Despite a push from some lawmakers, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders declined the option of attaching a Farm Bill extension to the continuing resolution (CR) deal.
Rather, they are seeking to work towards addressing the massive authorizing bill in some way during the lame duck session following the November elections.
By not attaching an extension to the CR, agriculture leaders are willfully moving past the September 30 deadline for reauthorization and allowing the current Farm Bill to expire. It’s important to remember this happened last year (and in many previous Farm Bill negotiation years), and allowing a short-term expiration to take place is not nearly as impactful as it may sound.
Programs subject to discretionary funding — such as most U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development programs — will be able to continue to operate as long as funding is provided in the CR (which it is at flat levels from FY24). On the conservation side, many programs were reauthorized through 2031 in the Inflation Reduction Act, so impacts will be minimal.
The most significant large-scale impacts come at the end of the crop year on December 31 rather than the end of the fiscal year. This is when many of the farm commodity programs would go offline and be replaced by outdated laws that do not recognize certain commodities and ineffectively manage others. While inaction before the September 30 deadline has less serious consequences, Congress will certainly need to act before the end of the calendar year.
Currently, agriculture leaders are mulling options for negotiations, with Senate Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) pushing the hardest for completion of a full Farm Bill in the lame duck session. Others are more pessimistic than the retiring Stabenow, with Senate Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Arkansas) and House Chairman GT Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) appearing to lean towards another extension before the end of the year, paired with an ad hoc assistance package to address specific disaster relief needs of farmers. House Ranking Member David Scott (D-Georgia) appears to be open to this approach as well.
The 2018 Farm Bill, also known as the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, expired on September 30, 2023, but was extended for one year until it expired again on September 30, 2024. The farm bill is an omnibus, multiyear law that is typically renewed about every five years. It’s impactful to the groundwater industry as some water well contractors drill farm water wells, irrigation wells, or service wells and their pumping systems.