Source: NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COALITION, 9/25/19

With only six days left in the current fiscal year (FY), Congress is slowly but surely making progress on a final funding package for FY 2020. Last week, the Senate moved the ball forward by “marking up” and passing their agriculture appropriations bill out of both the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee and full Senate Appropriations Committee including $23.1 billion in discretionary funding for many of the major programs and functions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – $135 million below the level of funding in the FY 2019 committee-passed bill.

The Senate moved more slowly than their counterparts in the House, who passed their agriculture appropriations bill at the end of June. The Senate wanted to wait for a new two-year budget deal before drafting their appropriations bills, while the House based their bill on predicted budget figures.

The differences between the two bills are stark, and amount to vastly different spending allocations. The House’s overall spending allocation was $15 billion more than the amount ultimately agreed upon for non-defense discretionary funding in the budget deal.

 Once the Senate allocated total non-defense funding to its appropriations subcommittees using the non-defense discretionary funding total provided by the budget deal, the Senate agriculture subcommittee had $895 million less than what the House worked with.

As a consequence of being allocated $895 million less than what the House used for their bill and $135 million below FY 2019, the Senate agriculture spending bill underfunds critical economic development and sustainable agriculture programs in comparison to the House-passed bill which included robust support for sustainable agriculture programs and priorities. Additionally, the Senate bill, unlike the House bill, does nothing to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) destructive proposal to relocate the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) outside of their home in the capital. In fact, the Senate provides $25 million to support USDA’s ill-conceived plans.

Because of the significantly different funding figures used in the House and Senate bill, it is likely that some sustainable agriculture priorities will be on the chopping block relative to the funding levels in the House-passed bill when the FY 2020 appropriations package is finalized.

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