Editor’s Note: This post was written by Nourish Colorado, an NSAC member. This is part three of a five part series. See part one, Budget Reconciliation: An Unwanted Outcome for Coloradans, and part two, Impacts of Budget Reconciliation and Coloradans’ Health.

“Welcome” is an odd word to use to begin this post, given the profoundly and universally negative information we’re here to convey. Thank you for being here with us and reading along! This series elevates the many damaging impacts of the recently passed budget reconciliation bill, referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”. The more we can share accurate information about what is going on, the more effective we will collectively be in changing these policies! Our third blog post in this series focuses on some of the ways this new law hurts farmers and farming communities. (If you haven’t yet, catch up on our first and second posts in the series.)   

At a high-level, this bill: 

• Will increase subsidies for large commodity growers; 
• Includes little to no supports for small, diversified, and local agriculture; 
• Makes drastic cuts to programs like SNAP and SNAP-Ed that connect more households to growers and help keep dollars local; and
• Ultimately delays the passage of a comprehensive, forward-looking, bipartisan farm bill.  

Farm Bill Catch-Up

Budget reconciliation, as a reminder, barely passed out of the Senate and House, with all Democrats in both chambers voting against it. The bill pays for tax breaks and commodity subsidies by cutting SNAP.  In so doing, it has bypassed, perhaps for years, the opportunity for the government to draft a bipartisan farm bill that reflects the many needs of rural and urban communities across the country. For many decades, the “Farm Bill Coalition” of Democrats and Republicans have worked together to draft and adopt a farm bill every five years or so that supports agriculture big and small, conservation, rural issues, and nutrition assistance. The farm bill, like all major legislative policies, requires 60 votes in the Senate to pass, meaning it must be bipartisan in nature. Legislators have long worked together to make sure many priorities are included so that the government can keep on functioning for the American people. In contrast, the budget reconciliation bill needed only 51% to pass, making it highly partisan with the majority party (Republicans) able to push through legislation without needing bipartisan support.

With the inclusion of so many farm bill provisions in budget reconciliation and the complete abandonment of bipartisan policy-making, this process means we may not see a complete, new farm bill until we have a new Congress. The 2018 Farm Bill has already been extended twice. These kinds of delays in changing or improving government programs hurt ALL sizes and shapes of agriculture and clearly will result in increased food insecurity. In the absence of a new farm bill, and to sustain most farm bill programs in any capacity, Congress must now pass an extension (again!) of the current bill before the end of the year.  

How Cutting Nutrition Assistance Hurts Farm Communities

Much has been written about the economic impact of SNAP – every dollar of SNAP generates between $1.50-$1.80 in economic activity.  This is critical – food dollars benefit farmers, and the more food dollars one has, the more benefits farmers reap. The House Agriculture Committee released an analysis of budget reconciliation that summarizes the impacts that cutting SNAP will have on farm country.They point out how 25 cents on every dollar spent on food (whether SNAP or otherwise) goes to a farmer, and for every dollar cut from a person’s SNAP benefits, food purchases will decrease. Cuts have a compounding effect on SNAP food purchases, leading the House Ag Committee to estimate that this new law will eliminate $30 billion in farm revenue due to SNAP cuts alone.  

To better understand the compounding effects here in Colorado, let’s dive deeper. The loss of food dollars through SNAP alone will decrease farm sales, and in Colorado, SNAP is the foundation of two SNAP incentive programs – Double Up Food Bucks and the USDA pilot program Colorado SNAP Produce Bonus, which has over a 99% redemption rate. Collectively, these produce incentives for SNAP shoppers are available at over 150 locations and over 250 farmers accept payments from one or the other of these incentives. Farmers markets, and retailers that gain critical income from SNAP and SNAP incentives will lose customers from decreases in SNAP participation. Compounding this loss is the elimination of SNAP-Education, which has for over 10 years connected limited-income households with their local food system by supporting programs like Double Up, offering shopping tours at farmers markets, and integrating local and seasonal produce into cooking classes. The farm bill is the only mechanism to not only sustain sufficient SNAP benefits, but also to restore SNAP-Ed and secure the future of high-ROI SNAP incentive programs.  Laurel Smith, owner of Here & Now Farm in Wellington, CO, sums up this damage to farmers such as herself: 

