Agri-Pulse
Food for Peace, fertilizer measures added to Senate Ag farm bill
By Kim Chipman
The Senate Agriculture Committee added a bundle of bipartisan amendments to the proposed GOP farm bill, addressing Food for Peace, hot rotisserie chicken, fertilizer and specialty crops.
The en bloc approval came at the start of the Republican-led panel’s farm bill markup on Thursday. Other amendments so far from Democrats have been voted down along party lines.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is out due to a health issue, is voting by proxy on amendments. His vote, however, cannot count to advance the bill out of committee, meaning Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., needs at least one Democrat to back the legislation or it will fail. The farm bill isn't currently expected to be approved due to partisan disagreement related to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
On other amendments, a proposal from Peter Welch, D-Vt., would mandate an audit of farms if there is more than one manager, or more than three people eligible to receive subsidy payments. Welch said he's concerned some commodity program dollars are going to "people who don’t drive tractors.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who has long pushed for such reforms, lamented that he couldn’t vote for the amendment, which failed on party lines.
“I’m sorry to say that since this has turned out to be a partisan markup, I can’t vote for your amendment that I agree with you on,” Grassley said in comments directed at Welch. “You and I believe that people that are actively engaged ought to be the only ones receiving farm payments, and we know when we give 70 percent of the farm payments to 10 percent of the biggest farmers in this country, we’re going way beyond what the safety net for farmers has been in the last 90 years.”
Amendments approved include:
- Requirement of `designation of country-of-origin’ and `farm-raised/wild caught’ for fish to be combined and placed on the front of packaging and printed in font no smaller than the font used for the ‘farm-raised/wild designation’ label. (Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss.)
- Allow hot rotisserie chicken as an eligible SNAP food and require it be an accessory food in terms of SNAP retailer eligibility. (Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va.)
- Transfer the Food for Peace Program from the State Department to USDA. (Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.)
- Require federal action to improve fertilizer market transparency (Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa)
- Bolster protections for CFTC whistleblowers and makes improvements to the CFTC Whistleblower Program (Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa)
- Make losses of timber eligible for assistance in the form of block grants. (Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.)
- Direct the Farm Credit Administration to conduct a study on gaps in rural housing credit markets. (Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va.)
- Require the Forest Service to amend the applicable prairie dog management plans for the Dakota Prairie Grasslands and the Oglala National Grassland to limit prairie dog habitat within grazing allotments and establish a 1-mile buffer along adjacent state and private lands. (Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.)
- Enhance cybersecurity of SNAP EBT cards (Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.)
- Affirm the definition of specialty crops in Title 10, the Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops (TASC) program, and crop insurance authorities. (Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.)
- Create an Office of Small Farms at the USDA to streamline access to USDA programs for small farmers. (Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.)
- Expand eligibility and address administrative issues related to the Heirs Property Relending Program (Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.)