Is Ag Policy Broken?
Are we witnessing the end of agriculture policy as we know it? I promise you, this isn’t some headline meant to draw in readers with doomsday predictions that incite fear or anxiety. This is a very real concern of mine. Recent years have seen reactive policy overtake solid governance in regards to agriculture and I am unsure of what will change this trendline and allow us to return to proactive farming policy.
Agriculture has always been tied to government because of the need for a robust food supply chain and consistency for the end consumer. The Farm Bill started as a way to connect these two groups through food stamps, and has transformed into an ever growing behemoth. Typically agriculture policy is advocated for by independent groups, verified by government institutions, turned into a legislative product, sent back to the government offices and then passed down to the farmer. Is it a quick process? No, but sound legislation is rarely quick and especially when you are dealing with the scope of what falls under agriculture.
The last Farm Bill was passed in 2018, with an expiration date in 2023. Instead of having discussions about how we can make future focused investments in agriculture at a time of trade disagreements, weather concerns, and societal shifts toward social movements in agriculture, we are just stamping extensions on the outdated policy and moving on. Why is this? This program has valuable conservation efforts, safety nets for farmers, nutrient loss reduction strategies, beginning farmer initiatives, and of course SNAP tied to it. Where the pressure applied from a disruption in SNAP, as we saw with the government shutdown in 2025, should force this bill to be a priority, instead it allows legislators to keep constituents happy without creating any meaningful change by just extending it.
Has the Farm Bill gotten too big to be a legislative priority? When given the option to kick the can down the road, the federal government and Congress light up like a husky kid in a candy shop. Continue SNAP without any real work while showing how I “served” my constituents? Where can I sign up? When the Food Stamp Program was added to the Farm Bill, it was a common sense choice. Creating a market for surplus food capacity that creates a floor for farmers incomes while feeding citizens is a win win. However this program soon spiraled far beyond the initial scope and has overrun farmer programs as it moved to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. This partnership has forced actual agriculture policy to the backseat and is holding back the potential of farmers.
In recent years we have seen government programs issue financial aid directly to the farmers due to trade issues and increased input costs. While these are helpful to farmers today, it actually hurts us in the long run. The most recent bailout isn’t for farmers. Its for the agriculture supplier and machinery companies. They have elevated prices post COVID and haven’t had to adjust to realistic situations like the ones faced by the farmers. The prices are low, but the stark increase in inputs is what is killing us. Almost all of the money that will be distributed will go to big ag companies pockets. Selling the plight of the poor farmer is much easier when economic times are bad than trying to tell the average citizen that we are bailing out billion dollar companies. It allows all of those companies to not have to adjust to a bad ag economy and continue on as usual while farmers fight to survive.
So has ag policy died? At least in the short term yes. Instead of lobbying and working with legislators to build out programs that farmers can build and plan off of and building a transformative investment in agriculture, we are reactive to the whims of the market. We look for band aid solutions instead of curing the disease that ails the industry. The people hurt the most by this are young farmers. They are the ones that need government programming the most to grow operations and build a brighter future. As we discussed during Ag by the Numbers, there is a demographic issue in farming that won’t be addressed without transformative investment in the future.
Instead of programs we can count on and build off of, we are stuck waiting for direct payments that allow for inputs and land rent to remain astronomically high because the government will swoop in and bail us out. By fighting for ad hoc direct payments as a solution to real change, we lose our future. The Trump administration has backed up the ag economy for the short term, but what about the next president? What if they are not as friendly to agriculture and the payments cease? We are then left without solid farm policy and band aid fixes. We will lose more young farmers and ranchers in an industry where that simply cannot be afforded.
These payments are a band aid on a sucking chest wound. It slows the bleeding without changing the prognosis of the patient. Instead of building sound strategies to aid farmers and make the industry better, we are stuck treating the symptoms without ever getting to the root cause; farms fighting for survival because of ever rising costs and lack of change. The opportunity exists to channel the money into proactive methods of farming that can be better for the environment, profitable for the farmer, and ultimately better for society. But every time we act reactively and refuse to sit down at the table to start that discussion, we move backwards.
An announcement made along with the bailout was a $700 million investment in regenerative farming. This was actually labeled as a Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Currently, we don’t know what shape this program takes. Will it have farmers input? Does it require significant capital investment from the farmers side? If it does, where are the assurances to the farmers that once the initial funding dries up that the next administration will continue to fund it? Will farmers be left holding the bag? There is potential, but also a lot of unknowns and unknowns mean risk, something most farmers cannot withstand much more of.
