The US Senate Should Reject Farm Bill’s Stale Food and Agricultural Policies

"This proposal fails the basic test of a modern farm bill: whether it helps farmers and communities become less vulnerable to the crises they are facing," said Dr. Kate Anderson, director of the Food and Environment program at UCS. "Farmers are grappling with a fertilizer and fuel crisis and increasingly extreme weather spurred by climate change, while families are struggling to afford nutritious food, agricultural workers are under attack, and communities are exposed to polluted drinking water. Yet the Senate bill would largely preserve a policy framework that keeps farmers dependent on costly inputs, shifts pollution and health risks onto communities, leaves agricultural workers vulnerable, and keeps corporate agribusiness interests at the center of federal farm policy."

For many producers, fertilizer was already the single largest input cost before the Iran war sent prices soaring. A recent UCS report found that corn and soybean producers overapply fertilizer to an extreme degree and with deep consequences, costing farmers billions of dollars, producing heat-trapping emissions comparable to as many as 14 million gas-powered cars a year, and polluting drinking water with nitrate contamination which is linked to various cancers. Agricultural nitrogen runoff causes an estimated $157 billion in costs for downstream water treatment, pollution cleanup, public health expenditures and more. While the Senate legislation would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to publish a report on the state of the fertilizer industry and the effects of industry concentration, much more work remains to be done.

"A small group of powerful corporations have influenced farm policies to push U.S. farmers toward a model heavily reliant on inputs like fertilizer, but it's not sustainable ecologically or economically," said Dr. Precious Tshabalala, co-author of the UCS fertilizer report and an agricultural economist at UCS. "The existing model squeezes farmers' tight margins and pushes harms onto the public, while leaving the food system vulnerable to shocks like the Iran war. This is simply no way to feed a country."

UCS is urging lawmakers to reject any farm bill that does not meaningfully restructure the policy framework for providing federal resources to struggling farmers and communities. A good farm bill would reduce nitrogen pollution at its source and lower costs for farmers by investing more strongly in conservation and good stewardship practices. Congress should also push back against the Trump administration's authoritarian actions, including those targeting agricultural workers, to protect constitutional and human rights and avoid a looming farm labor crisis.