 Hello everyone and welcome to the first briefing of our five part series farm bill in focus. Today we're starting off things by discussing the process and path forward for passing a bipartisan farm bill. I'm Dan percent with the environmental and energy study Institute. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide policymaker education about climate change topics. Over that time we've developed some additional expertise helping rural utilities access federal resources from the Department of Agriculture. But today we're really focusing on our congressional education work which comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Most prominently we do briefings like this I hope folks in our online audience today have attended more than one. We have a lot of briefings in fact I did account this is our ninth briefing of the year and we're still only in seven week 17 of the year. We started off the year with congressional climate camp which was a four part series about budget and appropriations public polling non CO2 emissions and pollutants and the status of the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act implementation. We also hold briefings on lots of different topics. In addition to policies before Congress or coming before Congress so in addition to farm bill topics starting today we also had a briefing last week about nuclear energy programs underway at the Department of Energy. And the week before that we took a look at programs underway at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at DOE. We also do a lot of writing. We have a great biweekly newsletter we call climate change solutions I hope everyone who hasn't already subscribed to that takes a moment and visits us online at www.esi.org. In addition to climate change solutions you can visit our website to access all of our congressional education resources everything is free, totally accessible and open to the public. You can find out pretty much anything you need to know about a climate change topic my bet is that we probably have a resource about it that was written or produced sometime in the last year or two. The reason why this is important is because our work needs to be timely relevant accessible and practical in order for us to make a difference. We have a lot of thought into how our resources are presented to be science based and be ready for the congressional staff person when they need the information in fact, before they need the information before they realize they need the information. In addition to this briefing series, we held a briefing last month on organic agriculture in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council. We also have dozens of legislative side by side by side comparison fact sheets that are already posted and waiting until we get House and Senate text and we can update them to help congressional staff quickly compare what the House and Senate are proposing and how that compares with each other, and also with current law. It's much better for everyone to have this available information available as you need it, because we all know, or at least I anticipate in the next 12 to 18 months. Most congressional staff people will become front bill staff people, and it's much better to know that you have ESI as a resource before your boss asks a tough question about a climate change topic and you can count on ESI as always to help with that. We've collected all of our resources including our hearing tracker and article series, which are also really great resources at a single website and that's www.esa.org forward slash 2023 farm bill. Congress renews the farm bill every five years to address numerous issues from conservation to crop insurance. The farm bill is the most impactful piece of legislation related to us agriculture. It affects how and what food in we eat food access and nutrition, natural resources, rural development and more. 2018 Farm Bill which was the last one expires this September, and the process of developing the next farm bill is already underway and actually has been underway for some time. The meeting will help congressional staff get up to speed quickly on the basics of the farm bill, including the process for passing the bill, its history and evolution, and opportunities for a bipartisan path forward. We will hear from our expert speakers about what makes this farm bill special, including the relationship between the various policies and programs at stake, and the investments provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. And the next briefing series is to help staff learn about how to meaningfully engage with the front 2023 farm bill, regardless of their bosses committee assignments. We have five really, really tremendous speakers, and I'm really looking forward to all of their presentations. After our presenters wrap, we will have a Q&A period, and since we're online today, our online audience has two options for submitting presentations to us. The first is you can send us an email, and the email address to use is ask, that's ASK at EESI.org, or you can follow us on Twitter, or other social media sites at EESI online, and please be sure to use the hashtag, hashtag EESI talk. Our first presenter today is Jim Monk. Jim has been with the Congressional Research Service since 2003 and has covered three farm bills. Jim presently focuses on the farm bill budget, agricultural appropriations and policy for agricultural credit. Jim is a farm kid from Illinois who became motivated to study economics because of the incentives and the tax code and the farm bill. And before joining CRS, Jim worked for the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. Jim, you are a familiar face and a familiar name to a lot of congressional staff because of your work on the farm bill. I really am looking forward to hearing your presentation today. Thanks, Dan. So as Dan said, let's see, mute off, right? As Dan said, Congress passes the farm bill about every five years. It has become the main, Daniel, I don't need you to, there we go. Okay. Now I can advance my slides. Okay, so the farm bill has become the main legislative vehicle to set agricultural policy for the next five years and beyond, and is also the legislative vehicle to carry changes to that affect long standing permanent laws that continue. The breadth of the farm bill has grown over time over the decades but has generally is generally limited to the jurisdiction of what's in the jurisdiction of the House and Senate agricultural committees. Other speakers will talk about examples of what's not in the jurisdiction, but this next slide lists the titles of the farm bill that was enacted in 2018. Here's an example of the breadth of the farm bill, ranging from title one is the traditional farm commodities programs. And there's crop insurance, title, farm conservation, trade promotion, nutrition assistance, farm loans, rural development and ag research and extension programs. There's a little forestry title, bioenergy, horticulture development, and a miscellaneous title that we stick a few things about livestock sometimes in. So that's the breadth of the farm bill and it crosses pretty much all of the relevant parts of agriculture jurisdiction that are kind of food and fiber related. As Dan indicated to, why do the farm bill now in 2023, it's because we're at the five year cycle of when the 2018 farm bill begins expiring at the end of this fiscal year. One item to note is that exploration looks different across the breadth of the farm bill. There's different consequences on different categories of programs. Some programs can continue under appropriations or continuing resolutions. Some programs would cease beginning even as early as October 1 this fall. Other programs don't have consequences until we get to the new calendar year in January 1. And, and an extension may work for some programs but not all so that the consequences of exploration are not easy to to confine. One thing that agriculture has different from a lot of other authorization bills in the federal government is that for the farm commodity subsidies. There's still permanent law that dates from the 1940s and an expiration of the farm bill means that we would revert to permanent law is still on the books from the 1940s which are really out of touch with modern economics modern trade trade policy. And it would be really expensive to the government so it helps this expiration consequence of reverting to permanent law helps the farm bill get Congress's attention and not just get left aside. To talk a little bit about the legislative process the farm bill is no different than any other legislation that generates some disagreement, but historically the farm bill has been less bipartisan and more often about differences between commodities or regions. The breadth of the modern farm bills that we saw across the 12 titles helps build coalitions to help get votes in places that aren't solely agriculture focused. The, the legislative process of you know how a bill becomes along is really again no different for the farm bill than other pieces of legislation house in the Senate, develop versions of their own versions of the bill separately. The Agriculture Committee I think is well known for having listening sessions out in in farm country and cities to get public input before they start writing the bill. There's the usual subcommittee process of, you know, subcommittee and committees, the committee holding hearings with witnesses on Capitol Hill. Eventually there'll be a business meeting of the Agriculture Committee, where they do what's called a markup and have legislative texts, they debate in committee, have a committee vote, and then eventually successfully report the bill as a committee bill to the floor. There's the usual floor consideration that you can watch on c span, or there can be floor amendments, the contents of the bill can change on the floor from members of the whole chamber, and then there'll be a chamber vote on the bill. Same thing happens in the other chamber. And those two different bills that pass the House and pass the Senate would be conferenced to reconcile differences between the House bill and the Senate bill. Conferencing often USDA will come to the Hill to provide more in depth technical assistance about how program that's in the chamber pass bills might work. But there becomes a conference agreement single version of the of the kind of the House and Senate bills comes down to one, one joint version, and that version will be voted on in the House and the Senate. And eventually then go to the President, President signs the bill bill becomes law, and USDA implements the new law. So that's, you know, the usual how it will becomes a law that we watch in school health. One thing to kind of to help watch, you know, for the, all the actors that can be there is the four corners what people refer to as the four corners of the agriculture committees, meaning the chair and ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. You can watch those four corners, and they'll negotiate kind of amongst themselves representing their committee in the chamber. And if you get three of the four corners in line, then that helps get the bill across finish line. Timelines. The last three foreign bills starting with 2008 foreign bill have had some hiccups that previous foreign bills didn't have. They started taking longer in 2008 and 2014 and the 2014 and 2018 foreign bills have problems passing the House floor to look at that what that see what that looks like on a timeline. The 2008 foreign bill should have been a 2007 foreign bill. The House went first, got it off the floor by in summer the Senate did it in the fall. It needed the spring of 2008 to finish conference, but then it hit vetoes from George W. Bush, Congress overrode the vetoes but we finally ended up with the farm bill in 2008. The farm bill should have been a 2012 foreign bill. The Senate acted first that year, the little diamonds, and then the House marked up the bill in July, but it stalled them kind of during the presidential election cycle. I think that contributed to the bill stalling through the rest of 2012. That's how we got the one year extension at the end of 2012 to cover 2013. The bill was reintroduced in the new Congress took, you know, take several months and