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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has stunned Capitol Hill - and provided a big boost for farm bill programs - by cutting a major climate funding deal with Sen. Joe Manchin.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced an agreement with Sen. Joe Manchin on a narrow reconciliation bill that would provide $369 billion in climate-related provisions, including more than $20 billion for farm bill conservation assistance and additional incentives for low-carbon biofuels and rural electric co-ops.
The demise of President Joe Biden’s climate funding plan on Capitol Hill makes it a lot harder, but not impossible, to help farmers ramp up climate-related practices. But the administration retains a powerful tool in the Commodity Credit Corp., and there will be pressure to steer farm bill funds into climate priorities.
Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week as Democratic leaders are desperately trying to cobble together an agreement on a reconciliation bill that could fund President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
Fertilizer prices are continuing to soar and threatening to go higher, so the Senate Agriculture Committee has asked economists at Texas A&M University to update a study that detailed the sharp cost increases heading into this year.
Three major farm groups are hoping to double the amount of cover crops planted in the United States through an initiative targeting Midwestern corn and soybean farmers.
Farmers will need significant incentives to plant incentives to plant more cover crops, and the subsidies will likely need to increase as the government’s acreage goals rise, according to a study by economists at The Ohio State University and the University of Illinois.
