Lawmakers reach tentative farm bill deal after months-long impasse

The compromise bill now being developed must pass each chamber again before heading to the president’s desk.

Lawmakers faced pressure from farmers and ranchers to get a deal done, particularly amid a steep decline over the last several years in farm incomes as commodity prices have sagged, said Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, an industry group.

“Reaching an agreement gives farmers and ranchers certainty that a farm bill is getting done, and will help them weather the economic storms in their way,” Moore said. “It’s especially important as banks are beginning to look with farmers at the next financial year.”

The biggest debate over this year’s farm bill was over food stamps, as House Republicans pushed much stricter work requirements for “able-bodied” adults seeking to benefit from the program.

The Republican plan would have added new work requirements for those aged between 49 and 59, and made it more difficult for states to waive some food stamp work requirements. Among other changes, the GOP plan would have also removed the existing work requirement exemption for parents with children older than six.

But those positions ran into opposition in the Senate, where it requires votes from Democrats to be approved. Between 800,000 and 1.1 million households would have faced food stamp benefit cuts under one of the House Republicans proposals, according to a study by the Mathematica Policy Research, a policy research organization.

Stabenow and Roberts declined to describe the compromise they had reached on the food stamp issue but said both parties should be able to live with it and that their House counterparts also had signed off.

“It’s something that I support. I’ll just leave it at that,” Stabenow said.

Negotiators also feuded over a forestry section of the farm bill, as the White House made a late push for provisions that would have allowed for the clearing of material from forests that they argued help spread fires. That push emerged in response to the California wildfires earlier this month.