“Like many people, I became a farmer because I wanted to feed people—not just middle- or high-income people, but everyone who wants to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. One way I can make sure this is possible is to accept SNAP payments. And since I run a pilot program called Colorado SNAP Produce Bonus, SNAP shoppers can get up to $60/month in additional produce from my farm for free—a healthy food incentive. But all this is in jeopardy since the passage of the budget reconciliation bill. I am furious that almost 300,000 Coloradans might lose some or all of their SNAP in years ahead. Farmers like me will see that revenue stream shrink and we’ll lose some of our favorite customers. Economists have shown that when someone shops with SNAP, it has a significant impact on our local economies. Why would we take that? These are programs that we dreamed up as a society. We asked our legislators for them, and we designed them into existence. For generations, we made changes to these types of programs through the Farm Bill instead of rushing bad ideas through budget committees. A proper farm bill is where we’ll be able to decide to keep Colorado SNAP Produce Bonus going past 2027. Many farmers I know are unhappy with our representatives who voted this appalling bill through, and we’ll be fighting for ways to rebuild a robust SNAP program for the communities we live in and love.”

A Multitude of Attacks on Farm and Food Systems 

The budget reconciliation bill, referred to by the University of Illinois’ farmdoc policy analysts as the “Reconciliation Farm Bill”, wreaks much more havoc for farmers big and small than simply decreasing revenue through SNAP. Analysts opened farmdoc’s recent blog, The Reconciliation Farm Bill: The Top Five Most Problematic Changes to Farm Policy, thusly: “Were it not for the protective cover of the budget reconciliation process and its fundamental warping of the deliberative process as designed in the Constitution, it is extremely unlikely that these five changes would have become law.”  

In its comprehensive overview of impacts on farms and farm systems, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) calls attention to the significant expansion of farm subsidy programs, all benefiting large commodity growers and corporations, and paid for by cuts to SNAP. NSAC elevates how the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the increases in subsidies through the nation’s largest loss, in addition to risk coverage payout programs for commodity crops (which do not include fruit and vegetable crops), will cost over $54 billion over the next 10 years. Given that only 27% of farm acres are enrolled in these programs and only 31% of farms are even eligible given their base acreage, these massive subsidies will not benefit most of America’s farmers. In moves that seem determined to widen the divide between large, commodity growers and smaller farmers, the bill does not expand access to crop insurance for most small to mid-sized, multi-crop, or direct marketing farms. 

The bill is a confusing mixed bag for on-farm conservation support as well. The major problem is that conservation programs need to be authorized and strengthened through an actual farm bill. Refer back to NSAC’s What’s Really Inside the Final Budget Reconciliation Bill: A Breakdown of Food and Agriculture Provisions for an extensive review of how the bill does not extend the authorization of the $2 billion Conservation Reserve Program (it needs a farm bill!!) but it does rescind unobligated Inflation Reduction Act funds that were an unprecedented investment from the Biden Administration, including from the Conservation Stewardship Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, and Regional Conservation Partnership Program.  The bill also does not increase funding for programs such as the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program and the Organic Research and Extension Initiative. These are just a few examples of the types of programs that rely on a bipartisan farm bill for continuity and impact that will not experience support since the budget reconciliation seemingly picked and chose some agricultural provisions to support, and others to ignore.  

Bottom line, this process bypasses the decades-old Farm Bill Coalition and provides few opportunities for local efforts that support regional food systems and connections between nutrition assistance and farming communities.  Stick with us next week to read more about the unfortunate ways that cuts to SNAP hurt not just SNAP recipients, but impact many food assistance programs, leading to concerns for food security.