Agriculture Policy

The Senate voted to move to conference with the House on the 2018 farm bill and announced its conferees this week. A total of 56 lawmakers have been assigned to the joint House-Senate Conference Committee, which will continue discussions during the House’s August recess. The Senate is remaining in session for most of the month to continue work on appropriations bills and nominations of Trump judicial and administration appointees. The Senate's nine farm bill negotiators include Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as four other Republican conferees: Senate Agriculture Committee ... Read More

By Bobby Frederick, Director of Legislative Affairs and Public Policy Before embarking on the five-week August district work period, the House passed a medical device tax repeal and the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) outlining defense programs for the year. Meanwhile, the Senate confirmed a new Veterans Administration secretary and began work on an appropriations bill (H.R. 6147) that includes funding for agriculture, transportation, interior and financial services programs. Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced that the Senate ... Read More

By Sarah Gonzalez, Director of Communications and Digital Media The process to find a compromise between the House and Senate farm bills began this week when the House voted to go to conference with the Senate and named its 47 conferees. The Senate has yet to vote or name conferees, but Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said that may happen as soon as next week. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., named 29 Republicans as conferees, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named 18 Democrats. House Republican conferees are listed here and House Democrat conferees are ... Read More

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Grain Inspection Service today (June 29) published separate notices seeking comments on the current U.S. grain standards for corn, soybeans and canola. The U.S. grain standards for various commodities customarily are reviewed every five years, but the NGFA and North American Export Grain Association, among others, encouraged FGIS to expedite a review of the U.S. grain standards for soybeans to determine if changes are warranted – in particular because of potential differences in the methods used to determine foreign material in soybeans by ... Read More

The Senate passed its bipartisan version of the farm bill Thursday by an 86-11 vote, retaining federal crop insurance, nutrition programs and conservation provisions included in the committee-passed bill. “We are one step closer to providing farmers and ranchers a farm bill with the certainty and predictability they deserve,” said Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., after the vote. The bill includes an amendment introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that tightens commodity program eligibility rules. Farm operations would be restricted to having one non-farming ... Read More

House Republicans passed their version of the farm bill (H.R. 2) on a party-line, 213-211 vote Thursday. The bill is unchanged from the version that failed to pass in May, but it gained more Republican votes after House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., agreed to schedule votes on unrelated immigration bills. The farm bill failed to pass last month after Democrats and some moderate Republicans opposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the bill and some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus withheld their votes to force action on a separate immigration ... Read More

By Bobby Frederick, Director of Legislative Affairs and Public Policy Twenty-five NGFA members and staff, along with state affiliates from Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, and Texas, met this week with more than 50 congressional offices to hone in on priority issues important to the grain and feed community. NGFA’s June 13 fly-in occurred on the same day that the Senate Agriculture Committee marked-up its version of the 2018 farm bill, giving NGFA members the opportunity to promote reforms that target the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) towards environmentally sensitive land and hold the ... Read More

By Sarah Gonzalez, Director of Communications and Digital Media The Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday (June 13) approved its version of the new farm bill by a 20-1 vote, sending the bill to the Senate floor for a debate by the end of the month. “We have the support of both leaders to bring the bill to the floor before the 4th of July break, and if we do that we will then give our farmers, our ranchers, our growers, and everybody connected to the great food chain we have in America certainty and predictability,” said Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch ... Read More