Life in rural America is not easy. Right now, farmers across the country are staying up all night, racing to harvest the last of their crops. The economy is in turmoil and prices are uncertain due to a trade war we didn’t ask for. And things could get worse, too. Imagine planting next season with no crop insurance, or sending your child to a public school that no longer provides a free lunch. Yikes.
The Farm Bill is up for reauthorization this year and Congress missed its September 30th deadline to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. Congress has put our national food system in a precarious position, and left essential rural programs unfunded in the meantime. But with a fast-approaching midterm election, rural communities have a unique opportunity to influence what the next Congress and the Farm Bill will look like.
The Farm Bill is a 900-billion-dollar piece of legislation housing hundreds of programs that shape how the American food system works, from rural farms to urban supermarkets. Rural communities are familiar with programs such as crop insurance and commodity programs. They’re essential to our way of life, the reason we are able to produce the crops that feed America.
Yet the Farm Bill also houses some of America’s most significant nutrition and food access programs like SNAP (food stamps), as well as the national school lunch program. SNAP was the sticking point for politicians this year: the House Farm Bill imposed additional work requirements on food stamp recipients, while the Senate version did not. The new work requirements would be much more onerous than those currently in place, sharply increasing bureaucratic hurdles to SNAP eligibility by making participants work more hours and fill out more complex forms to prove that they did so. Such a change would cut an estimated 1.2 million adults off from accessing food stamps. Despite months of negotiations, Congress was unable to reach a compromise on whether or not to increase SNAP work requirements. And without a compromise, the bill died.
So what happens when Congress misses its deadline to reauthorize such essential programs? Theoretically, the programs run out of money, putting the American food system in jeopardy. In reality, major commodity programs in the Farm Bill are run according to the crop year rather than the fiscal year, and thus have a few months of wiggle room. Most other major programs have funding through the current appropriations bill, but would be vulnerable to funding cuts during the next appropriations cycle. So, they’re largely safe from immediate collapse due to Congress’s delay, but they’re still hanging in the balance as we wait for an eventual compromise – language in the Farm Bill has the power to change the parameters and requirements of these programs, which will have significant implications for program recipients.
The most immediate impact of Congress’s inability to reach a compromise on reauthorization is not in flagship Farm Bill programs like crop insurance and SNAP, then, but in “orphan programs,” many of which are especially important to rural communities. These 39 programs were written into the 2014 Farm Bill with a strict expiration date of October 1, 2018. Since that date, orphan programs have been both unauthorized and unfunded.
USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has promised to do everything the USDA is “legally allowed to do” in order to provide interim funding for these programs, but even he acknowledged that the orphan programs are unlikely to continue at the status quo after the Farm Bill’s expiration.
Threatened orphan programs read like a priority list for rural communities. They include the Rural Water and Waste Disposal Program, which funds rural communities to build water and waste facilities, the Value-Added Market Development Grants, which assist rural farmers in marketing organic, local, and non-GMO products, and the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, which provides funding to encourage startup growth in rural America. Several of our country’s biofuel, agricultural research, and conservation initiatives are also orphan programs.
Traditionally, the Farm Bill has represented a balance of typical rural and urban interests – rural districts have advocated for their commodity programs, and urban districts have championed welfare programs. This year, I challenge my fellow members of rural and farming communities to break from tradition and hold their representatives to a higher standard. Republican representatives of rural districts allowed the Farm Bill to expire and for funding to essential rural programs to halt, all in their insistence to increase SNAP work requirements. Despite tradition, SNAP is actually a rural issue too; more SNAP participants belong to rural communities than urban or suburban ones. It’s time to start electing officials that take care of their community’s interests, not just their political party’s priorities.
Join me today in voting out the rural Republican representatives who let us down by failing to reauthorize the Farm Bill. Help America elect representatives who will support rural communities in the Farm Bill, feeding them when they’re hungry and supporting them as they develop and grow.