in a new Congress like this year for the committees to assemble and get going in all the process. And so then the House and Senate marked up bills in like May, I guess it was a 2013 when the when the floor went when the bill went to the floor in the House, it didn't have it ended up not having the votes to pass and it failed on the floor. It didn't have a yellow diamond or triangle. The notable thing in 2013 is that the House split apart the bill into a nutrition bill and a farm farm bill. And those passed later in the summer into September. The bill was stitched back together for conferencing with the Senate and it was passed as a, as a combined whole regular farm bill in January of 2014. It took the longest that we've had of any farm bill, the 2018 farm bill was faster if got passed within the calendar year, but not without some fireworks in that the bill also failed to pass on the House floor. And was later months later in June, did get the votes to pass Senate acted in June, and we had conference through the summer and fall and bill was enacted after the elections in 2018, and during the lame duck session. So very variable, you know past cannot predict the future, but those are examples of things that have happened of note in the past reform bills you may hear about. To talk about budget, trying to go through this pretty quickly, but for the budget Congress organizes itself for to control the budget authorizing committees which the agriculture committees are in appropriations committees and they control different pots of money mandatory spending and discretionary spending. For discretionary programs, all the farm bill does is authorizes appropriations funding comes through appropriations acts later for mandatory spending programs, the farm bill both authorizes and provides the funding and uses congressional budget office baseline scores. A baseline is a projection at a point in time of what future spending would be assuming current law continues it's a benchmark against we measure what a bill will do. And what the bill does is measured as a score. It's the expected change that a bill would make, compared to current law bosses increase spending negatives decrease spending. And the idea behind pay go or cut go is to not let a bill increase the deficit to keep it from not extremely keep it from exceeding the baseline cut goes a little more restrictive than pay go because it doesn't allow tax provisions to offset spending. That's really irrelevant for the farm bill because taxes aren't in the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee. So what's that look like in a quick example. hypothetical program has about $100 million a year of baseline. A bill is proposed to, in some cases, increase spending that's little pluses or reduce spending little minuses. Three provisions in this hypothetical bill have a net still a net positive, indicating that it would violate pay go because it's increasing spending, the score is positive increases spending compared to the baseline. And then my last slide is to look at what's the baseline for the current farm bill other speakers will probably talk about this more. There's about $1.4 trillion of baseline for the next 10 years, or largely four titles of the farm bill, but there are five other titles of the farm bill that get a sliver of mandatory spending, even though those titles receive more funding from discretionary appropriations. And with that, I will turn it back and let our next speaker go. Thank you, Jim. That was a great presentation and a great room, a great opportunity to remind folks in our online audience today that the presentation materials that you'll be seeing will all be available online at www.esi.org. So if you'd like to go back and revisit Jim's presentation, especially those cool timeline charts. Everything will be available online, which is very helpful. I'd also like to point out that when Jim was talking about the breadth of the issues. It's a lot of issues and so in addition to our briefing today which is more process oriented. Every two weeks for the next while we will have another firm bill briefing where we look more closely at some of those specific issues and so two weeks from today. We'll be back talking about climate energy and economic wind winds in the farm bill will be back on May 24. Every one of these will be a Wednesday afternoon, May 24 for unlocking rural economies farm bill investments in rural America. We will be back on June 7 for the future of forestry in the farm bill. And then finally on June 21, we will have conservation practices from farms to forests and wetlands. So today all of those briefings will be archived to the live cast presentation materials on our website. If you RSVP and you know you can attend or something pops up at the last second that's okay. If you RSVP that'll ensure that you get a link to the live cast as well as all the presentation materials and eventually summary notes which take a couple weeks to put together but are really really useful as well so if you have an RSVP for our future briefings and you think those topics, you'd like to learn more about them. I encourage everyone to do that. The speaker today is Jonathan Koppus Jonathan is assistant professor of agriculture policy and law at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and director of the Gardner agriculture policy program. He's the author of default lines of farm bill or farm policy, a legislative and political history of the farm bill prior to his role at the University of Illinois. He served as chief counsel and special counsel to for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and legislative assistant to Senator Ben Nelson. Jonathan grew up on his family's farm in Western Ohio. Jonathan, welcome to our briefing today I'll turn it over to you. Thank you Dan and thank you EESI for allowing me to join this otherwise distinguished panel to greetings everybody from the Grand Prairie here in East Central Illinois where spring is is trying its best to stick around. I'm tasked with a very brief and rapid run through of the history of the farm bill and so I'm going to do my best to, you know, summarize about 90 years of Congress actually reauthorized the bill 2023. It will mark 90 years since this federal direct assistance to farmers was first put in place. I'm going to start that history and do a quick run through. I also at the top want to apologize I have class to teach here at the top of the hour and so I got to jump off and we'll miss the question and answer, but the expertise on this panel will, will do a great job of managing so I, but I do apologize for that. In true sort of Madisonian theory, the farm bill strength is in its coalition multiple factions coming together, bringing votes with him to get a to get a bill across the double majority in Congress and the House and the Senate. For the farm bill, the strength, its political strength is in this sort of tripartite coalition, this traditional farm set of interests, regional based commodity based as Jim mentioned. And so as it came together at the, at the beginnings to push a farm bill through beginning in the mid 1960s then we added the food assistance to the food stamp program now known as a supplemental nutrition assistance program or snap. This map is from frack, this is their congressional district participation numbers. So we've got farm assistance we got direct assistance for food for low income households to, and the third leg of this. Very strong political coalition that is the conservation programs mentioned and discussed in more detail. As we go here we have direct assistance again to farmers, but this time to help cover the costs or help encourage conservation natural resources so everything from clean water to clean air, reducing soil erosion helping wildlife habitat and so forth. So this farm bill makes its way through the difficult congressional process that Jim highlighted because of the votes that come together around these, these different major titles or major areas that it deals with. So we take a long view of history here is a is my attempt to summarize it in a very brief picture. For those of you that are numbers nerds, you know, be careful with this chart. This is the total crop land used for crops as reported by us da is from 300 million to 400 million so we're creating up and downs a little bit over time, all the way back to 1910 to give us kind of this long view of production in this country. And I'm going to jump through each one of these major farm bills that give us kind of, you know, landmarks along the way or road marks along the way. The first being the 1933 agricultural adjustment act. And we can see some of the significant acreage shifts over a few areas that we'll talk about briefly. If you want to look at prices these are the market year marketing your average prices which what we typically use in the commodity subsidy or commodity source support programs as part of the calculation to trigger payments. And this just gives you again that long view since back to 1910 is reported by us da the national average market price over the course of a year. For the three major crops, the three great major regional crops corn, wheat and cotton. Cotton's on the other side there with dollars per pound and corn and wheat dollars per bushel. And again here's just a long view kind of sense of how market prices have moved and, you know, and we can think of policy and response to sometimes as market prices or attempts to try to respond to particularly low price eras that we see in this history. So again let's start at the beginning in the new deal so we had a farm depression after World War one. We had unsuccessful attempts to push farm support legislation through Congress in the 20s. But it was the Great Depression that really hit in October of 1929 with the crash. It was Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress is the push through this the new deal legislation so all kinds of emergency response legislation, contained in one of the earliest efforts on the new deal May 13 of 1933 was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, very broadly written bill basically giving the Secretary of Agriculture vast authority to try to address the crisis and the depression in agriculture. And not long after that we also suffered through a dust bowl and we had a follow up legislation in 1936 that was kind of our first faulting steps or faltering steps at conservation. Some efforts to pull land out of production it was was highly erodible and the wind and drought scenario out in the Western Plains Southwest complaints in particular. So that's our new deal sort of starting point. Of course we go through World War two, we come out of the World War two we're still operating under this new deal era this this attempt to try to control acres produced and try to keep a floor under prices so the prices of the farmer stay up but that that support system doesn't encourage over planting. And this happens to also be the era 1949 that Jim mentioned that permanent authority. And that's why it's so out of date and out of touch in terms of how the farm economy exists today and what kind of spending challenges would happen if we reverted our commodity support policy in 1949. That's post World War two legislation 1949 also marked sort of the early stages of the technological revolution and agriculture, the Green Revolution, we often talk about a mechanization chemical fertilizers synthetic fertilizers and chemical inputs pesticides and then better hybrid seed, and we drastically expand our yields our production capability in a relatively short amount of time which means policies attempting to control acres are less and less effective because we're producing more and more per acre and they get very politically difficult. And that kind of sums up the 1950s very tense fights, inter regional fights, particularly between the Midwest and the South, corn interest cotton interest over this policy and a big kind of heated debate over multiple farm bills about what to do with a policy that was obviously failing as you know, billions and billions of dollars worth of surplus commodity surplus wheat surplus cotton surplus corn and feed grains, being forfeited the federal government under the programs. This culminates in one more notable farm bills