Thompson looking for more information to determine nutrition, farm program language in upcoming farm bill

A key Capitol Hill Republican says he plans to focus carefully on the diet title throughout deliberations surrounding the upcoming farm invoice. 

Speaking on this week’s Agri-Pulse Newsmakers, Rep. Glenn Thompson, the highest Republican on the House Ag Committee, says he was pissed off with updates to the Thrifty Food Plan that were used to increase benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The reevaluation, introduced in August 2021, elevated common SNAP advantages by about $36 monthly. 

While Congress licensed the replace within the 2018 farm invoice, Thompson mentioned Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack did it “fully on his personal authority, and never in an actual clear manner.

“I imply, he added an extra quarter trillion {dollars} to the diet title,” Thompson mentioned on this week’s Newsmakers. The diet title is now projected to price $1.1 trillion over 10 years, he mentioned. 

Thompson, who chaired the House Ag’s diet subcommittee throughout work on the farm invoice, mentioned USDA didn’t seek the advice of carefully with Congress Hill because it thought of the calculations. 

In August, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack mentioned he was in contact with Thompson and Senate Ag Ranking Member John Boozman, R-Ark., upfront of the TFP rollout. Vilsack mentioned the farm invoice had no constraints on the alternatives that had been made. 

The politics of the diet title have been evident in latest farm payments, famous Jonathan Coppess, a former Farm Service Agency administrator and Capitol Hill staffer who’s presently on the school of the University of Illinois. He mentioned diet points have hampered closing passage of earlier farm payments as GOP members of Congress sought to win SNAP reforms that angered Democrats.  

“We have the final two farm payments within the House to indicate simply how problematic that will get. Both of them [the bills] had been defeated on the House flooring as soon as and needed to be kind of rescued again within the course of,” he mentioned. 

“So I feel any time we see this very partisan deal with slicing SNAP, altering advantages, eradicating folks from this system, all of that simply ignites a sequence of partisan and political issues within the chambers that complicate the coalition constructing you’ll want to get the votes to get the invoice throughout the ground,” he mentioned. 

Thompson additionally mentioned he was involved about elevated enter prices dealing with producers and advised shifting to a extra margin-based threat administration construction. 

“Is reference worth truly a great way to proceed when it is the margin that issues?” Thompson requested.

Thompson mentioned commodity market costs are fluctuating, however “each commodity is combating enter prices” which don’t appear to be slowing down anytime quickly, he added. 

“Shouldn’t we be wanting [to] extra complete margin sort instrument versus a reference worth, which is absolutely meaningless in case you have this tremendous excessive inflation as a result of sadly, I do not see indicators of that slowing,” mentioned Thompson. 

To handle this difficulty within the subsequent farm invoice, Thompson is looking on producers to proceed to share their experiences on how their operation is being impacted by rising enter prices. Then he questioned if reference costs are one of the best software to assist producers.

Lisa Van Doren, chief of employees of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, mentioned producers, particularly rice growers, are being hit laborious with enter prices and want to the farm invoice for help. 

“That’s actually going to be an initiative that we’ll deal with and to attempt to be sure that Congress understands the implications,” mentioned Van Doren. 

Ryan Yates of the American Farm Bureau Federation mentioned ag lobbyists must educate various new lawmakers on farm invoice points after the midterm elections in November. 

“I feel because it stands now, we’ve got over 150 members within the House that weren’t right here after we wrote the final farm invoice,” he mentioned. “With retirements and election across the nook, we’ve got loads of schooling to do; I do suppose it may be achieved.”

This week’s Newsmakers will be considered at Agri-Pulse.com.