The elections could shape the future of the American food system

Nathan Ryder raises cattle and vegetables with his wife and three children on 10 acres of pasture in Golconda, Illinois. They also live in a food desert; the local grocery store closed a few months ago and the nearest farmers market is at least 40 miles away, leaving their community struggling to access nutritious food.

Opening another supermarket is not the solution. The U.S. government has spent the last decade investing millions in establishing them in similar areas, with mixed results. Ryder believes it would be better to expand federal assistance programs to make them more accessible to those in need, allowing more people to take advantage of these benefits on local farms like his own.

Increasing the reach of small growers and producers in the country could be a way to address growing food insecurity, a problem made worse by inflation and supply chains strained by climate change. “It’s a great opportunity to not only help local farmers make a profit instead of some of these giant commodity corporations … but also (help people) buy healthy, nutritious foods,” Ryder said.

This is just one of the solutions that could be codified in the 2024 Farm Bill, but it probably won’t happen any time soon. The deadline to finalize the omnibus bill is Monday, and with lawmakers deadlocked along partisan lines, it seems likely they will simply extend the current law for at least another year.

Congress has been here before. Although the Farm Bill is scheduled to be renewed every five years, lawmakers voted last November to extend the policy through 2018 for a year after struggling to reach agreement on key aspects of the $1.5 trillion spending package on nutrition and the environment.

Extensions and delays have serious consequences because the Farm Bill regulates many aspects of the U.S. food and farm system. It covers everything from food aid programs and crop subsidies to international food aid and even protective measures. Some of them, such as crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning they are unaffected by any disruption to the reauthorization schedule. However, others, such as grants for the development of beginning farmers and ranchers and local food promotion programs, are entirely dependent on measures provided for in the law. Without new measures or an extension of existing ones, some of them would be closed until the bill is re-approved. If Congress fails to act before January 1, several programs will even return to 1940s policies, which will have a significant impact on consumer prices for goods such as milk.

After nearly a century of bipartisanship, negotiations on the latest farm bills have been disrupted by partisan gridlock. The main difference this time is that a new element dominates Hill’s political chessboard: elections. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen before the election, which is causing a lot of tooth-gnashing and hair-twisting,” Ryder said. He worries that the new administration and Congress could result in a farm bill that further disadvantages small farmers and producers. “It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure adventure novel. Which direction will the Agriculture Act go?”

The new president will present his own agricultural policy program, which may affect certain aspects of the act. And of course, whoever sits in the Oval Office can veto anything that comes out of Congress. (President Obama threatened to reject the bill introduced by Republicans in the House of Representatives in 2013 as she proposed cuts to food benefits worth up to $39 billion). The potential for a radically different Congress has even greater implications. Of the 535 seats in the House and Senate, 468 are up for election. This will likely lead to renewed negotiations among a new crop of lawmakers, a process further complicated by the pending retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. While representatives are increasing pressure on congressional leadership to pass a new farm bill before the end of the congressional term, there is a strong likelihood that all of this will create additional delays if it does not require writing an entirely new bill.

This has profound implications for consumers already struggling with rising prices and farmers facing increasing consolidation pressures, not to mention efforts to transform U.S. food systems to mitigate and adapt to a warming world, said Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food and Water Watch. (This nonprofit organization advocates for policies that provide access to safe food, clean water, and a livable climate.) “The farm bill has a really big impact on changing the type of food and the agricultural system that we are building,” Wolf said.

But Monday’s upcoming deadline is somewhat arbitrary – lawmakers have until the end of the calendar year to pass the bill because most key programs have already been extended in the appropriations cycle. But DeShawn Blanding, who analyzes food and environmental policy for the nonprofit science organization Union of Concerned Scientific, thinks the likelihood of that happening is low. He expects the negotiations to extend into next year, and perhaps into 2026. “Congress is much more divided now,” he said.

The House Agriculture Committee passed the bill in May, but the proposal was not put to a vote due to disruptions in negotiations. Meanwhile, the Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to advance a bill, although Democrats and Republicans in that chamber have introduced a framework to reflect their agenda. Given the upcoming election and higher legislative priorities, such as funding the government before Dec. 20, the last legislative day on the congressional calendar, “it’s likely that this will be one of the longest farm bills we’ve had,” Blanding said.

As is often the case, one of the biggest sticking points is the funding of food aid. SNAP and the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much a household receives under SNAP, are two of the biggest points of contention, with Democrats and Republicans largely divided over the program’s structure and funding. A bill by the Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee proposed the equivalent of nearly $30 billion in cuts to the SNAP program by limiting the ability of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to adjust the costs of the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to determine SNAP benefits. The provision, supported by Republicans, has faced fierce opposition from Democrats, who have criticized the plan to cut benefits amid a growing food insecurity crisis.

The farm bill “was intended to help address food insecurity and the food system in general, and it should support and expand programs like SNAP that help with that,” Blanding said, which becomes even more important as food supplies continue to decline due to changing climate access for many Americans. Without a new farm bill, “we would be stuck with what (food insecurity) looked like in 2018, not what it looks like today in 2024.”

Nutrition programs governed by current law were intended to address pre-pandemic levels of global hunger that had not yet exceeded key climate thresholds. As the planet’s warming crisis deepens, fueling crises that tend to exacerbate existing barriers to food access in affected areas, the food programs authorized in the Farm Bill are “an extremely important part of the disaster response,” said Vince Hall, director of relations government at the company’s non-profit organization Feeding America. “The number of disasters that Feeding America food banks are asked to respond to each year is only increasing due to extreme weather conditions resulting from climate change.”

This tension makes Congress increasing funds like the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) more critical than ever before. The Farmers to Food Food Bank Project Grants, established under the 2018 Act, provide funding for projects that enable the nation’s food banks to be supplied with fresh food produced by local farmers and ranchers. This must be included in the new bill, otherwise it risks being withdrawn.

David Toledo, an urban farmer from Chicago, worked with a local food pantry and community garden to provide fresh produce to neighborhoods in need. For Toledo, the Farm Bill is a gateway to solutions to the impact of climate change on food availability in the US. He wants lawmakers to put politics aside and pass the bill for the good of the people they serve.

“What is at stake with the Farm Bill is a healthy nation, healthy communities, the engagement of farmers and beginning farmers. And I mean, God forbid, but the potential to see a lot more hunger,” Toledo said. “It has to pass. It must pass with the support of both sides. There is so much to talk about right now.”

This article originally appeared on Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/the-election-could-shape-the-future-of-americas-food-system/.

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