WASHINGTON — Three of the four top agricultural leaders in Congress are emphasizing writing a farm bill that meets the needs of all rural Americans, but they diverge sharply over food assistance work requirements pushed by U.S. House Republicans as well as uses of Inflation Reduction Act conservation funds.
Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas and Republican Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania expressed a shared commitment to getting the bill done on time with “ground-up” input from farmers and ranchers while speaking this week at the North American Agricultural Journalists conference.
“When you look and see what’s going on in rural America, agriculture is really all that’s left,” said Boozman, the ranking member on the Senate Committee for Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. “It’s a safety net for our farmers, but it’s also a safety net for rural America.”
Still, the committee leaders split along party lines in discussing the possibility of expanded work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. They also disagreed over a Senate Agriculture GOP proposal to redirect funding for climate initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act into the farm bill’s baseline budget.
The farm bill is a multiyear omnibus law which authorizes an array of agricultural and food programs, including federal crop insurance, food stamp benefits and farm resource conservation.
The farm bill is renewed close to every...
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