Finding Fault With the Farm Bill

The so-called farm bill includes something for everyone, from farm subsidies and food stamps to clean-air initiatives. But its sheer, trillion-dollar size leaves critics plenty to find fault with—and those fault lines could derail the bill currently being drafted by the House and Senate agriculture committees.

The coalition that passes the law, which expires on Sept. 30, 2018, cuts across parties and regions. That’s especially crucial in 2018, when rural lawmakers may determine who controls Congress. How they manage the farm bill’s faults may shape who wins next year’s elections—and determine whether America flirts with a reversion to older farm laws that would force markets to adjust to supply-restricting rules in effect when Harry Truman was president.

That’s happened before, and Congress always patches it with extensions of current law—but the lack of any agreement would show Trump voters in rural districts that once again, Washington can’t deliver for them. It could impede progress on small-town scourges ranging from a lack of broadband access to opioid addiction. And it would be another sign of American political dysfunction.

As goes the farm bill, so goes cohesion in American politics. This could be the year it falls apart.

The key to passing the farm bill is the urban-rural coalition of farm-state Republicans (who back farm subsidies) and urban Democrats (who protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps).

But rural Republican support is no longer automatic, as small-town social conservatives take aim at food stamps. House Freedom Caucus members have backed deep cuts to the program in budget resolutions: Work requirements and other means of tightening the program, all billed as ways to ensure that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aid is targeted to the most deserving, will divide GOP support.

Some Democrats are more absolutist on food stamps than others. Pragmatists, including the ranking Democrats of both the House and Senate agriculture committees, will stomach some changes to the rules to get a bill through. More strident advocates such as Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts resist any reductions. The division weakens the Democrats’ united front.

The food stamp community itself has divisions. Dietary restrictions in food stamps are supported by many nutritionists as a way to encourage better eating. But the corporate muscle supporting SNAP—the big grocers such as Kroger Co.—don't want the rules, which complicate business and could cut into sales.

The last farm bill passed in early 2014 after farmers experienced record profits and high crop prices. Prices have plunged since then. That’s made funding for such environmental favorites as the Conservation Reserve Program, which idles erodible lands in return for a fixed payment, attractive. The initiatives channel money to famers who adopt sustainable practices, and in some cases pays them not to plant crops. But money for clean air and water comes with government strings attached, which farmers historically fight.

Environmental issues divide the farm groups that provide muscle for efforts to pass the bill, as lobbies that support expanded farm payments argue over how much regulation to accept in return. More Republican-leaning organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation will push for as little government oversight as possible, while more Democratic-leaning groups like the National Farmers Union are more open to it.

But farmers will unite in wanting more ways to make money. Wheat farmers, for example, have struggled to profit as production costs have risen, and they may find conservation programs that pay farmers to idle land more attractive than raising a crop.

But while environmental groups may get more acreage set aside for conservation, they may have to give on other fronts, such as rules that tie crop-insurance payments to conservation practices. A key arbiter: Outdoors groups like Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited, which want to preserve habitat. They have a big say in how environmentally friendly the farm bill will become.

The Budget Hawks overlap with the Welfare Skeptics but aren't exactly the same. Budget Hawks are less worried about welfare dependency than they are about saving money. The Agvocates—farm and rural lobbyists who boost agriculture spending, even if they’re otherwise fiscal conservatives—are the rural part of the urban-rural coalition. They represent the commodity groups that fight over how the bill will allocate money to corn, soybeans, and other crops. They tend to be fiscal conservatives, too, though not when it comes to farmers.

Before the Agvocates can do battle, they need to agree on what they want farm subsidies to look like. That could be difficult this time around. Thanks to chronic budget deficits, the money isn’t there to expand programs.

Dairy producers and cotton growers both feel they were shortchanged in the last farm bill, while corn, soybean, and wheat farmers are largely happy with current programs. More money for cotton and dairy could mean less for everyone else. But without happiness in all parts of the commodity world, any deal on the farm bill could die before it even gets through the Agriculture Committee.