In the grand scheme of the 2023 Farm Bill, agriculture—despite what the bill’s name may suggest—makes up just a small portion, with nutrition programs slated to account for over 80% of spending.
Still, agricultural industry groups are pushing to make their slice of the Farm Bill pie as impactful as possible, and their priorities could have a notable impact on the food industry.
- According to the USDA Economic Research Service, every $1 invested in public agricultural R&D between 1900 and 2011 produced an average $20 in benefits to the US economy, improving areas like food prices and availability as well as food safety.
“The Farm Bill is a once-in-a-five-year opportunity to really realign our priorities with where we want to be able to go, and specifically for food and agriculture,” Peggy Yih, managing director at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’s Center on Global Food and Agriculture, told us.
Ag behind: Yih said one of the organization’s top recommendations for the Farm Bill is public agricultural R&D receiving “adequate attention and funding,” noting that China surpassed the US in ag research funding in 2008, while India and Brazil are also boosting their funding.
- Ag research funding has dropped 20% since 1995, meaning funding for the four USDA agricultural research agencies has grown at much lower rates than other federal research programs, like the National Institutes of Health.
- Funding for public ag R&D could fill the gap of support for specialty crops that the private sector doesn’t prioritize because they don’t offer the short-term profit that a crop like corn would, Yih noted.
“We really need tools to equip farmers and everyone involved in the food supply chain to ensure that we have affordable, safe, and healthy foods for not only the American public, but to be able to provide…a breadbasket for the entire world,” Yih said.
More research around greater efficiencies for agricultural inputs (like boosting the efficiency of photosynthesis, which is actually a thing), could lead to lower costs for higher yields of products like strawberries, driving consumer prices down, Yih said.
Still, the impacts of agricultural R&D funding aren’t as direct as funding for programs like SNAP, Yih noted, so pointing Congress—especially Republican lawmakers who tend to be more fiscally conservative—to prior success is important.
- One example: Papaya almost went extinct in Hawaii due to the papaya mosaic virus, but investments in R&D lead to increased immunity and “basically [rescued] the papaya industry in Hawaii,” Yih said. Similar support is currently needed to combat citrus-greening disease in Florida that’s been threatening the state’s orange-juice production, Yih noted.
Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
“To lose out on an entire crop would be awful,” she said. “It’s just a matter of where lawmakers see their priorities.”
Organic growth: One subsector of the Farm Bill’s agricultural wedge, the organic industry, also has some notable priorities. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) collaborated with nearly 300 retailers, brands, growers, and certifiers to lay out its priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill.
“The USDA’s general support hasn’t really carved out much space for organic historically,” OTA CEO Tom Chapman told us. “We’re trying to make sure that the USDA’s educational programs, technical assistance programs, [and] research programs really reflect the diversity of American agriculture, which includes organic.”
The OTA aims to update research and risk management tools created for traditional agriculture to meet the organic industry’s needs. Securing crop insurance, for example, requires three years of history for a specific crop grown on a specific field, Chapman explained, and because organic farmers practice crop rotation to promote soil health, it takes many years to have sufficient history for all of its crops.
- Improving financial tools like these could lower prices on organic products and lead to higher production yields, he said.
It’s also seeking “continuous improvement” in what it takes for a product to receive a USDA Organic seal, Chapman said. In January, the USDA published the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) rule, implementing mandates from the 2018 Farm Bill, which “protects organic integrity and bolsters farmer and consumer confidence” in the seal.
- While Chapman said the OTA is “very happy” with the rule, it’s pushing the USDA to “extend their authority” to prevent misleading claims around organic non-food products like personal care items or textiles. The OTA is also currently involved in an active lawsuit for animal-welfare standards to be included in the certification process.
Given it took five years for the USDA to update the SOE, the OTA would also like to shorten and simplify the process for future updates.
“We need to be able to update when consumers’ expectations change or the science changes,” Chapman said. “We can’t let it take 10–15 years to address those changes that need to happen in real time.”