of the era 1956 when then President Eisenhower fought with the Democratic Congress over policies. When he vetoed the first farm bill that was produced by that Congress, he demanded what he called the soil bank which is an attempt to shift some of this policy into a conservation so we're moving acres instead of moving acres amongst commodities, shifting acres into a conservation set of programs under the soil bank. He told it his reelection year as a, a response to the Congress that was not cooperating with what he where he thought the policy should go. So I think an interesting political moment. Eventually Congress back down and passed the bill more to his liking he cited in the law soil bank cover was pretty briefly in operation and part of was terminated just a couple years later, and eventually faded out but it did include the first version of the conservation reserve program the idea that we would pay farmers or pay landowners to take highly road will land and remove it from production for multiple years anywhere from three to 10 years. So that was 1956. You can see on the acres chart following that that policy was actually tightened and strengthened in the 1960s and then focus largely on feed grainings and pulled quite a few acres out of production. There is a fascinating story in this 1960s timeframe we think about the coalition building and the farm bill aspects. The food stamp act of 1964 was passed in the wake of the first defeat of a farm bill on the house floor in 1962. Again this regional fight multiple other political battles brought down a farm bill 1962. And in order to get revised legislation for cotton we 1964 Congress paired up the votes for a food stamp act and a cotton wheat bill. They weren't the same legislation but they sort of formed that initial coalition that bridged the vote counting out of just rural districts in the house to bring in districts across the spectrum including an urban areas. We then have the big spike in 1972 Nixon president Nixon and Secretary butts with us grain deal Soviet Union and spike in prices inflation and all kinds of consumer demands. And in 1973 that farm bills the first one to combine food stamps and farm support policy and it also shifted out of that, out of what was the remaining of that new deal policy to this target price concept where we're triggering direct payments to farmers. And then we go into the 70s inflation and the 80s farm economic crisis, and one of the more landmark legislation passed by Congress in 1985 food security act, which introduce or which initiated the modern conservation set of programs, particularly conservation reserve program and the compliance mechanisms. This was a 1985 and some of that was a product of some of the fighting around budget and spending issues. We get into the 90s and Jim mentioned this the 1996 federal agriculture Improvement Reform Act and Fair Act is probably the most major change the farm support policy since 1933. It decoupled everything so we're not paying farmers based on what they plant and move it off with acre prices based on the market, but when we had a price crash after that and saw a lot of ad hoc payments. And in the modern area I'm not going to overstate this Jim talked a lot about these model modern era farm bills, but I think the main takeaway from this that we see, again is not just the political strength of the political coalition. And across the different titles what happens when that coalition turns on itself or gets torn apart largely under budget fighting. And that's the 2014 2018 farm bill experiences, in which those fights over the snap program supplementary nutrition assistance program really broke apart the coalition and cause significant problems and passage in the House of Representatives in particular. So there's our brief history. You can kind of think about that back over the prices and acreage issues. So quick notes just this 2018 farm bill existence has been rather unique because of the massive amount of ad hoc and supplemental payments that have gone out in the wake of trade conflicts in 2018 and 19 and then the coronavirus resistance programs and 2021 and as mentioned also the inflation reduction act is the first major investment in conservation programs outside of a farm bill and so this is pretty historic in terms of the amount of the investment for conservation and the focus on things like climate change and otherwise. With that, I will say thank you again for having me on and hand it back over to Dan and again apologize that I cannot stick around for questions but you can find me here at the University of Illinois if you have any follow ups. Thank you. Jonathan, that was an incredible presentation, and I really appreciate it. Great slides as well. And we will definitely miss you in the q amp a but we will release you to your students. And thanks so much for your willingness to participate in our briefing today. We've talked about a lot of things Jim talked about a lot of things will have a question and answer period and while I always have questions that I could ask. I'd also really like to ask questions from our online audience so if you have a question about what you've heard so far, or what you're about to hear, you can send us an email email address to use this ask that's ASK at ESI.org can also follow us on Twitter and other social media at ESI online and send in your questions that way. Our third panelist today is Nadine Lair. Nadine is an associate professor in the food studies program at Chatham University Chatham University. Her interests include agriculture policy development challenges and opportunities and sustainability and sustainable agriculture and diverse views around food farming and land use. Nadine has also worked in mediating conflict conflicting views of sustainable agriculture in Peru and Brazil, small scale vegetable and livestock production and urban forestry. Her publications include us farm bills and policy reforms, ideological conflicts over world trade and renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. Nadine, welcome to our briefing today and I think you might get the award for sort of most. If you were with us in person you would have gotten the most distance travel award for our readings because you're coming to us from Costa Rica today. So thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much Dan I really appreciate the opportunity to participate. I am luckily on sabbatical and so I appreciate the ability to participate via zoom. I've been looking at farm bills for almost 20 years and and what I wanted to do today was to kind of add a little bit of shape and painting to what Jim and Jonathan have talked about in terms of some of the historical trends that you see in farm bills and that you might think about with the 2023. So I essentially want to make two points. I can't get my slides to move. Let me try to share them again. Okay, we got it now. Perfect. So the first point that I want to make is that farm bills happen within a certain historical political situational context and that context matters. So a lot of this we just got from Jonathan right the 1933 farm bill this first setup of support payments happened in part because of the Great Depression right farmers wanted this kind of support in the 20s when they needed it they couldn't get it. So the historical and political context around the depression that really made this seem like a package of supports that was doable and feasible and worthwhile. Similarly in 1973 the increase in gas prices food prices brain cells to the Soviet Union, this idea that we weren't producing enough to meet demand, kind of brought in the next administration to say hey we got to increase production and to change the commodity programs to increase production. That wasn't a change that would have necessarily happened 10 years earlier even though there were strong debates about it all the way along the way. The 1985 farm bill, the farm financial crisis. The overproduction of the 70s and the recognition of the environmental impact of agriculture became stronger in that period. You know you had the, you had the environmental decade of the 70s and all of a sudden the context was right for conservation groups to really get a place at the table, and to make this big move for conservation into the 85 farm bill. Similarly the 1996 farm bill that Jonathan talked about to this idea of at the time reducing the price supports and subsidies came in a context where World Trade Organization negotiations were really pushing for reform, Republican Congress, budget deficit, high farm prices all came together to make this possible in a way that it hadn't been in 1990 and in the way that it wasn't able to again in 2002. So, if you look at kind of information from different policy scholars you see some principles that can help us right understand so most policy change is incremental right the government is designed to move slowly and cautiously and carefully. And so most changes slow, there's occasional bursts of change and sometimes situational context is part of what shapes opportunities for change and stability. And by situational historical context, these kind of dynamics that Jim and Jonathan both brought up. Create a backdrop against with which congressional staffers Congress people advocacy groups farm organizations are working to kind of make their priorities part of the fine farm bill. It's sort of the backdrop that can facilitate certain kinds of policy and not other kinds of policy at a certain point in time. That makes sense. So I'll give you an example from the 2008 farm bill if you look in the couple years before 2007 which was when we were supposed to have the firm bill. You see a lot of constant conversation around trade and trade provisions, and the idea that so pressure was going to push for reform to commodity senses. If you go ahead another year or two towards when we actually had the farm bill you actually see very little of that in news coverage, very little about WTO, and a whole lot about ethanol biofuels renewable energy right so the context around that farm bill changed in the couple years before 2008, and it facilitated sort of a different set of policies right not necessarily a commodity reform but a farm bill that was focused more on status quo and morons increased renewable energy. Right so why, why was that the case you had a number of factors suspension of WTO negotiations in 06 really reduced that pressure congressional elections you went from a Republican Congress to a Democratic one that was more domestically focused at the time. Rising gas prices at that time in the early 2000s made it really appealing to look to corn ethanol as a fuel additive for a fuel alternative right so it meant more people were planting corn. And it meant that there was more demand for corn right so higher prices, higher prices across the board for commodities right and that had budget impacts for the farm right. Commodity prices that were high meant lower counter cyclical or loan deficiency payments at the time lower farm payments, brought the budget of the farm bill the proposed budget back into what looked much smaller more budget compliant, made it seem less pressing to think about commodity reform, and more pressing to think about renewable energy and to think about ethanol and how to, how to manage this. On top of that you sort of had a political public mood right, just showing some images right this was post 911 it was pre housing bubble pre great recession and you had this idea right that was very resonant in the rhetoric of like home grown energy, reducing reliance on foreign oil from the Middle East etc etc right so within this context, it shaped what players were able to do in the farm bill and it shaped the way that policy turned out. Second point is kind of reiterating in some ways some of what Jim and Jonathan said right, and just highlighting the role of issue expansion in the farm bill and the farm bill started they were. They were smaller they were about commodity prices they were about price support they were about grain reserves right and over time. The scope of the farm bill has increased right and Jonathan highlighted that as kind of the source of a lot of the stability in farm bill passage right. So just to highlight that again right the 1970s Jonathan talked about