On Friday, March 8 – more than 162 days into the start of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 – Congress finally approved a final FY2024 Agriculture Appropriations bill. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 (CAA, P.L.118-42) funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – alongside numerous other departments and agencies – through September 30, 2024.
However, given Congress’ increasing inability to enact appropriations legislation on time, it is likely that the CAA will stand as the law of the land through at least November 2024, if not longer. This post examines the food and agriculture components of the CAA. For a quick look at the final FY2024 agriculture funding levels, see NSAC’s detailed FY2024 appropriations chart here.
The Topline
The CAA funds the USDA and the FDA at $26.23 billion, roughly $750 million above the FY2023 funding level. While every annual appropriations process is unique, the FY2024 process was particularly so – and the context is important in understanding the final result.
In 2023, Congress struck a deal to raise the federal debt-ceiling by setting a cap on FY2024 and FY2025 defense and non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending. Commonly referred to as the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA, P.L. 118-5), the deal applied an NDD spending cap of $703.65 billion for FY2024 and $710.68 billion for FY2025. In addition to the caps, Congressional agriculture appropriators in the House and Senate also had the unique challenge of meeting a higher-than-originally-anticipated funding need for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.
Under these fiscal constraints – coupled with a wide gap between the Senate-passed bill and the House of Representatives’ initial harmful FY2024 funding proposal – it was widely anticipated that most programs would, at best, receive level funding. Ultimately, Congressional appropriators delivered a final FY2024 agriculture funding bill that has some bright spots alongside numerous painful cuts. Importantly, the bill rejects harmful policy riders, including those that would have stifled fair competition and hampered USDA’s ability to respond to emergent agricultural needs. Nonetheless, cuts to many programs critical to sustainable agriculture are deeply disappointing.
Conservation
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides support to farmers voluntarily adopting conservation practices. This may come through cost share support as in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), or additional support for higher levels of stewardship and addressing resource concerns offered through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). Both programs, among others, are successful only when NRCS can hire and train competent field staff and partner with conservation organizations across the country. These last two functions are paid for through the Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) fund, which is appropriated annually.
Notably, the CAA recognizes the need for sufficient numbers of well-trained staff and requests a report on NRCS’ plans for future staffing. Unfortunately, despite the importance of on-the-ground support for farmers seeking to implement and enhance on-farm conservation, the CAA provides only $773,495,000 (-3%) for CTA, down from $800,892,000 in FY2023. This is a disappointing disinvestment in our nation’s farmers, thousands of whom are trying to utilize NRCS programs only to be turned away. As NRCS is reporting record interest in conservation from the farmers it serves, NSAC encourages Congress to recognize the need of this moment and provide far more CTA funding in FY2025.
The CAA similarly underfunds the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI). This crucial conservation program allows NRCS to use a subset of CTA funding to hire grazing technicians, as well as enter into cooperative agreements with third party organizations capable of delivering grazing specific technical assistance to farmers. This assistance can take the form of written grazing plans, educational events or training, and facilitating farmer-to-farmer learning networks. Since well-managed grazing can help sequester carbon, reduce erosion, build soil health and resilience on farms, and provide a low capital opportunity for new and beginning farmers, GLCI is an essential subprogram within CTA. The CAA provided only $10 million (-28.6%) for GLCI, down from $14 million in FY2023 and well down from historic funding levels of roughly $27 million. NSAC requests that Congress correct this mistake in FY2025 and provide at least $30 million for GLCI.
Finally, the CAA sends a confusing message to NRCS on how to conduct outreach to Historically Underserved producers. On one hand, the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the Act encourages NRCS “…to hire staff fluent in non-English languages, experienced in Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)-based practices, and familiar with a range of operation types and business structures.” NSAC applauds this language, as our members and partners regularly highlight the difficulty producers face in accessing NRCS services and resources when English is not their first language, or some element of their operation is unfamiliar to field staff in their area. This single sentence sets up NRCS for several decades’ worth of hard work to provide equitable service to diverse producers. NSAC is encouraged to know Congress sees the importance of this work.
However, just two sentences earlier, the Joint Explanatory Statement also declares that the CAA “…does not provide funding for conservation equity agreements.” This language is not only an attack on NRCS’ ability to do both essential racial equity and conservation work, but it also contradicts the language highlighted in the previous paragraph. Equity in Conservation Outreach Cooperative Agreements have been used to support third parties providing producers the exact translation and program navigation services that the Joint Explanatory Statement encourages NRCS to engage in. Individual projects funded can be viewed here. Further, some underserved communities hold such a deep-seated distrust of NRCS, that only a trusted third party can help forge a new working relationship. These agreements are essential to NRCS’ success in creating more equitable program outcomes going forward, and NSAC calls on Congress to provide clear instructions to continue such agreements in FY2025.
Sustainable and Organic Agriculture Research
Several of the research programs that support sustainable and organic agriculture research, as well as beginning and small-to-mid sized farmers, took a hit in the CAA. Overall, funding for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which administers all competitive agricultural research grant programs authorized in the farm bill, was cut by $22 million.
