Ag News
Senate ag Committee releases new farm bill draft
Posted on Nov 21, 2024 at 7:48 AM
On Nov. 18, the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee released a draft of the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, the Senate’s version of the new farm bill.
The 2018 farm bill, which has been extended, expires Dec. 31.
According to a committee press release, the bill includes $39 billion in new resources to “keep farmers farming, families fed and rural communities strong.”
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) is reviewing the 1,397-page bill. Meanwhile, AFBF President Zippy Duvall emphasized that time is short to get the bill done.
“It’s unfortunate that only a few legislative working days remain for Congress to act, but Farm Bureau remains committed to working with elected officials on both sides of the aisle to achieve federal policy that improves the outlook for farmers and ranchers,” Duvall said. “Our members across the nation have been clear in calling for a new farm bill in 2024 that helps farmers hold on after farm income dropped 30% in two years. The hardworking women and men who grow the food, fiber and renewable fuel for our nation cannot afford to wait for good federal policy that helps them manage the day-to-day risks inherent in agriculture.”
According to the release, the $39 billion in new resources includes $20 billion designated to strengthen the farm safety net and establishes a permanent structure for disaster assistance to speed relief to farmers. Another $8.5 billion would support nutrition assistance programs and $4.3 billion would go toward improving the quality of life in rural communities by: Supporting improved rural health care, childcare, and education; creating good-paying jobs; expanding access to high-speed internet; and lowering costs for families and businesses.
Some highlights from the committee summary of the bill:
• Gets money back in the hands of farmers immediately by providing a partial reimbursement of crop insurance premiums and Noninsured Crop Disaster Program (NAP) fees paid for the 2024 crop.
• Builds on a successful, market-based approach that provides support to farmers when disasters outside of their control strike and focuses assistance on farmers with dirt under their fingernails and not billionaires and foreign investors.
• Makes crop insurance more affordable by increasing premium subsidies on the most common, area-based, crop insurance policies and on individual coverage for all farmers.
• Ensures access to crop insurance by incentivizing insurance companies and agents to serve all producers and all commodities, ensuring premium rates reflect risk, and strengthening USDA’s ability to oversee industry compliance with the requirement to serve all producers.
• Improves access to Whole Farm and Micro Farm insurance policies providing new insurance options for specialty crop producers who lacked or had limited options available to them. The bill increases financial incentives for insurance companies and agents to sell these policies to small and diversified producers, facilitating data access, and streamlining underwriting processes.
• Provides certainty to farmers by making payments under the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) programs more likely to trigger and improves emergency disaster assistance. All covered commodities will see a 5% statutory reference price increase, a more market-oriented escalator formula, and a higher ARC guarantee.
• Addresses a key shortcoming of ARC/PLC by enabling partial, early payments, ensuring that farmers receive the assistance they need faster.
• Provides immediate assistance by making program enhancements starting with the 2024 crop year, and making assistance available to farmers for the 2023 and 2024 crop years on either ARC or PLC, whichever results in higher payments.
• Strengthens support for specialty crops by including the first-ever specialty crops insurance subtitle, ensuring that specialty crop farmers have a voice in policy decisions, accelerating the development of new technology through dedicated funding, and doubling investments in successful programs like the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and the Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
• Supports beginning farmers by providing premium discounts on crop insurance and new opportunities to access commodity programs, supporting education and training for the next generation of agriculture professionals, and creating a new program to support agriculture programs at community colleges around the country.
The bill also provides support for agriculture research, supports trade programs, establishes an Office of Small Farms to address small farm policy, cultivates regional food systems and doubles funding for dealing with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.
For the entire committee summary of the bill, click here.
To read the text of the bill, click here.
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