a lot right this rural urban alliance support for commodity programs and support for nutrition programs that happened when you put these two bills together. The 1980s right conservation programs which in the 80s were mostly set aside programs you take land out of production for conservation. That also means you're reducing production. And that means you're potentially increasing prices for commodities right because you produce production and so that's appealing both the commodity groups and to environmental groups you have this synergy that allows new programs to come into the farm bill. And that importantly expands the stakeholder base right once conservation groups were part of farm bill, they're part of farm bill once nutrition groups are part of farm bill they have a stake and they have an interest and they want to be there and they're at the table. So you have this increasingly complexifying set of issues and set of stakeholders when you go into these debates. Similarly in the 1990s you had to move towards more sustainable ag programs working land programs and other was not just set aside but conservation practices on farm alongside production. And in the 2000s you saw more energy provisions and specially perhaps this isn't an exclusive list. There's a lot more issues as well but I just wanted to give a sense of how these dynamics shape farm bills and future farm bills. A little bit of focus on conservation sustainable ag, and then I'm renewable energy because we're with ESI today. So if you look right the early conservation programs in the farm bill we're about soil erosion conservation, not so much for conservation's own sake but more for for preserving agricultural soils for future production. But as you get into the 1980s, you see these set aside programs taking hold in the 85 farm bill you even saw the first kind of sustainable ag oriented programs. Lisa which is now the Sarah program, but the initial conservation programs again we're taking land out of production. The bill you started to get to 96 the equip program 2002 the CSP program which we're making more of a case that on farm practices can contribute to agricultural conservation just as much as set asides or in different let's say. So over that time you saw a real proliferation of conservation programs and then in the 2010s more of a consolidation of the programs. And also you know the the IRA kind of throws an interesting wrench in there in terms of the funding for conservation that is something that will come up, presumably in the 23 farm bill debates. So if you look at it right if you look at programs that might be considered under sustainable ag broadly rich in the farm bill. There's a ton, right. So if you look at the CRS reports and the NSAC reports you can get information on all of these but my only point here is to say, there's a lot right so commodity title as a big part of the farm bill nutrition obviously in terms of budget and is also a huge part but but conservation and sustainable agriculture is is very well represented over the last 40 years. Similarly renewable energy it's obviously slightly more programs slightly fewer, but there are a number of programs, mostly around bio based fuels bio energy, etc and there's some great CRS reports that can give you more information about those. Just notes about renewable energy and biofuels in the farm bill right the 2002 farm bill was the first to have its own energy title that was expanded in 2008 in the case that we talked about and those programs were mostly reauthorized in the 2014 and 2020 farm bills. And there was some shift from earlier on mandatory funding to discretionary funding which can affect the way people are looking at the programs coming up into the 2023 farm bill but again it's an illustration of, of sort of this issue expansion and how a new issue can come into the farm bill and then develop a history and a trajectory of its own. One thing important to think about with energy is that the farm bill is not by far the only place where you have like energy legislation. So a lot of energy legislation happens outside the farm bill and the energy committee. Other ag related energy bills renewable fuel standards, cafe standards, tax incentives for biofuels also some of those in the IRA. So just to note that there are a number of different places where people are looking at energy, aside from the farm bill and so what's in the farm bill is a little bit more narrow in that regard. So, essentially points I'm trying to make is when you're thinking about if you're working on the 2023 farm bill or if you're watching the 2023 farm bill. Things to keep in mind that situational context matters. This includes the normal bipartisanship that you often see in farm bills but also the partisanship that we've seen in recent decades in Congress regional dynamics stakeholder positions current events public mood and it also includes the history and trajectory of issue expansion right the ways in which conservation and sustainable agriculture renewable energy or really any other issue that you're thinking about have played out historically have some repercussions for what the debates look like now and maybe give you a little bit of insight as you're thinking about what might possibly happen. With that I'm going to turn it over and my emails down at the bottom if you want to contact me further. Thanks so much. That was a really great presentation and really really appreciate you joining us today from taking time away from your sabbatical which I'm sure is much earned so thank you very much. Looking forward to revisiting some of these contextual issues in our Q&A. Our next speaker is Sakina Shabazz. She is the policy director at the Berkeley Food Institute where she supports and state and local policy research and educational advocacy efforts. Before that, Sakina was deeply involved in anti hunger and anti poverty research and advocacy with DC hunger solutions and the Congressional Hunger Center where she was an Emerson national hunger fellow. Sakina, welcome to our briefing today, looking forward to hearing your presentation. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And also thank you to all the speakers who came before me. I think they played some really important context and foundation for some of the contents that I'll be talking about today, which mostly is like what's in the farm bill and also framing it around some of the key players that are part of this process. Next slide. So we've already seen this already from Jim. I think it's a good refresher to know what the 12 titles are that make up the farm bill, just to kind of get a sense for this because we're going to talk about what also is not in the farm bill and the corresponding departments within the federal government that represent those areas, but I thought it would be really good just to kind of give a little refresher what this looks like. Next slide. And so if you are going back and looking at public law for the farm bill or for the one that was most recently passed in 2018 the agriculture improvement act of 2018, you're going to find a table of contents you're going to find the authorizing language title area, and then a breakdown from there that will reflect the different policy areas that make up the farm bill corresponding to those different titles. But if you're looking at public law, I think the bill that was passed in 2018 was probably around 538 pages and so I think if you're going in and looking for a specific title or thinking about a specific policy area that you want to look at, it's good to know what this breakdown looks like so that you can be more supportive to the member that you're working for, the particular committee that you're working for when you're doing that research. Also, just a further breakdown you're going to have subtitles that's often in reference back to older public law that's in place. And also the parts are divisions within those specific subtitles and so it might give reference to a specific program or things of that nature. And then when you're digging into the sections, you're going to get definitions you're going to get the purpose of the program, it's going to outline which agency is responsible amendments to prior public law program administration requirements around reporting and things of that nature and so I thought this would be a little bit of a good clue in case you go back and find yourself looking at the actual 538 page long public law that made up the 2018 Farm Bill. Next slide. This is what this will look like if you're just going through and doing a search on the congressional website. It's, you know, going to give you the authorizing language and this is specifically in reference to the title one which is commodities and examples of what those different subtitles look like we're on policy, marketing loans, sugar, so on and so forth. Next slide. I thought it was also worth it to dig into what this looks like for the miscellaneous title which is title 12. I think it's a little bit of a of a misnomer because so many important programs fall under this particular title, but this really shows you what those different policy and programmatic areas were so for subtitle a you're covering livestock for subtitle B and so on and so forth agricultural and food defense support programs for historically underserved producers which we'll talk a little bit more about later, the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 and so much more that goes into that and so it's really well organized and definitely suitable for folks from the general public who are interested in this but definitely also for the folks who are currently involved in the 2023 reauthorization process. Next slide. So this is a really interesting part to think about because our food and agriculture system of the United States and abroad is so broad and comprehensive. And there are a lot of corresponding issue areas that lawmakers care about that advocate groups care about that lobbyists care about that are tangential to the farm bill but not necessarily part of the reauthorization process. One of those issues being farmers and farm worker labor which is so important and crucial to being able to have a healthy and flourishing food system to have our food that's grown and provided you know maybe with different sustainable practices and things of that nature, but actual labor is covered by the Department of Labor and so when we're going through the reauthorization process of the farm bill, different issues that are tangential to this might come up but this is outside of the jurisdiction of the farm bill. Also for public land grazing that falls under the Bureau of Land Management specifically the Department of Interior, also really important for farmers especially those who are doing ranching and things of that nature but the laws governing that fall under the Department of the Interior not under the US Department of Agriculture. Access and water rights also under the Department of Interior food safety is primarily under the Food and Drug Administration, though within the farm bill the research title does make some funds available to different institutions across the country to do research on invasive pests and species and things of that nature, but food safety as we know it primarily is under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration. Two really important nutrition programs, the school, school meal program, national school breakfast and school lunch program, after school meals or supper programs, and also the supplemental nutrition program for women infants and children also known as WIC are under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Agriculture but the authorizing language for these two programs is under child nutrition reauthorization or what was passed in 2010, the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. That typically has also been under a five year reauthorization process but it had that particular bill has not been reauthorized since 2010 and so the programmatic funding levels and authorization of those things are still in place but it hasn't made any adjustments for expansion or innovation or a lot of innovation to those particular programs, at least not on a wide scale level that you would typically see with the full reauthorization process