Leaders of the debt-deficit super committee said their panel has failed to agree to more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction measures and would not be making a recommendation to Congress. This means the efforts to craft a farm policy proposal to be included in a super committee recommendation have also ceased, confirmed by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.).

Under the law passed this summer to raise the debt ceiling and establish the super committee, its failure will trigger automatic cuts through a process known as sequestration. Cuts will begin in early 2013 and take an estimated 8 percent from federal budgets, with a significant portion coming from defense spending and none coming from a still-undetermined list of programs. President Barack Obama said Monday he would veto any attempt to reduce the planned cuts or exempt additional programs or departments, like the Department of Defense.

A regular order rewrite of the 2008 farm bill, which expires Sept. 30, 2012, will likely begin late this year or early next, though the process remains unclear and will likely depend in part on the effects of sequestration-required cuts to farm bill programs.