The Oklahoma State University Agricultural Economics Department hosted the Rural Economic Outlook Conference at the ConocoPhillips Alumni Center on the OSU campus on Wednesday, October 16, 2024. Farm Director KC Sheperd got to talk with OSU Associate Professor in Agricultural Economics Amy Hagerman about the pending Farm Bill.
Hagerman said that having a new Farm Bill or an extension of the current Farm Bill by the end of the calendar year is critical. She doesn’t see it happening until after the election, so an extension is more likely.
“I really think that we’re going to get a twelve-month extension because we’ve got a lot of work to do to get to a Farm Bill,” Hagerman said. “If that new Farm Bill conversation actually extends beyond when new members of Congress and the new Administration come on board, that changes things a lot and for a lot of different reasons.”
She explained how there would be a new Congressional Budget Office baseline, and that the cost of the Farm Bill under the proposed amendments from the House or Senate would be known. Those factors will mean a lot to a Congress that is concerned about costs after the deficit and tax cuts conversations that will happen in the Spring of 2025.
“To me, that means we are going to have a hard time getting a Farm Bill with any kind of floor time for a while,” Hagerman stated. “Some of these other big conversations have to happen. We are probably holding through 2025, and a lot of programs are going to look exactly like they have looked like for the last six years.”
Hagerman spoke about the differences between the Harris and Trump administrations that would impact agriculture the most. She said that while their trade policies are very different, they both share the same goal of protecting and enhancing U.S. production with an internal focus rather than an external market development. She said that the two administrations’ approaches to food inflation need to be watched carefully as they could have a big impact on agriculture. Then, of course, their tax policies need to be examined closely.
As calls for increased disaster relief to be added to the new farm bill ring out after the devastation caused by Hurricanes in the South and wildfires in the North and West, Hagerman says that will be difficult to accomplish. “Right now, new money is really hard to find for this Farm Bill,” she commented. “That is just a general trend that we see across the federal government right now; they want to reduce spending. We have a lot of challenges right now that are going to result in higher costs, whether that be through our crop insurance, disaster programs, or through this additional ad hoc FEMA money that is going into those areas as well. Those are critical disaster programs, and they are permanent so this Farm Bill expiration doesn’t affect any of our disaster programs that those producers can use.”