and then air quality falls under the environmental protection agency or the EPA. These are all really important issues, but fall outside of the jurisdiction of the farm bill and largely outside of the jurisdiction of the USDA, even though we know that these things are tangential and definitely an issue to people of issue and importance to people who also care about the farm bill. Next slide. I think it's really important to also dig into who the key players are we know that this is largely within the jurisdiction of Congress, especially the House Agriculture Committee the Senate Agriculture Committee, but there are a lot of other actors that play here. And certainly the US Department of Agriculture who is responsible or what is responsible for implementation of these programs for evaluation of these programs and actually reaching the farmers the producers and people on the ground who are implementing and receiving funding that has been authorized to the farm bill. As we saw earlier in two of the previous slides in terms of actually getting the bill through Congress, it has to be signed by the White House and as we've seen from the historical context that Jim provided there's been some back and forth there and past farm billiers. There are also our leads on key marker bills, marker bills are smaller bills that are introduced into the House incident that are meant to garner interest amongst members of Congress. I'm into push particular issue areas, but are not introduced with the intention of making it through the full legislative cycle being put into law. The goal is to have those smaller bills be part of the largest let be part of the larger legislative package that ultimately makes up the farm bill. And oftentimes when we see marker bills introduced you'll have a particular member of Congress, who cares about a specific issue area who cares about that, you know, particular thing related back to their region or to their particular district and are often looking for co sponsors, hopefully in a bipartisan way to get those particular bills introduced and ultimately into the 20 into the 2020 day farmer reauthorization process. You have your chairs and your ranking members. And right now in the House of Representatives that is primarily our chairs of Republican and then within the Senate that is a Democrat. And between those two there's a lot of negotiation that is expected to happen. And one of the other areas that we're going to talk a little bit more about different interest groups and so I think it's a really interesting position to have when you can't get into the lobby but you're able to do education around certain areas that are related back to the farm bill that is definitely the case for the for the Berkeley Food Institute and so in our capacity we're often trying to be available and very similar nature to ESI to provide education and insights into why the farm bill is important how it ties back to particular issue areas that we care about to the states that we're representing and things of that nature. And so for the folks on the call who are maybe staffers or part of the committee. And maybe this is your first farm bill reauthorization process. You know there are a lot of different groups that are going to be reaching out to you and have a particular interest in elevating particular issue areas and that is extremely broad there's no one particular group that's going to come through the door. Talking to you about a particular issue, you have trade associations, anti hunger and nutrition groups which I feel pretty familiar with given my work when I used to be in DC, public health groups groups that care about conservation and increasingly groups that are pounding the pavement around racial justice issues, especially as it relates back to issues of discrimination and writing those wrongs with this particular farm bill biofuels as we've seen before. There is a robust infrastructure in place representing groups from native communities and that have tribal interests, especially coming out of the legacy of different class action lawsuits that have been faced by the USDA by these particular groups but the issues that tie back to Indian country and different issues that are specific to people living on tribal lands. We have rural and economic development groups, increasingly universities and land great institutions, I want to bring it back to the research title or title seven. That is a broad swath of funds and supports that are made available to universities, and one big issue area there too is research facilities where this really groundbreaking work takes place and making sure that those facilities are up to D and up to up to code and standards so that the work that can be that's funded to be done can actually take place. Also banks and insurance providers farmer nonprofits think tanks supply trade interest. It really runs the gamut as you can see with the 12 tiles that make up the farm bill there are probably several groups within there that have that have interest in issues that they want to elevate to members of Congress into the committee and that they ultimately want to see in the farm bill. Next slide. I wanted to highlight an example of a marker bill that's coming through Congress right now does that is both bipartisan in terms of both parties and also by camera meaning that it's been introduced in the house and also in the Senate this pertains back to local processing for livestock and poultry and supply chain issues, the ability to local to strengthen local food systems and to support small meat and poultry processors. And I think in the political climate that we're in right now that is going to require a lot of negotiation negotiation for the farm bill reauthorization. It's really encouraging to see that there's bipartisan support for this particular bill from Senators John Thune shot Brown and representatives Shelly Pinkrey and Representative Jim Baird and this is something that we're monitoring pretty closely, not officially endorsing it but just wanted to model show this to you as a model of a bill that has both support from both parties and both chambers and is something that will just be watched closely throughout this particular process. Next slide. I wanted to also share an opportunity to stay connected on this particular work. We are having a congressional briefing next Tuesday. And the Russell Senate office building in room 385 with the Berkeley food institute where I work the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and also American University, the representatives who will be on this particular panel or from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, another group that's focusing on a policy research center for for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, another group representing the National Farmers Coalition with moderation from our executive director. This is a really rich time for gathering information for staying connected on different issues that are both intersecting and warranting of their own, you know, sort of attention and investigation as we go through this particular farm bill reauthorization process and my contact question is below and look forward to taking questions that you all have as we near the end. Thank you. Thank you that was me turn my video back on I thought I did sorry. There we go. Thank you that was great. Your issue group slide looks a lot like our RSVP list for today's briefing so I think that's probably a good sign in terms of who's paying attention. We have lots and lots of stuff covered and we still haven't even gotten to Bart yet. If you have questions for our panelists, send us an email ask that's ASK at ESI.org, or follow us on social media at ESI online. And that brings us to our fifth presenter today, Bart Fisher. Bart is a research assistant professor and co director of the agricultural and food policy center in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas and A&M University and serves as senior advisor for federal relations in the office of the Vice Chancellor for Texas A&M AgriLife. His applied research focuses on solving real world policy problems for agricultural producers and on anticipating potential policy changes for Congress to consider. Before joining Texas A&M Bart served for more than eight years on the House Agriculture Committee and most recently, he served as a deputy staff director and chief economist under the leadership of ranking member Mike Conway of Texas. He's a fifth generation farmer who was raised on his family's wheat, cotton and kettle operation in southwest Oklahoma. And there he continues to be actively involved. Bart, really looking forward to your presentation today. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks for joining us. Well, thank you very much. It's great to be with you all today. I am the fifth speaker here, so I will endeavor to try to pull all of this together in a very quick, succinct way, but I think if you've heard one theme throughout the presentations today from my colleagues, it's that context matters right here. I think one of the first places I will start is with a little bit of context as well. And I'm going to zoom, you know, Jim did a great job at the outset of talking a little bit about the budget process. I'm going to zoom back out and you may look at this and if you're not a budget nerd, you may not enjoy this slide as much as I do. I definitely nerd out on a good pie chart. Not only because I think it does a great job of capturing the entire federal government and in context or the place in which, you know, the farm bill finds itself. And so if you look at the top of that chart, it's really trying to capture discretionary spending. Half of that is defense. The other half of that is things like salaries and expenses and the federal government and so on and so forth. And if you add net interest to that, that accounts for about a third of our federal budget. And for discretionary spending, those of you that work on the Hill know this well. Those priorities are debated every single year. They're debated annually. They're debated against a backdrop of caps that have been put in place primarily under BCA and other successive budget deals, but those are negotiated annually. If you look at the other two thirds of that pie chart, though, it's other mandatory spending. So these are things that the authorizing committees like the agriculture committees have passed in into law. The thing I wanted to highlight is that the vast majority of these and the three at the bottom account for fully half of the entire federal budget but the vast majority of them are on autopilot. They're largely permanently authorized where they where there's a lot of interest and certainly political support, but they don't necessarily get revisited that often. And you contrast that then with a farm bill where as it's been mentioned a couple of times on this zoom the farm bill comes up every five years like clockwork. And so I mentioned all of this, I think, you know, after almost 10 years of working on Capitol Hill and trying to, they're trying to find a way to simply describe the process I think this does it because, you know, we're so much of the federal government is on autopilot. The farm bill is not and that creates a very interesting dynamic on the one hand it can be a good thing right every five years you get another another bite at the apple an opportunity to make changes or improvements or if your priority wasn't considered in a previous farm bill you know, to live to fight another day, you know, to potentially have your priority reflected in a future farm bill. The challenging side of it is that it collects a whole lot of baggage that may have nothing to do with a farm bill and so if you're a member who's greatly concerned about the debt and don't have a lot of opportunity to vote on bills to constrain the debt, you know, here comes a farm bill and so it's often when I when I look back, you know, in the farm bills that I was a part of, and see some of the amendments that are offered for example, they're often head scratching to me because for the people who, you know, work with those programs, you know, where that are incredibly where these programs are incredibly important to these individuals some of these amendments are a bit of a head scratcher