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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Leaders of the House and Senate Ag committees announced dueling plans for a new farm bill as the partisan impasse appeared to deepen ahead of the House panel’s planned votes on May 23. House Ag Chairman Glenn Thompson released a broad summary of his planned legislation, and his Senate counterpart, Debbie Stabenow, followed with a much more detailed section-by-section summary of her draft bill.
A steady stream of lawmakers filed into the House Ag Committee's hearing room Tuesday where they advocated for changes to crop insurance, trade program expansion and a slate of other policies on their farm bill wishlists.
U.S. farm groups were quick to cheer Tuesday's announcement of a $1.3 billion investment in a new Regional Agricultural Promotion Program after waiting for weeks for the USDA to confirm its plans to fund a new program to help promote ag exports.
USDA’s plan to spend $1.4 billion to pay for a new export promotion program will provide the increase in market development funding that commodity groups have been trying to get through the farm bill, says Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
Farm groups have grown accustomed over the last few years to having more money to work with for promoting their products overseas, but that abundance could come to an end quickly.
Leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee are calling on Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to use his Commodity Credit Corp. spending authority for trade promotion purposes and purchases of commodities for international food aid.
Lawmakers are about to break for their August recess with just two months to go before some programs in the 2018 farm bill expire, and not even a draft of the new legislation is in sight. But the stakes for not passing a fresh farm bill on time may be lower this year than in the past.
When it comes to Title III of the farm bill, lawmakers need to prioritize strengthening USDA’s Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) Program, witnesses told lawmakers at a hearing hosted Thursday by the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition, Foreign Agriculture, and Horticulture.
