With the days dwindling in the countdown to the election, the Senate is in a time crunch to wrap up the farm bill. That’s why it likely will not happen before the election or the end of the year, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns said. He shared why he believes that during the Indiana Ag Policy Summit, hosted by the Indiana Soybean Alliance and the Indiana Corn Growers Association.

“If you look at the number of days available, assuming they come back on Sept. 9, you’ve got about 15 days on the schedule,” Johanns said. “If I were to guess, because the White House is up, the entire House is up, a third of the Senate is up, and it’s a coin toss for who’s going to be in control — you won’t see 15 days.”

He shared that it’s likely they will not use those 15 days they have available.

Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., echoed that sentiment, adding, “I can’t tell you that the farm bill will be out at the end of the fiscal year.”

Rather, Johanns predicted a second extension on the farm bill after the election. He sees multiple areas of concern that must be remedied before any sort of solution is reached. However, the most pressing is the allocation of dollars to nutrition.

Dollars for the Thrifty Food Plan in the Democrats’ proposed farm bill have jumped from $766 billion to $1.223 trillion, making this the first trillion-dollar farm bill.

“The cost of this just exploded,” Johanns said. He shared that the key principle of the Democrats’ proposal is that they want to make sure that this program is updated every five years and implemented, and he expects that funding to continue to increase.

Farm focus

“You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘We need more farm in the farm bill,’” Johanns said. “This farm bill isn’t even much of a farm bill anymore. It’s a nutrition bill. And that’s where we find ourselves today.”

Braun speculated that a lack of agricultural knowledge may be the culprit for this uneven proportion. He shared that he is one of two senators on the Agriculture Committee who have any sort of farming background. Most others on the committee more than likely have never set foot on a farm, Braun said.

THERE ARE GAPS: Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., explains that a lack of agricultural knowledge in the Senate Agriculture Committee may have led to an uneven ratio between nutrition and agriculture funding in the farm bill.

“That’s what we’re up against at the federal level,” Braun added.

Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron said he visited with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., a few weeks ago, and he left feeling less hopeful than when he entered the meeting.

“It was disappointing because I didn’t hear anything that said she was going to try to bring them together,” Kron said. “And her comments were pretty divisive, too.”

He said that Stabenow was adamant about dividing agriculture into different sectors in the farm bill. She would like to assign varying dollar amounts to all the commodities.

“She was pointing out more dollars per farm were going to rice, cotton and sugar, and she was actually trying to divide agriculture into different sectors, like the Midwest versus the South,” Kron said. “I didn’t hear anything from her about bringing the two chambers together that could ultimately move the bill.”

Braun said that if a solution is not reached, it just leads to more control.

“If you can’t legislate, you will start getting rules and executive orders,” he said.