for those of us who work it in this space and I think part of it is just a reflection of the fact that so much of the federal government is on is on autopilot and I think for those of you who plan to engage in the farm bill who might be new to it it's really important to understand that right. And I think it's it's key to stay focused on the topic at hand because the farm bill does attract a lot of attention I think you know this is a big reason why just by virtue of the fact that it comes up every five years which nowadays is pretty unique. This particular farm bill to is also against the backdrop, you know, of debt. It's not lost on me that today, you know, Congress is having conversations about raising the debt ceiling and whether or not that will be paired with spending cuts. It is somewhat ironic to me because when I joined the Hill. Now 12 years ago, back in 2011 debt was was all we were talking about at the time and it was the primary reason why it took three knowing on four years to get the 2014 farm bill past, because it was against a backdrop of concern about debt. The irony is that the debt is more than doubled since then. And so the big one of the big question marks for me is what does you know that pretend for a farm bill how much is this going to factor into the farm bill. And I'm watching the debt debate right now, you know, against the reauthorization of the debt ceiling very closely because I think it's going to be pretty instructive for what we may or may not have to deal with in a farm bill if some of these debt conversations were to spill over into a farm bill on the one hand we have members who are interested in cutting spending and again, that's part of the debate being had today, arguably, you know, in certain corners of the farm bill there's a need for additional investment and so how do those two things come to a head, you know, I think we're all still waiting to see but particularly for those of you who are new to this process, you'll be on the lookout because I do think this will factor pretty heavily into it. He mentioned at the outset did a great job of setting the stage on on budget he mentioned that four titles, you'll primarily account for all the mandatory spending a farm bill and, and by account for most of it it's about 99.8% of it is accounted for by those four titles title one, which I use here in this table CCC price support is a proxy for for title one spending conservation has been discussed snap as well and crop insurance is entitled 11 so those four account for the vast majority of the outlays I think one of the one of the dynamics we're watching now is that this farm bill is projected to cost considerably more than the last one up significantly the first one ever to come out you know north of a trillion dollars so again with this debt conversation in the backdrop you know what is that portend for a bill on the snap front we know some of the fault lines of the last two bills snap you know relative to 18 is up 82% conservation on the conservation front it's up spending is up there. But what you know you've got to read the finer points to know that the vast majority of that is because of the infusion that came about in the IRA right and so that was an intentional infusion made in the last Congress. The last point I'll note here you at the top of that chart for the CCC you could think of this. And then mentioned you're going back to the early farm bills 1933, you know, title one of the farm bill is sort of your traditional reason for doing farm bills income support for farmers and ranchers. You'll note that the baseline there is up a little bit I think it's a bit misleading in part because about 10 billion of that is what the Congressional Budget Office sets aside as their expectation for what future salaries down at USDA will spin and ad hoc spinning that's not something that is historically been reflected in the baseline at least not to that magnitude so I would argue about 10 billion of that is really phantom baseline it doesn't really exist and so what that means is for the traditional support to growers it's largely has flat line and even gone down effectively since the last back the last farm bill, and that's against the backdrop of all the chaos we've seen coming out of out of COVID and so where do we where do we go from here then particularly on that first point I'll start there with title one, like one of the biggest threshold questions right now is where the conversation is going to go on traditional farm policy house ag they're having a hearing today two panels 1010 witnesses, you know where they're exploring this very topic but what we've seen over time is title one the traditional farm programs income support now counts for about three three to 4% of a farm bill. It's extraordinarily targeted which is why on this chart you see there in the middle of the 2018 farm bill was about $60 billion over 10 years in total for writing 20, writing title one of the 2018 farm bill so there are many who feel that the the pendulum has probably swung too far. And it's one reason why you see the red box there then in the last five to six years we've spent north of $90 billion the appropriators have an ad hoc and budgeted assistance and so it raises this question mark of will there be an additional infusion into the farm bill quite frankly I think it's going to be necessary our conversation here today is about path and process to get to a bipartisan farm bill. I think this question mark is one of the Lynch pins in whether whether or not that can happen is is is going to have a huge bearing on the process. Another one that I'll mention and I should give credit to Jim here as well because Jim is historically been the authority or CRS on tracking items that don't have baseline you think well why might these matter. So all of the spending we've talked about are for programs that have an ongoing budget where every farm bill they don't have to come up with the funding to pay for it. But there's also a litany of programs in a farm bill they don't where it doesn't have baseline Congress will just give it a one time infusion. But typically there's an expectation that that's going to happen in each in each farm bill in each successive farm you farm bill, but absent new money to a farm bill. How do you pay for that generally by cutting somewhere else and so this is one of the many things that the leaders of the ad committees have to weigh in that are they going to be able to trim elsewhere or secure additional funding to be able to help cover some of these things and they run the gamut the top there and the miscellaneous title you know this emerging citrus trust fund you see a few organic provisions there a couple of provisions on biofuel all the way down to things like feral swine control all of those are programs that don't have baseline. I think the saving grace is that in 2018 we largely cut that list in half so it's a much smaller list than it is historically been, but yet it's still something that the membership is going to have to weigh through particularly the leadership of the ag committees and both the House and the Senate will have to to wade through another one that's been mentioned here a lot is also the the inflation reduction act there was a significant infusion. There are roughly 20 billion in budget authority now the estimate is that translates into about 15 billion in outlays or what you know, CBO expects us to cut a check for up to about 15 billion over the next 10 years and so clearly there's a lot of support for that the infusion that was over and above the existing baseline for conservation. The question mark is, you know what might happen in a farm bill conversation so the blue on these charts was added in the IRA. As part of budget reconciliation which we don't have time to get into the nuts and bolts of today, but in the context of a farm bill. The leaders negotiating the bill certainly could revisit the blue, you know they could reallocate it they could use it elsewhere and so that's another thing that we're watching closely is the direction they go there do they choose to revisit some of this. I don't necessarily think that all has to be bad either, or even viewed as a threat because the challenge with the blue is that it does end. It has a finite shelf life in 2031 and so within the context of a farm bill, there are actually ways to reallocate where the blue could also stay in in perpetuity and I can talk about that more in q&a. If you like, I'm going to end here, you know by talking, you know just using this slide as a point of discussion and I'll wrap up here pretty quickly because I do want to stress a little bit this point of you know bipartisanship and can we get a bipartisan bill when I joined the House this number down here at the bottom was 242 242 Republicans and yet it was it was very challenging to get farm bills done both in 2014 and 2018. I do think the fact that you have both the House in the Senate so narrowly divided where the membership is very balanced in in both chambers I think it does lend itself to a more bipartisan bill even in the House of Representatives so I'm encouraged by that I think that's entirely possible to do. I will also it's somewhat. It's hard for me not to chuckle you know sitting now on the outside looking in and hearing all of the chatter about this bill and the talk about bipartisanship because I think virtually every farm bill has started as a bipartisan farm bill. But you have where I started you know the pie chart where all sorts of interesting things happen in a farm bill it's a very interesting political animal. And so we just don't know the path that it's going to take going forward but I do think it is entirely possible to get to a bipartisan farm bill, even in the House, but if it doesn't. The last two farm bills that ended up partisan in one chamber, still ended up bipartisan in the final product that went to the President both President Obama and President Trump and so I would encourage folks again particularly those who are new to this process not to worry about the process to focus on the substance to engage and not so worry about the day to day minutiae because the ag committee leadership, you know they're trying to. You know, I think they all endeavor to be bipartisan but ultimately they want to get a good bill done and a bill that's really good done as well. One last point I'll highlight is that for those of you who are engaging whether you're off the Hill or you're on the Hill, just to give you a little snapshot of what's going on, you know, particularly at at at the committees. You have the 435 members in the House I think it's something like 215 that have never voted on a farm bill. So almost half of the membership in the House have never voted for a farm bill. And of that you got 74 who were brand new in this Congress, who may prior to being elected have never voted on anything, certainly in the context of a legislative process and so there's a whole lot of education going on behind the scenes right now. There's also a lot of groundwork being laid so field hearings are underway and you have hearings as I mentioned happening right now in the committee and so the committee's trying to lay the groundwork my encouragement to you would be to work collaboratively for those of you that are staff on the Hill if you're interested in putting down marker bills like Sakina mentioned reach out to your counterparts over on the Agriculture Committee Democrat or Republican because I can guarantee you. They would like to work with you and quite frankly they would much rather work with you then find out about it in a press release and then have to try to figure out how to navigate going forward so with that I'll stop there. Look forward to your questions and really appreciate the opportunity to join you today. That was great bar and a great place to end I feel like this is a good situation where a teaspoon of honey as well we're you know well well more valuable than a gallon of gall when it comes to working with committee they they can be your friend or not it's largely up to you and you know your point about the half half of the house being new to the firm bill and that's exactly you know what today's session is all about getting people up to speed as quickly as possible and I'll include Jonathan in