Bipartisan decision yet to be made on Farm Bill

SACRAMENTO — An extensive piece of legislation the agricultural world is watching, the Farm Bill, will be up for vote on June 22. At this point, there is no bipartisan decision.

The bill covers a large variety of programs and agricultural matters from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to crop insurance and conservation.

The last Farm Bill was enacted into law in 2014 and expires later this year.

According to Nicole Montna, chairman of the California Rice Producers Group and president and CEO of Montna Farms in Yuba City, programs that expand conservation efforts and crop insurance are extremely important to rice farmers.

“There are programs that protect growers when they have severe market conditions and provide a safety net that can be utilized to get through that severe time,” she said. “... Crop insurance is always an important part of what farmers look at in a farm bill, in 2014 (and) 2015 we had severe droughts that affected the crops.”

Some rice growers, such as Montna Farms, participate in programs that help benefit waterfowl. Montna Farms specifically provides water for waterfowl migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Many rice farmers view these types of conservation efforts as vital to the Farm Bill, Montna said.

“I think that the 2018 Farm Bill won’t be significantly different from the 2014 Farm Bill,” she said. In 2014, there were significant changes in how programs were implemented and “what we’re seeing in 2018 is tweaks to those plans so what a grower might see is something similar but hopefully better.”

This year’s proposed Farm Bill has added some additional requirements for SNAP recipients, including people between the ages of 18 to 59 must work or be enrolled in a training program for at least 20 hours per week. People who are disabled, pregnant or caring for a child under the age of 6 are exempt from these requirements. It would also aim to cut down on potential SNAP fraud by creating a database that would determine who is eligible and to prevent people from receiving benefits from multiple states.

SNAP accounts for 80 percent of the Farm Bill’s spending, according to Congressman Doug LaMalfa for California’s 1st District.

The bill would also be repealing the Conservation Stewardship Program and incorporating parts of the program into EQIP, revise requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency pesticide registration program and makes minor changes to some other programs.

LaMalfa said the program is important because helps keep the prices of food consistent for food grown in America and it helps support programs through the USDA like research and forestry.

“It continues the stability that the program ensures for pricing along with a safety net for pricing (in case of things like severe weather),” he said. “It makes pricing for consumers more stable as well... It’s very important for much of rural America, one of the things the USDA does is help rural America.”

Third District Congressman John Garamendi said some of the programs are essentially the same but have some minor tweaks and name changes, but there is some disagreement on SNAP and some of the farm programs.

“The conservation programs are good, even though the titles have changed,” he said. “The SNAP program I think is incorrect, I see no reason to establish a very expensive administrative program to determine who is eligible for the SNAP benefits... Some of the very conservative republicans are opposed to some of the farm programs.”