United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

Senators returned to Washington with the clock ticking on the current farm bill.

The Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Bozeman of Arkansas says one of his first priorities is another attempt to move the new farm bill out of committee.

Now the committee tried in August, but the bill failed to advance on a 10 to 11 vote.

And a major sticking point was the implementation timeline for the new state cost-sharing requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Well, of course, we continue to wait and see what is going to happen with the farm bill in the Senate.

We are expecting another vote in the Senate Ag Committee here this next week as they come back from recess.

Let's talk about where this process stands and get some perspective from the International Fresh Produce Association.

Joining us right now, their Director of Production and Environmental Policy, Sarah Ngu Reads.

Um, that I think is going to be the biggest like pushing point in, um, whatever happens in the midterms, because right now we're trying to see, can the farm bill even get passed before, um, the midterms can, can this happen? And if this doesn't, right, then, you know, we'll see what happens, whether Republicans keep, you know, both chambers, whether, you know, the Democrats take the house or if they take the Senate or both, like it's going to really, um, it's going to really impact the farm bill, which can definitely impact the hemp loophole.

I mean, we're seeing Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Democrat members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, have their own bills that they're proposing regarding hemp and regarding some regulations on there.

And I think that shows that it is an interest within some Democrat members of the Ag Committee.

So if Maybe they're also pushing in their own states.

And then also add to that the increased input costs, and I think certainly we can make a case for another year of some type of emergency assistance.

In fact, you know, the House, they've already passed their version of a Farm Bill 2.0. We're just waiting on the Senate to get a, hopefully, when they come back on September the 14th from their recent break, they will be able to go back into session within the Senate Ag Committee and finalize their version of the Senate Farm Bill 2.0 so that they can vote on that through the full Senate and then hopefully get that reconciled with the House and get some assistance out there.

But we do know the House has already talked about and already recommended approximately $12 billion of assistance And we don't know how that will come exactly at this point, but we do know that the farm bridge assistance program that was delivered based on the 25 crop, we know that that got a lot of praise for being something that was quick and efficient and able to in being able to get some emergency funding out into the countryside quickly.

So I think chances are good that we could see something like that.

But there have been lobbying attempts from various representatives.

The Senate Agriculture Committee's markup failed ten to eleven in August over an unrelated food assistance dispute, so no amendment for hemp was adopted there either.

The Farm Bill extension and government funding now share the same September thirtieth deadline, which means the Farm Bill, Farm Bill track and appropriations track are running in parallel, not in sequence, which would end up carrying hemp language before December.

Could they get to the Har- Farm Bill finally and get to that because other areas of agriculture will be affected along with hemp, and then hemp would just benefit from it? That could be something we would look, look forward to.

We're three years behind in passing a new farm bill, and it's still unclear if a new one will be passed this year.

Even with the disappointing outcome with the Senate Ag Committee failing to advance the farm bill back in August, American Farm Bureau Vice President of Public Policy and economic analyst John Newton is hopeful that something can come together when the Senate returns from recess next week.

Agriculture's not a partisan issue.

Every single state has agriculture in it, uh, and farm bills have always been bipartisan, and I, and I think we can get to that point.