the statement to even though he's not with us in our Q&A but I mean who could pick five better panelists to help those staff people get up to speed tremendous panel and amazing chemistry and interaction between the panel so you might everyone to turn your cameras back on and we will go ahead and kick off our Q&A session I'm really looking forward to getting into this and now that everyone's heard each other's presentations. I have a couple questions like to start with. And the first is Jim I think maybe we'll go back to you and then since we it's been a while since we've heard from you and then we can hear from Nadine and Sakina and Bart but going back to the idea about sort of the history in the process and sort of the various political and policy drivers that are going to come to bear in the next 12 months to basically force Congress to work together in a way that the president can go along with and get a farm bill signed. What are some things about the farm bill from either political policy or stakeholder perspectives that you anticipate coming together to make this thing happen sometime in the next year or so? I think we're seeing a lot in the press presently if Congress can figure out how far it wants to go with snap reforms. As Bart mentioned, figuring out what's going to happen with negotiations over the debt ceiling, as much from the perspective of how much will it derail the floor this summer in order to get to the farm bill. And that laid out a lot of good suggestions I think about those dynamics too. Nadine, I'd like to hear from you about some of the different perspectives and why this is so important for different farm bill constituencies, whether it's farmers, ranchers, conservationists, anyone? Yeah. Well, I think all of these panelists really spoke to this in some regard that the farm bill ends up being important because it's so big and it covers so many areas and it covers so many stakeholders, right? And so it's crucial to farmers and ranchers. It's crucial to conservation. It's crucial to energy. It's crucial to beginning farmers, socially disadvantaged farmer groups. There's so much in their nutrition and snap and kind of basic poverty alleviation, right? It's crucial in so many areas that what ends up being interesting and important is that this then lives, as Bart suggested, in a mechanism that has to be reauthorized to get passed through sort of the gauntlet of current politics, right? And that has a strong bipartisan history but also goes right through the middle of all the debates and all the disagreements and all the ranker and all the cooperation that happens in the country. I think it's, I think it depends on a lot. One thing that I have learned over the years is it's, I think it's very hard to predict, but it's important to watch and see how it evolves. And I agree with Bart not to pay too much attention to all the minutiae up and down but give it a long, you know, a long view. Sakina, please feel free to jump in. I think it's really important to pay attention to the farm bill. I mean, it touches every corner of food and agriculture policy as, you know, as has been reiterated during our time together already. I think one of the analogies that has felt most appropriate, especially working with students at UC Berkeley this semester is just sort of thinking about the farm bills is sort of like Super Bowl of like food and act policy. It's really hard not to pay attention to it when it's in the new cycle, when it's under reauthorization and coming from a state like California where, you know, we're like a major producer for specialty crops and just in terms of landmass it's really huge and thinking about our agriculture and extension network across the state. There are so many different interest points and different points of engagement, considering that we also have members on the House Agriculture Committee and well the House Agriculture Committee from both Democrats and Republicans, not on the Senate Agriculture Committee but those being really interesting points of leverage and connection as well and making sure that we're making space through the different educational and advocacy groups that we're a part of to engage with those members. And I really want to go back to the point that Bart made is that there are so many members in the House who have, who are voting for the first time and not been in Congress before, but I've never, you know, sort of been part of a farm bill reauthorization process. And when we think about some of our strategy for engaging members of the House Add Committee from California, it's not like our work just doesn't stop there. All the members of the House are going to have to vote on the bill that ultimately comes out of the House and makes it to the chamber floor so how can we really bolster our education and make our interesting concerns known to those members and think broadly about the different points that touch on California's agricultural economy but also thinking broadly on a national scale about what it looks like to make a healthier food system. Those are some of the things that cross my mind when I think about why it's important to engage in the farm bill and how we can really push that from an educational front when you have constraints around lobbying and your ability to make certain asks. I'm happy to give you the last word on this point. If you have any thoughts about some of the, some of the key drivers that you see coming together in the next year. Sure, you know I think for me and admittedly mine comes partly from my perspective you know the center we run we work for Congress primarily looking at farm level impacts and I, you know in one and I love that we have a big omnibus farm bill right that we have this broad coalition right that there's a lot that is in to support agriculture and food very broadly in this country I think no part of my concern to those that we've we've lost sight over time a little bit, you know, on the farmers and ranchers who actually do do feed us in the unique challenges that they face and so I go back to a point that you know it gets to be a secretary I get to be a professor, you know, we all get to have these jobs in part because we have people out there doing the hard work to feed us and so part of it is like we really squeezed over time the risk management tools available to those growers and we've got to find that right balance and I don't think we're there right now so I think that's something that the committees are going to have to struggle to struggle through one other one that you know I encourage everyone I talked to, and I know this applies to, to our entire country and the government as a whole but particularly in a farm bill there is so much that is said. Part of this is from having been on the inside for years but facts really matter right and there's so much misinformation out there about what is and isn't in a farm bill and you know an example I always go to you'll hear a lot about small and beginning farmers and that's extraordinarily important. But I've told I've been told dozens of times there's nothing in the bill for your small beginning producers to the point and 18 I asked our lawyers to craft a small and beginning farmer title, so that we could highlight all of them, and it was so intertwined with the rest of the bill they threatened to quit if I forced them to have a small and beginning farmer title so part of this is, and I love having other particularly you know from Jim at CRS others in academia who it's what we do right we educate and we speak the facts and so I think that's that is a big challenge just because, and I think it's great we're having this conversation today too right because it's a huge bill and there's not a lot known about it right and there's a lot of moving parts so I commend you guys for having this today. Well that brings up a question that came in from our audience and I'm going to tweak it a little bit because I think it's kind of an interesting point and like works sort of flows from what you're saying which is that the agricultural sector is incredibly diverse. What are their you know size of the operation itself what they're what they're growing what they're producing, how they engage in conservation programs will part of the country they're in one of their water needs all of the, all of the ways that what's not in the farm bill from but Bart happy to start with you and, since this is an audience question we can open it up to anyone who would like to share a comment but what are some of the key challenges for some of these programs dealing with such a diverse agriculture, you know agriculture sector is the answer just more programs and each one tailored fit or is it trying to make you know sort of larger umbrella programs work for multiple different parts of the sector. Well, I'm not going to pretend that I have the silver ball. That's part of the legislative process right members of Congress. You'll get to decide how you know to weigh all of these things I think a couple. So maybe I'll just offer a couple of observations I think you would send, particularly since the 1996 farm but we particularly in the production agriculture side we really struggle with that question because the hallmark there was, you know, let's let the market drive for the discussion let farmers plant for the market not for the federal government and I would to some degree argue that that, you know that that has been successful, but it also means where we do choose to engage it's going to be more targeted but how are we going to do that to make sure that there's kind of equity, you know, in the safety net. I think one other observation I would piggyback off of that then is that probably one of the biggest success stories again on the kind of on the on the production side of the ledger would be insurance right we now ensure over 100 crops. We now have new policies that are targeted where we're entitled one you don't really have you have a small presence on specialty crops and crop insurance. You have again products available on over 100, 100 products, and we're developing new policies targeted to those and so I feel I feel like we have a framework in place now with which to work but it's always just about finding kind of finding that right balance which is, you know, it's subject to negotiation and opinions and education and all of that. Right up to the line with the lawyers quit right that's where you that's the line you can't cross. Yeah, Sakina Nadine and Jim curious if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share with about sort of how we, you know, how we manage the diversity of the agriculture sector in the US. Yeah, I'll just chime in very quickly and I think I'll speak to this for the federally funded programs coming out of the Farm Bill and USDA but also from the state perspective to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. I think that advocates and you know the folks who are responsible for implementing programs always have their pulse on this technical assistance and making sure that farmers who are eligible for programs have the support that they need to be able to apply for them to get their appropriate financial documents and such in place. That is a really challenging thing to do, especially if you have like smaller regional offices that aren't as always accessible, accessible. Or even like with the, with the supplemental IRA funds that came up for the conservation programs it was such a rush, just getting at getting the knowledge out to people who are eligible for those programs by particular deadlines and so, I think across many programs that are authorized to be funded by the Farm Bill, ensuring that there's appropriate funding and support for technical assistance is always an important thing to keep pulse on. And it's one of those things that is really important outside of Farm Bill years to and ensuring that people who are, you know, eligible can access those programs have appropriate language assistance and things of that nature and so that's a challenge but I think it's something that's always sort of on the forefront of being solution oriented as well. And I just that in terms of, it's one of the things that I think makes Farm Bill interesting so for those of you who are working on the hill and maybe working on this for the