Commentary: Farmers want Congress to act and pass the farm bill

By Matthew Viohl 

In the world of farming and ranching, there are few days without work. Growing strawberries is more than just planting seeds and waiting for them to bear fruit—and cows don’t understand the concept of a weekend. Even a pandemic couldn’t give farmers and ranchers a break.

But Congress, 10 weeks without any relief is apparently too much. Sure, they get to keep their weekends—typically long weekends—and nearly a dozen federal holidays. But 10 weeks in a row to do the people’s work? House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said that was creating a “pressure cooker.”

After 10 weeks, the House and Senate passed a funding bill that managed to keep the government in operation through early 2024 and allow lawmakers to enjoy their Thanksgiving holiday. But it’s hard to be excited about their accomplishments.

They managed to pass a “bifurcated” funding bill, which gives them two deadlines to fund the government. The first, which includes agricultural and food-safety programs, is Jan. 19. The second is Feb. 2.

The short-term extension will at least give Americans the peace of knowing their government will operate through the remainder of the year. However, lawmakers are again stuck spending months working on appropriations bills that should have been wrapped up last fall.

This brings us to the farm bill, which received a one-year extension in the mid-November deal. U.S. agriculture faced potential economic calamity had Congress been unable to pass any extension before the end of December. Failure to do so would have sent many farm pricing structures back to Dust Bowl-era levels.

A gallon of milk cost about 50 cents back in 1935. While consumers may well appreciate that price tag in grocery stores come January, the dairy industry in 2024 wouldn’t last long under such circumstances.

With such a crisis averted though, we now head into the new year with the farm bill still incomplete. While agriculture committee staff members in the House and Senate have continued their work, the woefully slow appropriations process has pushed this critical legislation back even more.

The farm bill has rarely been an easy lift. It has been decades since the last clean reauthorization was approved, so this isn’t exactly new territory for Congress. It’s quite obviously not a small bill. The last five-year farm bill, passed in 2018, clocked in at more than 500 pages. Such legislation cannot be passed in a few days. Rather, it requires many months of negotiating and tweaking before a final bill emerges, as we hope is ultimately the case.

With that in mind, we are looking at a farm bill that may not be done until mid-2024, if not later. But 2024 happens to be a consequential election year, and such years are rarely conducive to major bipartisan legislative victories.

This is generally because the party that is out of power doesn’t want to hand a bipartisan “win” to the incumbent majority. In addition, when the dust settles after the election, Congress might be transitioning to a new majority.

In the case of the Republicans, a favorable Senate map and hopes of a switch in presidents could equal a chance to do things in their vision come 2025. Democrats are no doubt angling to hold the Senate and retake the House to do things their way.

Thankfully, the most influential agricultural supporters in Congress are pushing to get the farm bill done as soon as possible. California Farm Bureau, the American Farm Bureau Federation and countless other agricultural organizations are pushing hard to make this a reality.

Given the traction we have hopefully made on several Western-friendly provisions, we see this legislation as a chance to bring home several wins for farming across the country and for Western states in particular.

While it is easy to be jaded about the painfully slow pace at which Congress seems to operate these days, there is still enough hope that 2024 is the year to get the farm bill done.

For starters, we have several members of Congress from California who understand the importance of this legislation. While the broader legislative body might struggle to figure out how to keep government in operation for more than just a few months at a time, these champions are still working behind the scenes to ensure agriculture remains in business in the U.S.

However, hopes are not enough. As Benjamin Franklin once explained in his 1737 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack, “Well done is better than well said.” It is high time that Congress got that message and went back to passing meaningful legislation, including a new farm bill that supports our farmers and ranchers who rarely take a day off.

(Matthew Viohl is director of federal policy for the California Farm Bureau. He may be contacted at mviohl@cfbf.com.)