WASHINGTON (Gray DC)—Senators in Washington are now trying to advance a major food and agriculture policy package known as the farm bill after years of delays.

The bill, that establishes national farming and nutrition polices, could soon reach its closest point to passage since 2018, after Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) said it could be marked up before the congressional recess begins on Aug. 7.

“Congress needs to step up and get this done,” said Sen. Boozman. “...They’ve worked really hard and they’re very supportive of the farm community. And I think they’ll be very supportive of the farm bill that we release and get voted on hopefully in the next week or two.”

The House passed a farm bill for the first time since 2018 on April 30. The breakthrough came after partisan disagreements led lawmakers to forgo the typical five year update in 2023 and three extensions of the last version.

“[We] really weren’t able to come up with the funding that we needed, to significantly change the programs within the old farm bill, which we desperately need to do because of inflation, the pandemic, all of those things,” said Boozman.

Now, the Senate committee is working through the bill but contentions over food stamp program changes, passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill, have made progress difficult.

“The biggest thing is the nutrition program. So Democrats and Republicans want to reduce error rates in those programs,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the ranking member on the committee. “What the Republicans did is try to create incentives to reduce error rates, but they did it in a way that’s going to force over a bunch of cuts on families, when grocery prices are high, and on state budgets.”

Democrats on the committee have said that the bill needs to include a delay for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cost shifts that require states to pay for some of the program, depending on their rate of inaccurate payments, known as “error rates.”

The change aims to incentivize states to reduce error rates but Klobuchar said the way it was set up is posing issues for states across the country.

“We said there are some problems with this, including rewarding states with the highest error rates in order to help Senator Murkowski vote for the bill because of Alaska,” she said. “...So right now you have governors, red and blue states, many Republican governors saying, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t even have the actual data right now to make these changes.’ So why don’t give us a year or two on this front?”

Boozman said he shares the concern and is working to address it with Klobuchar.

Another hurdle is Senator Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) absence from the committee, which leaves it with 11 Republicans and 11 Democrats. The even split means lawmakers have to craft a bipartisan bill for it to advance.

“With Senator McConnell’s absence, it’s a challenge because we only have a one vote majority. So but it’s not something that we can’t overcome. So we’re working with Senator Klobuchar. I think we’ll be able to overcome that,” Boozman said.

Senate Republicans revealed their “Farm Bill 2.0″ proposal last month, after passing several farm bill polices in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

“A year ago in reconciliation, using that vehicle, we were able to essentially write about 85% of the farm bill and created a situation where we invested an additional $68 billion into the farm bill, which is unheard of,” said Boozman.

The proposal for the new bill includes 100 bipartisan measures that committee members worked to write.

“Every member of the committee has bipartisan bills that they’ve worked on together. It’s tended to be a very bipartisan committee. And I want to keep it that way,” said Klobuchar.

She added that if the SNAP concerns are resolved, the bill could be closer to making it out of committee.

“I think if we can resolve that, the rest of it will fall in place. And it’s really important for national security and for really the people of this country to get a farm bill done.”

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