The next Farm Bill, a massive spending plan focused on agriculture and nutrition, is being debated in Congress. Some advocates are pushing for water quality priorities to be included in the final bill.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2023 Farm Bill will cost $725 billion over five years and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Nutrition programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), make up the bulk of the spending at around 80%.
Harry Campbell, who directs science policy and advocacy in the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Pennsylvania office, said the commonwealth only gets about half the national average in technical support for conservation. He said this year's Farm Bill needs to provide more money for technical assistance and to make help more readily available to small farms.
A significant percentage of farmers who ask for assistance, up to 80% in some cases, do not receive that assistance on an annual basis. This is partly due to a lack of staff who can work with them in a timely manner.
Pennsylvania expects agriculture to make up 90% of the state's remaining pollution reduction goals for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. The state has been lagging in those goals, and the Environmental Protection Agency recently settled a lawsuit from the CBF and other bay states that alleged the EPA did not properly enforce pollution reduction in Pennsylvania.
Campbell said the Farm Bill provides the backbone to a lot of conservation programs for farmers, but Pennsylvania still needs to step up.
The federal farm bill can be a valuable tool for Pennsylvania, but it is not a silver bullet. The state must also take steps to reduce pollution from agriculture.
The Bay Foundation is also pushing for an expansion of a pilot program from Virginia that helped farmers plant buffers along waterways. Those buffers help keep nutrients and sediment from flowing downstream.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says the Farm Bill has the potential to make farms more resilient to disruptions from climate change and reduce emissions by advancing organic agriculture, increasing cover crop adoption, and reducing food waste.
"This Farm Bill has the chance to protect the historic $40+ billion Inflation Reduction Act investments empowering farmers to turn agriculture into a climate solution and double down on transformative, economy-wide investments needed to scale up climate-smart agriculture & forestry," NRDC scientists and advocates wrote in a blog post.
The last version of the Farm Bill, passed in 2018, is set to expire at the end of September.
Categories: Pennsylvania, Government & Policy