By Jordan D. Dux, Sr. Director of National Affairs While we here at Nebraska Farm ...

By Jordan D. Dux, Sr. Director of National Affairs

While we here at Nebraska Farm Bureau (NEFB) are definitely looking forward to the new year and all of the policy work there is to do in 2025, I'd be remiss if I didn't quickly review what happened right before the 118^th Congress ended a few weeks ago. As reported in our last Newswire of 2024, Congress worked throughout much of the month of December to put together a funding package to fund the federal government past December 20, 2024. After several iterations, Congress passed and President Biden signed the American Relief Act of 2025 which not only funded the federal government through March 14, but it included a number of important provisions for agriculture including disaster assistance as well as an extension of 2018 Farm Bill. Early drafts of the Continuing Resolution (CR) also included other long-sought for provisions; however, a more narrowed final CR eventually received the necessary votes for passage. While I'm sure many of you have watched and read news on what was eventually included in the CR, I wanted to take a moment to give you NEFB's perspective on the package and provide a brief preview of the undone work that we will likely be tackling in 2025.

First and foremost, the most talked about agricultural provisions of the CR included a one-year extension of the Farm Bill through September 30, 2025, as well as both economic and weather-related disaster assistance. The extension of the Farm Bill prevented the implementation of what is known as "permanent law." Permanent Farm Bill law includes much farm policy developed in the 1930's which would likely double prices for milk and other commodities through federally created parity price formulas. While I'm not going to get into the weeds on why "permanent law" would negatively impact farmers, ranchers, and consumers, let's just leave it at "it wouldn't be good." For the past two years, Farm Bureau has worked to get a new Farm Bill across the finish line that protects federal crop insurance, provides necessary updates to ARC and PLC, reforms conservation programs, increases funding for trade promotion programs, and fixes California's Prop 12 and Massachusetts Question 3. While it won't be easy, I can assure you all that NEFB will redouble our efforts to get a new Farm Bill done in 2025. With new Ag Committee leadership in both parties on both sides of Capitol Hill, we look forward to passing a bill that provides necessary risk management tools for America's food producers.

In terms of weather-related disaster assistance, the CR contained roughly $21 billion in aid focused on natural disasters which occurred in 2023 and 2024. Qualifying losses include droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, tornadoes, winter storms, freeze (including a polar vortex), smoke exposure and excessive moisture. Of the $21 billion, up to $2 billion will be used to cover livestock losses related to drought, wildfires and floods. Under the legislation, farmers who have utilized federal crop insurance products or the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) for the aforementioned crop year will be eligible to receive payments covering up to 90% of their disaster-related revenue losses as determined by USDA. Those without insurance coverage are eligible for payments capped at 70% of their disaster-related revenue losses. Given drought that persisted throughout parts of the state in both 2023 and 2024, expect Nebraska to receive some potentially significant payments from this program. When more details on known as to how USDA plans to administer this program, we will let members know.

The provision I received the most calls about was the $10 billion for farmers due to current agricultural economic conditions. While much of the support for this provision centered in southern states, the proposal had strong bipartisan support throughout the CR debate. While Congress developed a rather complicated formula for determining payments, you can see that formula in this AFBF Market Intel piece here, we expect payments for Nebraska produced commodities to be approximately $43.80/acre for corn, $30.61/acre for soybeans, $31.80/acre for wheat, $41.85/acre for grain sorghum, and $78.42/acre for oats. According to the University of Missouri's Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), farmers in Nebraska are expected to receive approximately $627 million in assistance through the program, the 6^th highest total amount in the country. Again, further details on when payments will be issued remain unclear, but once we have them, know we will share them with NEFB members quickly.

Getting the CR across the finish line at the end of the 118^th Congress proved unbelievably difficult and ended with a few items that will top our 2025 federal policy To-Do list including finally securing year-round E15 as well as fix to California's and Massachusetts' unnecessary animal welfare rules. At the same time, we also plan to work with Nebraska's Congressional Delegation on extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 federal tax provisions, getting new leadership in the executive branch agencies including USDA, EPA, USTR, etc., finally getting a new Farm Bill done, and continuing to push the new administration to find new markets for Nebraska agricultural products to name a few. As always, if you ever have any questions about anything happening at the federal level, please don't hesitate to reach out to me ([email protected] or 402-421-4437). I'm looking forward to a busy 2025, and I hope to see all of you in the weeks ahead.