Will Congress Do the Right Thing on Agriculture Funding

The official September 30 deadline for Congress to pass its annual appropriations bills to fund the government for fiscal year 2025 looms closer by the day. So, what kind of progress-if any-are the Senate and House of Representatives making towards this goal?

Quite a bit actually, in the agriculture appropriations arena-but that doesn't necessarily mean that arriving at a final result will be smooth or easy, or guarantee that this legislation will support climate action, conservation, nutrition, equity, or food and farm workers.

The House disappoints

The House of Representatives released its FY25 agriculture appropriations bill in June, and since then both the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee and full House Appropriations Committee voted to approve the bill on party lines, with all Republicans supporting the bill and all Democrats voting against it.

The House bill provides total funding of $25.9 billion, a decrease of 1 percent from last year. The legislation also includes cuts to several priority UCS programs, including:

• Conservation operations. The FY25 House appropriations bill funds conservation programming at approximately $903 million, a cut of $11.9 million from FY24 and well below UCS's requested funding level of $1.2 billion.
• Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE). The House bill funds SARE-a competitive grant program helping farmers, ranchers, and researchers improve agricultural sustainability-at $45 million. This is a $3 million cut from last year, and significantly below UCS's request of $60 million, which is particularly disappointing considering that SARE supports critical agricultural research and should be funded robustly.
• The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) received $443 million, a slight cut from last year and below UCS's $500 million request.
• Office of Urban Agriculture. The original House bill provided no funding for this office. However, an amendment was included during bill markup that added $4 million, which is great news!
• Climate Hubs. The bill also provides no funding for the USDA Climate Hubs. This is very disappointing, as these hubs play a critical role in linking the USDA's scientific research and expertise with the farmers and workers who feel the impacts of climate change in their work every day.
• Equity. The House bill funds the 1890 National Scholars Program and Centers of Excellence at $10 million each, which is identical to FY24 and matches the amount UCS requested. There was no funding in the bill for the Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach (FOTO) program; UCS had requested $10 million.

Aside from funding cuts, the House agriculture appropriations bill also contained several harmful policy provisions. These included language to limit diversity/equity programming and a proposed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) pilot program that could restrict the types of foods people are able to buy for themselves and their families. The pilot program language, however, was later removed by an amendment in the Appropriations Committee vote, and no such language was included in the Senate bill, which is a big victory!

The Senate does (somewhat) better

The Senate appropriations process kicked off after the Fourth of July congressional recess. The Senate skipped its subcommittee and sent its FY25 agriculture appropriations bill straight to the full Appropriations Committee for a vote on July 11. The bill passed unanimously, with support from both Democrats and Republicans on the committee-in stark contrast to the partisan House committee vote.

The Senate bill provides $27 billion in overall funding for FY25, an increase of $821 million over last year. The legislation includes funding for key conservation, nutrition, research, and equity priorities:

• Conservation operations are funded at $965 million, an increase of $50 million over the FY24 level. While this falls short of UCS's request for $1.2 billion, it nonetheless represents a significant funding boost, and it's great to see the Senate investing more money in conservation programs.
• SARE is funded at $48 million, the same amount as in FY24. While slightly above the House level, this still falls short of UCS's $60 million request.
• AFRI was funded at $445 million, the same level as last year and below UCS's $500 million ask.
• The Office of Urban Agriculture is funded at $7 million, the same as last year, but below the president's budget request of $15 million and UCS's request of $25 million.
• Climate Hubs receive an increase of $8 million.
• Equity considerations in the House and Senate bills are the same (Centers of Excellence and 1890 National Scholars Program receive $10 million each, matching UCS's request, but there is no funding for FOTO).

Overall, the Senate agriculture appropriations legislation represents a definite improvement over the House bill's cuts to key programs. It's particularly encouraging to see a substantial funding increase for conservation programming.

The relatively small increases and flat funding for key accounts in the Senate legislation still fall short of what UCS wanted, but we appreciate the Senate's effort to support conservation, equity, climate hubs, and agricultural research programming despite the current difficult fiscal environment, and to avoid the harmful policy riders included in the House bill.

So what happens now?

While this summer has seen a flurry of activity around appropriations, it's not clear how much additional progress will be achieved over the next few months. House Republicans plan to hold a floor vote on the agriculture appropriations bill before Congress leaves for its August recess. Even if that happens, the Senate would still need to hold a floor vote on its version of the bill before the numerous differences between the two can be ironed out into final legislation.

With the clock ticking down to the August recess, it seems likely that Congress, as usual, will need to resort to a short-term continuing resolution (or CR) to fund the government at FY24 levels until a new appropriations bill can be signed into law.

As we wait for the next steps in the process, now is a good time to reach out to your senators and representative and urge them to support an agriculture appropriations bill that strongly funds conservation, nutrition, climate action, agricultural research, and equity. We'll continue to follow the FY25 funding process closely and keep you informed.

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