In Washington D.C., negotiations on a massive farm and food stamps package are quickly testing two first-term members of Congress from Oregon — one Democrat and one Republican — who sit on an influential committee.
Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer was elected to Oregon’s 5th District in November. Voters next door in the 6th District elected Democrat Andrea Salinas. Both races were expensive battles of national import, and both representatives are Oregon’s first Hispanic members of Congress.
The pair now sit on the House Agriculture Committee, which is tasked with hammering out the federal farm bill this year. The sprawling package sets the course of agriculture policy and funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, on which 722,000 Oregonians rely. The most recent farm bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, cost about $428 billion.
Michael Fakhri, a University of Oregon professor and the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to food, said the farm bill touches virtually every aspect of American life.
“I think the farm bill should be considered more important than the U.S. Constitution,” Fakhri said.
Congress must reauthorize the bill every five years, which involves marathon talks that are reliable for partisan stare-downs. Negotiations recently kicked off in the House, which Republicans control, and in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Hunger organizations and farmers of all stripes say it’s a critical bill, and lobbying is intense. Earlier this month, Chavez-DeRemer met with farmers and industry officials at the Oregon Farm Bureau’s office in Salem and Salinas met with vintners in Yamhill County. The two lawmakers plan to meet with farmers and ranchers together next month.
In interviews with The Oregonian/OregonLive, the lawmakers pledged to cooperate and secure benefits for Oregon’s $5 billion agriculture industry, which is smaller and more diversified than the commodity crop powerhouses of the Midwest.
“Being freshmen and being new to this, we have a lot of common ground. And I think that our districts are balanced in a similar way,” Salinas said. Both districts include Portland suburbs and agriculture communities in western or central Oregon.
The pair of lawmakers share some priorities for the bill. However, Chavez-DeRemer signed onto an early effort by Republicans to restrict the supplemental nutrition, or SNAP, benefits, a perennial goal of conservatives during negotiations. Salinas is wary of the proposal.
Greg Addington, executive director of the Oregon Farm Bureau, met separately with the lawmakers. He’s impressed with their approach but says there’s a long road of talks ahead.
“When push comes to shove in September, we’ll know how bipartisan they really are,” Addington said.
EARLY TALKS
About 75% of the farm bill is dedicated to SNAP and other nutrition assistance programs. The rest funds crop insurance subsidies, crop subsidies and conservation programs. It’s also an important source of funding for rural development, broadband and renewable energy and guides forestry policy.
Addington, a former water manager in southern Oregon, is the Oregon Farm Bureau’s chief lobbyist for the farm bill. He’s concerned with issues plaguing farmers of the specialty crops that Oregon is known for, from blueberries and pears to hazelnuts, Christmas trees and mint.
Oregon has experienced a boom of small-acreage farms that’s driven by interest in organic and specialty crops, according to an Oregon State University report.
But climate-fueled drought, severe wildfires and other extreme weather events have damaged crops like wine, marijuana and blueberries in recent years. To protect farmers from year-in, year-out disasters, the farm bill spends billions of dollars to subsidize crop insurance. But the program doesn’t have an income cap on recipients, and, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, wealthy proprietors of big farms have benefited disproportionately from the subsidies. Commodity subsidies also encourage mass production of wheat, soybeans and corn, Fakhri said.
Salinas said farmers of smaller plots are often priced out of insurance plans. A priority for Salinas and Chavez-DeRemer this year is to somehow make crop insurance more accessible. That’s also a goal for the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, a national coalition of 80 organizations, and the Oregon Farm Bureau.
Elsewhere, Chavez-DeRemer wants to make child care more available to farmers as more women take to farming nationally. Salinas wants to expand the bill’s conservation programs to tackle climate change with sustainable agriculture practices, a key goal of climate and agriculture advocates this year.
NUTRITION REFORM
Talks on past farm bills included Republican efforts to slash spending on SNAP, which helps older people and people with low incomes and disabilities buy groceries.
Democrats generally oppose cuts. In 2013, Republicans sought a $40 billion cut to federal food benefits over 10 years, threatening the farm bill’s passage. A compromise was reached for an $8 billion cut.
Lawmakers since expanded the program in 2020 in a bipartisan pandemic-era assistance law, which slashed rates of adult and childhood poverty especially for Black and Hispanic people at a time when hunger soared in Oregon and nationally, according to the Oregon Food Bank.
The extra help expired in most states and U.S. territories this month, including Oregon, where about 17% of residents receive supplemental nutrition assistance, the fifth-highest share of population of any state, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. Every household receiving the benefit saw their monthly allotment drop at least $95 this month, according to the Oregon Food Bank.
Early talks have revealed conflict over nutrition assistance again this year. Democrats and hunger advocacy groups want to keep the extra assistance. In the House, about 25 Republicans including Chavez-DeRemer are cosponsoring the America Works Act, a separate bill that would strengthen work requirements for some supplemental nutrition recipients and make it harder for states to waive those requirements, as Oregon has done.
Chavez-DeRemer said the proposal encourages employment with the goal of “elevating Americans and Oregonians.”
“We want them back to work,” she said.
However, Chavez-DeRemer pledged not to split the nutrition programs from the farm bill, which Republicans have attempted in past negotiations.
Salinas wasn’t aware of the America Works Act until an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. She’s skeptical of the plan and said federal food benefits are important for Oregonians.
“I feel like people will end up going hungry if we kind of change the formula right now,” Salinas said.
-Grant Stringer, stringer.grantj@gmail.com; @stringerjourno
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