The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, which provides grant funding for farmer-driven research and plays a crucial role in sharing the results of that research with other farmers across the country, was cut by $2 million (-4%) to $48 million. SARE is the only regionally based, farmer-driven, and outcome-oriented competitive research program that involves farmers and ranchers directly as the primary cooperators in research and education projects. Since 1988, SARE has invested over $406 million across 8,783 projects nationwide. While funding for SARE has been steadily increasing over the past several appropriations cycles, the CAA stalled that momentum with the first cut to SARE in recent memory.
The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is the largest competitive grants research program offered by USDA. AFRI addresses key issues like farm efficiency and profitability, farm sustainability, conventional plant and animal breeding, local and regional food systems, and more. Unfortunately, the CAA cut AFRI by $9.8 million (-2.2%). Since its creation in 2008, AFRI has invested billions of dollars into researching solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing farming and agriculture today, and cuts to program funding are disappointing, especially as farmers continue to reel from the impacts of the pandemic and the worsening effects of climate change.
Fortunately, however, the news is not all bad. The Organic Transitions Program (ORG), which supports the development and implementation of research, education, and extension programs to improve the competitiveness of organic and transitioning-to-organic livestock and crop producers, received level funding of $7.5 million for FY2024.
Local and Regional Food Systems
NSAC was extremely relieved to see the CAA include $7 million (-17.7%) for the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production (the Office) after the House and Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittees failed to include funding in their original proposals. Unfortunately, while Congressional champions helped to prevent the Office from being zeroed out, this funding amount nonetheless sets the Office back to FY2021 levels which may impede the growing progress of the Office and the local food system networks that are supported through its grants and cooperative agreements.
Since its establishment, the Office has considered over 1,300 eligible applicants and funded roughly 300 projects, or ~22% of requests. The Office received additional funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which enabled it to fund backlogged, highly ranked projects. FY2024 will be the first year that the Office has no supplemental ARPA funding and consequently a smaller budget overall.
While the Office has been implementing these programs for less than five years, they have already demonstrated their capacity to support innovative community food networks in urban and rural settings. Beyond funding opportunities, the Office offers technical support for urban and small-scale producers through USDA service centers.
The Farmers Market Nutrition Program has been increasing low-income families’ access to farmers’ markets and investing federal dollars into local economies since 1992. As a nutrition incentive program in a farmer direct marketing setting, it has heavily relied on paper coupons to redeem cash value; however, there has been a recent push to modernize the program with electronic benefits in FY2022 and FY2023. The CAA included a staggering 62% cut from the program’s normal funding level – only $10M in FY2024 compared to recent levels of $26M. This cut – in addition to simultaneously asking states to modernize their programs – will inevitably have impacts on states’ abilities to successfully implement the programs at the same reach as previous years.
Rural Development
USDA’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service offers a wide variety of grant and loan programs that support business development and growth as well as technical training for employees. These programs serve more than food and agricultural businesses and are highly effective at retaining and increasing jobs in rural communities.
Many such programs have been successfully operating for more than a decade – for example, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (or ATTRA) was established in the 1985 Farm Bill while the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP) was created in the 2008 Farm Bill. Despite consistent requests for increased funding, their levels have remained largely unchanged. Now, the CAA contains cuts to these impactful rural programs.
For the first time in recent history, Rural Business Development Grants received only $20 million (-46%) compared to the typical $37 million; RMAP received $5 million (-16.6%) compared to its usual $6 million; and ATTRA received $2.8 million (-20%), after finally receiving its first increase to $3.5 million in FY2023. While these dollar amounts are small in comparison to the overall cost of the CAA, the reductions and subsequent impacts will be significant for the communities that benefit from the outsized impact of these relatively small programs.
Food Safety and Processing
Food safety education and training is a critical part of business success for any farmer or food business. The Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP) was designed with this intent in mind and specifically focuses on bringing new and tailored food safety education to farmers and small processors, with a focus on reaching underserved producers. The CAA sustained funding for FSOP at $10 million. While this is the level at which FSOP is authorized, it is worth noting that USDA can only fund roughly half of the applications submitted at this funding level.
On the other hand, the CAA did not sustain the user fee relief that earlier appropriations and pandemic relief bills have provided to small and very small meat processors. This lack of funding for fee relief in FY2024, coupled with the rescissions of prior ARPA funding for this purpose included in the debt deal, means small plants will be feeling the pinch, especially as new and additional compliance burdens are anticipated as USDA moves toward establishing new regulations for Salmonella in poultry.
Conclusion
While the CAA offers several bright spots, many priority programs for NSAC members and sustainable agriculture writ large were nonetheless cut, oftentimes significantly. These cuts are a product of a particularly chaotic appropriations process in FY2024 – but that does not make them any less disappointing or harmful. Unfortunately, the FY2025 appropriations process will be governed by similarly stringent spending caps, making it challenging to significantly improve upon the CAA.
Nevertheless, President Biden recently released the FY2025 Presidential Budget Request which outlines steps forward in terms of funding and policy. As the FY2025 appropriations process begins in earnest on Capitol Hill in the weeks ahead, NSAC will make an all-out push to build back and increase funding for the programs and policies important to the people and communities invested in the success of sustainable agriculture.
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