It’s now officially the U.S. Senate’s turn to wrangle over the future of America’s farmers. Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, introduced Farm Bill 2.0 on Tuesday.
Boozman released the following statement, saying the bill " ...provides farmers, ranchers, foresters and rural communities with the tools and resources they need to succeed. We can all agree that we must take steps to help America’s farm families, and one of the most important ways we demonstrate that commitment is by passing a bipartisan farm bill. This bill is built for the people who feed America.”
What Farm Bill 2.0 Covers
Not all 12 farm bill titles were addressed in the One Big Beautiful Bill, so Farm Bill 2.0 is critical to get a permanent bill in place. It builds on those farm safety net investments but makes updates to conservation, rural development and farm credit programs. The proposal also expands on the Working Families Tax Cuts farm safety net provisions, further improving existing commodity, dairy, standing disaster and crop insurance programs while also addressing specialty crops.
Steve Censky, CEO of the American Soybean Association, spoke about the bill’s language, saying in part it " ...made the investments that were needed for the ARC and PLC programs, raising reference prices, and making some improvements in crop insurance.”
Farm groups are pleased this language finalizes remaining farm bill titles such as rural development by supporting local meat processing, rural health and mental stress care, water quality and broadband. It also extends trade and conservation program funding and improves CRP grazing options during drought.
“Reauthorizing the CRP and other conservation programs, doing market development to increase funding for market development and other market uses, making a lot of just basic changes of things that are in the farm bill, broadband, rural broadband, biopreferred program. Things like that are really important for moving the farm economy forward,” Censky says. Plus, the bill modernizes the farm credit title and farm loan programs to recognize the higher farm production costs versus the 2018 Farm Bill.
What’s Missing — And What Comes Next
The following measures are absent from the Senate bill: the Pesticide Labeling Uniformity Act, a fix for Prop 12 and year-round E15.
“We at the American Soybean Association are supportive of finally getting E15 done, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily take away lots of volumes from biomass-based diesel, and so we’re hopeful in the Senate that this might still be possible as the bill moves forward and that something like that could be included,” Censky says.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry is expected to start marking up the farm bill draft right after the July 4 recess. The House of Representatives passed its version of the farm bill on April 30. Like the Senate proposal, it excluded pesticide labeling and E15. It did, however, include Prop 12.
The House version of the farm bill contains a “Save Our Bacon Act” provision to overturn two state laws — California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts Question 3. Rob Brenneman, president of the National Pork Producers Council, recently joined Chip Flory on AgriTalk to discuss the controversy over California’s Prop 12 and the millions of dollars being spent to target lawmakers who support a federal fix to state pork production standards.
Brent Hershey of Hershey Ag and the American Meat Producers Association then talked with Flory about his support of Prop 12 and his opposition to congressional efforts to roll back the law.
