It’s been a long time coming, but one ag economist very familiar with the process says Congress could very likely pass a Farm Bill before Christmas, regardless of what happens on Election Day. Dr. Bart Fischer, Co-director of the Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University, has been involved in every major ag policy development in Washington, D.C. since the 2014 Farm Bill. Fischer says House and Senate staffers are hammering out details right now.
“Same thing played out in the 2018 farm bill, right? The election was very consequential in that midterm, but by December 20th, President Trump was signing that farm bill in spite of the House flipping. And so, I think, in spite of the outcome of the election, that it’s absolutely possible to get it done between then and the end of this year.’”
A lot of the mandatory spending was taken care of in the One Big Beautiful Bill, but Fischer says there’s hundreds of pages of other things that are priorities to growers that all have to get worked out, including some big-ticket items.
“What’s going to happen on Prop 12? What are we going to do on E15? So there’s some major issues that have to get addressed. But I think there’s also a conversation playing out as well. Are there other things that we could be addressing here? You know, as we get to the end of the year, knowing there’s also a conversation about yet another year of ad hoc, could we be making some more substantive changes? And so, all of that’s playing out right now. They’re exploring the art of the possible. You know, all four corners are meeting and connecting and working those things out, and so to me, it’s very promising that they’re doing that.”