By Clint Thompson
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) comprises the majority of the farm bill’s funding. It also serves as the important link in getting a new farm bill passed.
Danny Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, provided attendees at last week’s Florida Citrus Show an update on the farm bill. Much of his discussion centered on why SNAP is included in the farm bill program at all.
“To put things into perspective a little bit, the 2025 farm bill, if it passed would be a $1.4 trillion farm bill over 10 years; 82% of that would go to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Why do we still have that nutrition program in with our commodity safety nets, our crop insurance and our conservation? It lets us get our foot in the door,” Munch said.
“Every time there’s a census, there’s more and more congressional representatives that represent urban areas than they do rural areas. That means we need more and more folks to vote for a farm bill that no longer represent farmers and ranchers. Having nutrition in the farm bill gives them something that they care about in those conversations. If I walked into an urban district that represents New York, they’re not going to listen to us unless we talk about nutrition and support those programs together.
“It helps us get the votes we need. We haven’t gotten them yet, but we’re working hard on it.”
Background
The farm bill is a piece of legislation that is renewed every five years. President Trump signed the current farm bill into law on Dec. 20, 2018. The current farm bill was extended for the second time until Sept. 30. Munch updated attendees on farm bill negotiations.
“There’s a lot of conversations happening with the farm bill. All of the trade associations, like Farm Bureau, are actively pushing Congress in the right direction. The real sense is bringing Congress together and getting enough votes to pass through Congress and the Senate is going to be obviously the hard part,” Munch said. “Last year we did get a farm bill passed out of the Ag committee on a bipartisan basis, but it didn’t materialize into anything in the Senate. We got that additional one-year extension, but unique to this situation is that there are a few orphan programs in the 2018 farm bill that were not extended.
“One of the big things when we think about citrus and specialty crops was the Emergency Citrus Disease Research Development and Trust Fund. There are millions of dollars that get appropriated to some of the research that’s really vital to citrus greening and finding other solutions in that field. It’s currently not funded under this extension of the farm bill.”