House unveils draft farm bill, setting up likely fight with Senate over food aid programs, climate change regulations

May 21—WASHINGTON — The House version of the next Farm Bill, a $1.5 trillion package of agriculture and food program legislation, set up what's likely to be a fight with the Senate, largely over food aid programs and climate change regulations.

The two chambers have been working on their bills for over a month, with the Senate version released earlier in May. The two chambers both included similar proposals on a number of topics, like updating the Dairy Margin Coverage program that provides emergency payments to dairy farmers when the cost of feed reaches a certain level compared to the price of milk and expanding federal crop insurance programs to specialty farmers previously excluded from most federal insurance programs.

But the chambers, with the House led by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats, also included vastly different plans for other programs in their committee drafts of the bills as well — the Republican House plan would cut a $13 billion conservation program funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, and would also limit future updates to the formula that calculates SNAP benefits, which some left-leaning advocates have said could cut about $30 billion in SNAP benefits over the next decade if passed into law.

Senate Democrats have vowed to block any proposals that cut food programs or conservation efforts, so the House plan is likely to face significant pushback from Democrats in both chambers — and with the House's slim Republican majority, it's possible the SNAP cut and conservation effort block will face serious roadblocks in that chamber.

On Tuesday, Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro, R-Tivoli, one of two New York representatives to sit on the House Agriculture Committee, held a virtual press conference to discuss the House Farm Bill with reporters. Molinaro represents the upper Hudson Valley and Southern Tier in Congress.

Molinaro said that he feels that both New York and federal lawmakers have long failed to properly represent the small and mid-sized farms that are most common in New York, compared to the megafarms owned by corporations that are more common in the midwestern "rectangle states."

"This bill is the product, for me, of 11 town hall meetings, three separate Farm Bill listening sessions and dozens of meetings with local farmers trying to give a voice to the farming community," he said.

Molinaro said there are 10 bills that he originally wrote that have made it into the House proposal this year, including the House version of the bill to expand the Dairy Margin Coverage program, a bill to expand home food delivery from food banks for seniors in rural areas and a bill to reauthorize and provide more funding to a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that provides funding and services to disabled farmers.

The Farm Bill also includes Molinaro's House version of a bill, supported in the Senate by Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y. that will exempt people enrolled in SNAP work training programs from having earnings from that program counted as income that could kick them off SNAP entirely.

It also includes a bill that would require the USDA to maintain an easy-to-access repository of information for farmers on how to acquire more efficient pumping and irrigation systems — something Molinaro said will help New Yorkers both in the farming industry and in the pipe and pump industry, which has a presence in Endicott, a town in his district.

The House Farm Bill also includes a provision to end the federal ban on public schools providing whole milk, 2% fat and flavored milk to students at lunch — both the U.S. and N.Y. state governments have prohibited public schools from providing whole milk to students since 2012, on the argument that whole and 2% milk's fat content can cause health problems and higher concentrations of bad cholesterol in the body. The Senate version does not address the federal whole and 2% milk ban.

While any federal legislation would not change the law in New York, and there seems to be little interest in changing the state law in Albany, Molinaro said he was happy to see the House version ending what he said is a "utterly ridiculous" ban.

"I didn't mean that pun, but it's ridiculous that before I got here, Washington and Albany made it illegal to sell whole and flavored milk in schools," he said. "We don't force anybody to drink anything, but our kids benefit from having access to milk and milk products earlier. We know this for bone development, we know this for general nutrition, and quite frankly, that prohibition on whole and flavored milk ought to have been lifted already by the federal government and Albany."

Molinaro lauded the bill's inclusions for food aid programs like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serves as the main food aid program in the U.S.

He said there's no outright cut to SNAP benefits, and the program is on track to see an increase of over $53 billion over the course of the 5-year Farm Bill term. He rejected the claim that SNAP benefits will be cut.

"What we do is seek to increase SNAP benefits, broaden to a degree who qualifies for SNAP benefits, and hold future administrations accountable for ensuring that individuals who benefit from SNAP have access by confronting states that allow far too many fraudulent payments," he said.

Molinaro said New York's SNAP program saw over $900 million in fraudulent payments made in 2022 — largely overpayments made in cases where people lied on applications for the benefits or businesses have run under-the-table "benefits to cash" schemes where valid SNAP beneficiaries are allowed to exchange their SNAP allowance on their EBT cards for cash or non-eligible goods.

Molinaro said that 2022 total, of $900 million in fraudulent SNAP payments, was enough to cover at least 175,000 families in New York.

"This is about empowering people and ensuring that SNAP is available to those who struggle the hardest," he said.

Farm Bureau's take

The N.Y. Farm Bureau, which represents the interests of farmers across New York and serves as a mouthpiece for agricultural priorities in Albany and Washington, has been tracking this year's Farm Bill process closely. Ashley Oeser, the NY Farm Bureau's national affairs coordinator and associate director of public policy, said in an interview before the House bill draft's full text was released that she was pleased to see both chambers were looking to expand the Dairy Margin Coverage program.

"That's something vital to our farmers and it gives them an additional support on their farms," she said.

She said the organization was also pleased to see other programs aimed at protecting dairy farmers in the House bill's early framework, like a proposal to increase the DMC program's tier-one limit from 5 million pounds of milk to 6 million — essentially providing more coverage to farms that produce more product.

The House version of the bill's move to expand crop insurance for specialty farmers was also welcome to the Farm Bureau, Oeser said, as well as the language that would establish an advisory committee of specialty crop producers that would inform USDA policy regarding those farms and to help get the USDA's farmer assistance and education programs more in line with specialty farming needs.

The Senate Farm Bill draft also includes specialty crop farming insurance programs that Oeser said would be welcomed.

Both chambers have included bills that would boost research and development assistance for specialty farms as well, providing more scientific research on practices and technologies that can help farmers do their jobs better and enjoy better, more environmentally friendly yields to their crops.

Oeser said the Farm Bureau is supportive of USDA conservation programs and was happy to see the Senate version include extensions and extra funding for the key programs — like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

Oeser said the Farm Bureau is also supportive of the initiative to put whole milk back into public schools.

"There's a lot of studies that show how healthy whole milk is, for students and we think that's important," she said.

Now that the House and Senate have put their proverbial cards on the table, the two agriculture committees will begin "marking up" the bills as drafted, making changes to language, before they head to the floors for a vote.

Because any legislation in both houses must match exactly to be signed into law, there will be some sort of process to bring the two bills into total agreement before a second vote is made.

Congress can either call a conference committee, a now seldom-used process where the two chambers appoint members to meet together and bring a bill into alignment. The more likely method will be that one chamber, after informal negotiations with the other, will vote a second time on a piece of legislation that matches the other houses version.

All this must happen before the Farm Bill in its current form, already extended for a year beyond its initial expiration date, sunsets on Sept. 1.