Regardless of who wins in the midterm elections, there is still work to do for U.S. agriculture in the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress. Duane Simpson, president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said he believes some work will get done.
“I have a high degree of confidence that we are going to either finish the farm bill or we’re not going to ever pass the farm bill. I’ll be honest. I think that we’re going to pass a farm bill. It feels to me like they’re very, very close to getting this done. You don’t get this close and then walk away and start all over with a new Congress. I think the farm bill gets done here in the next six weeks or so.”
Simpson talks about the main roadblocks to finally getting a farm bill.
“The first one is the one I think everyone’s most familiar with, and that deals with the SNAP benefits, where the cost share between the states and federal government, where Democrats want to see a two-year delay, Republicans have offered a one-year delay. There is some room in there to negotiate around a one-year delay. So that’s the first one. The second one deals with funding for EQIP and CSP conservation funding. In the One Big Beautiful Bill, there was additional money put in. That money was set there, kind of parked with the intent to spend it on other conservation programs, which is what the House did. Democrats don’t want to see that end up cut out of those two programs, and so there are some negotiations going on as to whether there’s new money that comes in or whether there’s a change in the total funding. But I think that one also can get worked out. And then the last one is Prop 12. There’s a House measure that completely preempts that. The Senate doesn’t touch that. We have to work that out.”
It’s hard to know for sure what’s going to happen in the lame-duck session.
“This is more art than science, but I would say that I’m highly confident. I’m as confident as I’ve been. To be fair, I’ve been pretty pessimistic in the past, but I mean, I would say it’s 80-20. There are so many things that can go wrong that could stop it from happening. But I think if they’re going to do the remainder of the farm bill, it happens in the lame duck. I think that trying to do this with a new Congress in the last two years of a presidency, I think if they don’t do it now, just about everybody believes they’re not doing it for another two years.”