Last week, the Trump administration and the U.S. Senate’s leadership made clear through their actions that they are not serious about ensuring the well-being of farmers and the food system. Instead, they are using the economic pain that farmers are experiencing as a bargaining chip to achieve other priorities like securing more funding for the administration’s war on Iran. The evidence can be seen within two parallel efforts in the Senate that both emerged last Tuesday.
The Farm Bill proposals in the Senate and House don’t meet the moment
First, Senator John Boozman (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, released his Farm Bill proposal, which mirrored the bill passed by the House of Representatives in April. These partisan Farm Bill proposals, both in the House and Senate, invest none of the new funds needed to build the regional processing and distribution infrastructure that farmers need for market access, expand the conservation programs that all farmers can utilize, or hire new NRCS and FSA agents needed to fully staff USDA county offices. These two Farm Bill proposals also fail to make the reforms that farmers need to make the farm safety net and FSA credit work for all farmers or stop corporations from price gouging and further monopolizing the food system. In short, the Senate Agriculture Committee had the chance to write a bipartisan proposal that could benefit all farmers, but instead, they chose to copy the House Farm Bill.
The Republican Senate leadership made this choice despite knowing that they won’t be able to get the 60 votes they need to pass this version of a Farm Bill — Senate Democrats have been clear that they won’t vote for a Farm Bill unless it invests in all farmers’ success and fixes the SNAP cuts and cost transfers passed in H.R.1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The fact that the Senate Agriculture Committee has not done the hard bipartisan work to put forward a proposal that addresses these concerns indicates that the committee’s leadership is not very serious about actually passing a Farm Bill.
The Senate looks to trade farmers’ livelihoods for war funding
At the same time that this Farm Bill proposal was released last Tuesday, the Trump Administration called on the Senate to pass over $67 billion in special funding to fund the Administration’s ongoing war with Iran. According to reporting from Politico, Senate leadership is pushing to tack on between $10 billion and $17 billion in farm relief funding to the war funding because they know they don’t have the votes to pass the war funding alone. “Senior Senate GOP appropriators have been pushing to add … farm aid to any Trump request for supplemental Iran war funding since the conflict began,” Politico reported, “arguing it’s unlikely Republicans could pass the funding without those added sweeteners.”
“Senior Senate GOP appropriators have been pushing to add…farm aid to any Trump request for supplemental Iran war funding since the conflict began, arguing it’s unlikely Republicans could pass the funding without those added sweeteners.”
Politico
Senate leadership thinks that aiding farmers being crushed by inflation is nothing more than a bargain “sweetener” to be used to try to coerce votes to pay for more war abroad. Instead, they should put farmers first by writing a bipartisan Farm Bill that actually invests in what farmers need. The fact that they are asking for between $10 billion and $17 billion in farm relief funding shows they could find the money to write a good Farm Bill if they wanted to.
Using farmers to get votes to fund the war that caused their crisis is hypocritical
The Senate leadership knows that the Trump administration’s war has supercharged the inflation and input cost increases that are driving the current farm crisis, and they know that farmers need billions of dollars in investments and support. According to Politico, “GOP senators and aides privately argue $10 billion will not be enough to cover the cost of an array of problems currently hitting farmers across the country — sparked by the impact of Trump’s tariff policies and the Iran war’s contribution to months of high fertilizer and fuel costs.”
The crisis in farm country is urgent and real, and farmers do need economic relief; but they also need policy that addresses the drivers of that crisis. Instead, they’ve gotten an unpredictable roller coaster of ad hoc aid that only reaches the most well-connected farmers, as well as massive cuts and disruptions to SNAP that have derailed the Farm Bill process while leaving people hungry and with less money to buy farmers’ products.
The Senate could have used their constitutional authority to exercise oversight over the administration’s wars to prevent the deepening farm crisis. They could have also engaged in a truly bipartisan Farm Bill process and invested billions to make farmers whole. Instead, they are dangling billions for farmers as a deal “sweetener” to fund the very war that is making the farm crisis worse.
Farmers deserve better
Farmers have been asking for a Farm Bill since 2023, and for three years, the can has continually been kicked down the road. On top of that, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act broke with decades of bipartisan Farm Bill consensus by unilaterally making massive cuts to SNAP outside of the Farm Bill, while opening up massive new loopholes for farm subsidy programs accessible only to the largest and most corporate-aligned farms. This derailed the bipartisan consensus that has historically been necessary to pass the full Farm Bill that farmers need, and it will result in compounding harms over the coming years.
For the small- and mid-scale independent farmers that are the backbone of regional food systems, it’s important to understand that not just any Farm Bill will do. These farmers need a Farm Bill that:
- Makes farm credit and the farm safety net work for all farmers.
- Restaffs local FSA and NRCS offices so they can provide excellent customer service and program access for all farmers.
- Rebuilds regional processing, distribution, and marketing infrastructure.
- Reverses course on requiring states and even counties to pay massive new administrative and benefit costs for SNAP, which risks the collapse of local county budgets and ultimately widespread increases in hunger.
- Stops large corporations from price gouging farmers on inputs and extracting maximum profits out of our food systems at all of our expense.
Congress should take farm policy as seriously as farmers take feeding us. If you want the Senate to work together to pass a Farm Bill that prioritizes all farmers and builds the food system that we all deserve, tell your Senator that this Farm Bill isn’t good enough.