first time, the fact that there's such a breath and diversity of constituents is a strength to the bill right in the way that Jonathan highlighted and also makes it really complicated and really difficult, right, and much messier in certain ways than it probably was in the 30s and the 40s when you could get everybody together in one room and figure it out and so it both makes the process more difficult, and also easier right there's questions of how to allocate money and there's these larger questions that I think come up you know I can say this. So in terms of an academic setting it brings up questions about like what's the role of government, what should government do, what kinds of services should be provided, you know these basic questions of constitutional democracy come through the Farm Bill and so I don't know if it's an easy answer but it, it, it means that even if you don't know a lot or don't have a ton of interest, our priority about agriculture. There's a lot to learn and there's a lot that really speaks to these larger issues of democracy and government that that can be pretty fascinating and important. Nadine's answer was fine I don't mean to editing. In that case Jim, we will let you go first in our lightning run because we're just about out of time. And so the question I would like to pose to everyone as we wrap up today is if everyone could offer one maybe two examples of what you know now that you wish you knew then when you first started working on the Farm Bill or agriculture policy. Jim what would you, what do you know now that you wish you could tell your, your previous self your, your past self before you get started on this work. So I think when a lot of when we come into the Farm Bill as individuals years ago, you come in with one particular topic, whether it's conservation or nutrition or in my case you know the farm supports our community. And when you do that, you're very narrowly focused and so I think what I wish I felt better was the breadth in the process. What we've done today. But I think it's really my answer. And I've learned a lot of that just by watching over a few farm bills, but you know, settings like today can really help speed that up. Nadine we can go to you next and then Sakina and then we'll, and then we'll hear. I think there are a number of things that I learned over the years that I might have liked to realize early on. One is that this is a long game. There's a lot of fireworks and there's a lot of drama that comes out of DC or that seems to come out of DC, and it's all important but but policy changes slowly it changes incrementally. It builds historically on what came before, and it's, it's a long game so there's a, there's an issue of patience in there that I think is important to keep in mind in particular when you're outside the subway and working through a news cycle that really likes all the, all the fireworks I think the one other thing that I would say is that, you know, these kinds of bills historically they're not necessarily built rationally right like nobody sits up on a hill and says this is exactly what we need in our food and farm policy they're built historically over time and added to and changed right. And so that means that from the outside. A lot of this can seem irrational right or, and so it's important to keep in mind the historical context how it's built and how that affects how things change. So in fact that a lot of the times the fireworks you hear in the news cycle outside of the about way. Don't always reflect the way things work on the hill right that I remember experiences of talking to people who working on the hill and talking a lot about how bipartisan their work is, even though that's not necessarily what you hear in the news cycle and so that I think has always been a really key take away from That's such a good question and I think there are two points that that come to mind when I, you know, first set it working in this space I was almost exclusively focusing on food and nutrition programs, considering that snap takes up, you know, anywhere from 75% to 80% of expenditures for the farm bill, but it was really enlightening to learn about the different titles and to learn about the different broader farming and food issues and food systems issues that the entire farm bill make up and so if you find that you know you have one particular area of concentration or expertise like explore, read the bills by 138 pages of it or, you know, look at different sources like like what's available on ESI and other groups to that focus on the different issue areas. A few that come to mind are definitely like frack the Food Research and Action Center, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, especially if you're coming from a more advocacy background, they produce really wonderful research and work in great bipartisan ways across those areas. And the other part I'll say too is that if you are, you know, coming into this from a more advocacy background a coalition building background, diversity of coalition matters working with groups that are in urban areas and rural areas is really important, older farmers and younger farmers different cross racial organizing groups and things like that are super important, and only make for stronger work in the end and a stronger sort of organizing body if there's like one particular issue that you want to elevate to Congress but also on the other end for for folks who are staffers or are working on the hill that that's a really robust learning opportunity and to see different groups coming together that might not always have similar interests but are coming together for that particular issue, I think is really powerful and really gives you an appropriate lane to sort of like use your policy skills your education skills and just building up morale and support around different issues that maybe wouldn't get as much attention if it was just one particular group driving that issue so cross cross good coalition building and you know keep exploring all the farm bill just just read all of it if you can, if you have time, it's a lot but it's worth it. And I think I may, I think I'm a blast. I'm a wrap up a little bit more philosophical kind of looking back on my time on the hill and in two parts one of them actually piggybacks off Nadine and so this is kind of focus more on folks who are watching this who are coming from outside the process who aren't on Capitol Hill. And that is if you are watching cable news, you know which makes money off of reporting every little thing that happens and magnifying it. I may look with a lot of skepticism on Washington DC but I let after almost 10 years of working there I left with more respect for the process and not less and so the reality is from from having worked alongside a lot of folks there are really good people working on Capitol Hill, who are well intentioned who don't know everything but who want to learn about your issues and so engage, engage with them, you know, our process as was noted may may have been the dean in her, her comments are designed to be slow and painful the founding fathers intended it right. And so it's done by design but it's also magnified by a lot of other outlets who profit off off of that and so my, my encouragement to you is to not be cynical about the process don't give up hope engage in the process because there are really good people working on this. The second part is for those who are watching who are working on Capitol Hill, I think there's often this. In nature right that I'm in this new role I'm supposed to know what I'm doing, you can't know everything you're not going to. And my encouragement to you is don't be afraid to ask questions you got a huge resource and Jim sitting over there but frankly, all of us so don't be afraid to ask questions if you call someone and ask a question and they make you feel stupid, then call one of us, because we're not going to make you feel that way we want you to be successful, I get calls almost every single day from Capitol Hill answering questions so don't be afraid to ask your question it's it is okay, much better, you know to get the information you need than to sit there trying to make these decisions and advise your, your boss. Through intuition right use those resources at your disposal, so I will I will I have lots of them but I'll stop there Dan. I think that is a great place to to leave it and Jim, I look forward to maybe finding out how many voicemails you get this afternoon for people who want all of your great resources and, but I was actually thinking that you might say to your 2011 self if you think the dead is something now just wait for the 2023 farm bill debate. This is great, this was such a great panel, and I know Jonathan had to leave us for his class but tremendous panel Jim Nadine, Sakina bar and Jonathan wherever you are in class. Thank you for being with us today and sharing your tremendous expertise and perspectives this was a really great panel and perfect way to kick off our farm bill series. You mentioned this is like Super Bowl I was thinking it was like the FIFA World Cup, like every five years everybody's a soccer fan or every four years everybody's a soccer fan and I think that's more appropriate with the timing. People are like, you know, Chris, you know, everyone's you know, commenting on messy skills that I didn't know who the Lionel Messi wasn't told a couple months ago. But that's exactly what this is all about and providing resources to help everybody get up to speed very quickly so thank you so much for an excellent panel. I'd also like to take a moment and thank my ESI colleagues for doing all the hard work to put it together. That starts with Dan O'Brien Omri Allison Anna Molly and we have three great summer and spring interns with us right now Lindley Isabella and Madeline so thank you for all of the work that they put in. We have a bunch more briefings coming up. We will be back two weeks from today with climate energy and economic win wins. Then on May 24 will be back for world development. June 7 will be all about the future of forestry. And then June 21, which is the fifth in our five part series is conservation practices. In addition to these briefings we also are RSVP for the briefings right there just everyone should do that. If you haven't yet, because even if you can attend you get the archive webcast you get the presentation materials you get some summary notes. All of those resources will be extremely helpful going forward I promise. We also have some really additional or some additional other farm bill resources. This is one of our side by side by sides. This is the rural energy savings program which is our favorite part of the farm bill, but you open it up, and it has a place for the existing law, and then eventually when we get house text and senate text will be filling that in, designed to make the life of a congressional staff person easier. Same thing with our article series that we're putting out. Same thing with our hearing tracker. Same thing with our regular articles and podcasts. And the best way to keep up with everything is to subscribe to our biweekly newsletter climate change solutions and you can do all of that. You can also follow us by visiting us online at www.esi.org. Sorry for going a few minutes late. I always say that because we always go a few minutes late, but anyone in our online audience today would like to tell us how we did share your feedback. This is a link to a survey. We had a robust audience today and I really appreciate that and we take all of your feedback very seriously we read every response, and we always do our best to improve. If you have any comments and you'd like to share your thoughts. If you had a problem with the live cast if you have ideas, anything like that, we'd be really happy to hear that feedback and really does help a lot. We will go ahead and wrap up. Thanks again to our great panelists thanks to my colleagues. Thanks to everyone in our online audience and we'll be back here in two weeks for economic. Wait, when does it Dan will go back to slides I get the order of the words mixed up. There it is. Climate energy and economic win-wins in the farm bill. That's May 10 at 1 30pm Eastern and until then thanks so much and hope everyone has a great Wednesday afternoon.