Farm Bill makeup depends on Tuesday's election outcome

Jonathan Coppess: “A lot about what Congress will do  or can do that will be determined by this election, I think we have very stark differences and governing philosophy or ideology and direction and those things will have a huge impact on it.

Paul Yeager: Are there areas that matter more geographically where members come from and carrying weight in these discussions?

Jonathan Coppess: Farm bills are really regional, we have kind of this three part sort of Farm Coalition, we have the Midwestern corn interests, we have wheat interests in the western plains, in particular, and then the southern commodities, cotton and rice and peanuts. So a lot of foreign policy is sort of dictated by how those three interact or work together or don't work together or kind of the conflicts and negotiations around that. And then I think a lot about how that that coalition or that group of interests, then kind of our driving forces and getting a Farm Bill, particularly through committees, and then your bigger coalition really involves the Food Assistance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has become it's always been very political has become much more partisan in recent years, and has been a hu ge challenge for writing the Farm Bill whenever there's this sort of partisan attack on it. So you've got the farm interest, you've got the low income food assistance, and you have conservation, which really is kind of a connective tissue between a lot of farm country and a lot of non-farm country because, you know, the impacts on natural resources like water, like habitat, and those sorts of things really come through the conservation title. 14:20

Paul Yeager: You're a policy guy, maybe not necessarily an election guy. However, let's put the two together. Is there a certain? I guess I don't put a certain party and charges one question, but a certain type of leader that could emerge in either one of these scenarios, if it is a red wave? Or if blue stays in power, on how maybe some of the questions that you just mentioned are answered?

Jonathan Coppess: Yes, I think what we've seen, again, using the most, the two most recent Farm Bill cycles as our kind of our example, or what we can work from, as the most recent history, in those cases, the House of Representatives in particular focused very much on budget cutting by Republican leadership. And when that is the case, obviously, the biggest budget item is SNAP. And so we sort of, you can almost see it happen, if we redirect to the, you know, to the budget, budget budget, how do we cut spending? How do we deal with deficits and so forth, then you just see it progress into well, then we've got to go after SNAP. And once you do that, it really complicates or nearly tears apart that coalition and then the votes that you need to get through. As I like to say that once you go down, you know, once everything's, you know, once everything's a budget issue, you know, it's kind of though, if all I have as a hammer, everything's a nail, it doesn't end with SNAP, I mean, they're going to look at farm subsidies, they're going to look at crop insurance and conservation, it becomes a sort of, we've got to cut, cut. And so it is a counterproductive policy discussion, a becomes very partisan, and it becomes, you know, very hard to hold together a coalition that is needed to get the votes in Congress.” 21:55

Paul Yeager: Those involved in agriculture think it's pretty important. But does that issue resonate with the regular voter, in all of these congressional and senate districts, that this is something that I don't see an ad for Congress or Senate on my TV that highlights so and so will cut everything in the farm bill or will bloat it? I don't see it.

Jonathan Coppess: You know it is sort of thinking through history, I think the last time we can we can kind of pinpoint where a farm bill policy may have had an impact on the election was probably 1954. For at least from the arguments from from a lot of the players at the time. So it's not you're not likely to see any, you know, political ads really focus in on this. And I mean, that's just the nature of a 30 second ad and that sort of brutal skim across the top of things that politics and campaigning kind of requires. But I think it's this this sort of governing philosophy that that matters. Are we thinking about policies and programs in the sense of, you know, we talked about inflation, for example, and inflation, inflation, inflation is a big issue. Okay, the follow on question is, well, how do you address it? What are the things that that a member or a candidate are going or say they're going to do to actually address inflation? How do you view it, you know, if it's all budget cutting, while program like snap will increase in an inflationary situation because the cost of food that's used to calculate those benefits is going to is going to go up to some degree And so I think I think there are those kinds of guides or guidance pieces that you get out of your 30 second commercial, like, if this is a candidate looking, looking at some of the partisan, you know, budget pieces, then you can imagine that they're going to challenge with the Farm Bill.

The full conversation with Jonathan Coppess is available now on our YouTube channel and where you get your podcasts.

Contact: Paul.Yeager@iowapbs.org