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by Ray Starling

Several months ago, I penned an article for Ag Innovator that referenced the shrinking number of farmers and “aggies” in the U.S. House and Senate. Perhaps nothing in that piece was a surprise to you, given that we all frequently lament the fact that there are fewer and fewer farmers in the population overall. It nonetheless makes those of us who earn a living from agriculture wince. We see our shrinking numbers as a sign of shrinking influence, even though our industry maintains its place as a key employer in over half the states.

It is against that backdrop that I want to briefly mention what lies immediately ahead: the drafting and development of the most significant piece of farm legislation in twenty years—the 2023 Farm Bill.

Chances are you will hear more about this over the next few months. In fact, the famous “field hearings” should begin within a matter of weeks. Keep an eye on whether any occur in a field anywhere.    

Before you say getting a farm bill in this political environment will be impossible, consider a little history. Farm bills are not easy and never have been. The first one is still the most famous, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. It was a part of newly minted President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The Act bribed farmers into limiting production across seven key commodities, with the ultimate hope that lower production levels would raise the market value and provide farmers with a return much closer to what economists at the time called “parity.” That first farm bill, and the very concept of a farm bill generally, faced a near-death experience, even as the Great Depression raged.

In January 1936, in a case entitled U.S. v. Butler, the United States Supreme Court struck the first farm bill down as unconstitutional for two major reasons. On one hand, the court took issue with the fact that the subsidies paid to farmers were recovered from agricultural processors. This, they deemed, was an illegal tax. On the other hand, the U.S. Supreme Court also believed federal legislation of this nature violated the Tenth Amendment, which reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Don’t miss that. In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the regulation of farming by the federal government was unconstitutional. In the court’s view, such regulation was a power delegated (or reserved) exclusively to the states. Associate Justice Owen Josephus Roberts wrote: “The [A]ct invades the reserved rights of the states. It is a statutory plan to regulate agricultural production, a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government.”

Shortly after President Roosevelt revealed his famous court-packing plan, which would have allowed him to appoint an additional justice for every justice on the court who was over the age of 70, Justice Roberts (who is quoted above, and who had written the decision striking down the first farm bill) found new religion. He suddenly found less to be concerned about when analyzing the constitutionality of the breadth of Roosevelt’s programs (including an upstart program called Social Security). The scope of the federal government’s authority seems to have grown ever since.

By February of 1936, Congress had adopted a do-over of the 1933 farm bill, in legislation entitled the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act. This marked the birth of the connection between farm income support and the implementation of conservation measures, a practice that continues in the present.

Fast forward to 1973, when the farm bill first became the shotgun wedding between farm programs and food stamps that it is today. The now late Senator Bob Dole, from Kansas, correctly reasoned back then that he could increase the likelihood of passing the farm bill if it contained something for both rural, more agrarian-minded members of Congress, and their more urban counterparts. This gave birth to the arranged marriage between the food stamps part of the federal government’s food assistance program and the federal government’s typical five-year cycle farm aid package. The matrimony has lasted since then, but as recent farm bill cycles have revealed, significant counseling has been required to avoid a divorce.

We are now on our eighteenth farm bill, the most recent of which is the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018.

While it may now be understood that farm bills are a permissible way for the federal government to regulate farming and aid the farm economy, the fault lines over which programs deserve funding and which ones don’t remain.

In my view, the writing of the 2023 Farm Bill will test the arranged marriage concept even more. Many of the more conservative members of Congress question both the farm aid and food assistance parts of the legislation, even though many of them hail from rural districts and might therefore be expected to view farm aid as the sugar that makes the medicine go down. Moreover, even many rural districts are not viewed as farm dependent as they once were—which I personally believe is statistical slight of hand, but we can save that discussion for another day.

Congressional progressives question why food assistance programs are not already bigger and view Title I of the legislation—the core commodity support programs—skeptically, given that it supports widely traded non-perishable crops. They are more apt to hear the critics who suggest it is these crops that have contributed to our non-communicable disease epidemics (diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity generally).

Add in that the farm bill provides a forum for elected officials to coerce, incent, or regulate activity believed to mitigate climate change, and you can see how the conversation will get sticky fast. And, I haven’t even mentioned that the House may soon be controlled by Republicans, with either party having the narrowest of margins in the Senate, and of course President Biden in the White House.

So, what does an equipment manufacturer need to know about all of this? Mainly that the process will begin and lumber forward, for better or for worse. Even the most pessimistic observer would admit that Congress does not want to fail to enact a farm bill. Deadlines—however extendable they may be—still get attention. While a little is tolerable, neither party wants to be responsible for farm and food assistance program uncertainty infinitum.

Second, that massive shifts in farm policy are rare. Changes are typically more incremental—“iterative” if you want to sound smart. Finally, that jurisdictional lines keep many of our toughest problems out of the farm bill debate. Do not expect the legislation to directly address farm labor woes, provide clarity on EPA jurisdiction, or get too far into issues like ethanol or trade policy. There are other deadlines for all of those. And other committees. And other lobbyists and trade associations galore.

Now is the time to think about what policies in the 2023 Farm Bill will impact manufacturers and how this community can position itself to influence them.

Can the case be made that supply chain vulnerabilities could somehow be addressed in the legislation? After all, challenges felt by equipment manufacturers are quickly felt by farmers and ultimately in the food supply. Could the legislation better support the development of talent and skill that is consistently in short supply for this sector? Are there issues that need more attention for which you could call for a study or deeper analysis that might develop the conversation further? Consider these questions and more as the farm bill discussions get underway.

After all, the signing ceremony will be here before you know it. And it seems there’s always a crowd for that—even if our numbers on the Hill are shrinking.