Minnesota farmers leave fields for D.C. to lobby for farm bill passage

WASHINGTON – Anne Schwagerl put one child in a tractor with her husband and another with her father-in-law before leaving Minnesota’s Big Stone County for the nation’s capital. She did not want to leave in the middle of planting season, but felt it was imperative.

“With mounting uncertainty on farms across the country, commodity prices continuing to flounder and input prices remaining high,” Schwagerl said. “We need Congress to prioritize a farm bill that supports family farmers and ranchers.”

Schwagerl and other members of the National Farmers Union came to Washington this week to lobby their representatives and let them know that things are not going well for them.

“I’m going into this next growing season, looking at the worst farm economy of my career, and that’s without a farm bill,” she said.

The last time farm country faced a farm trade crisis, President Donald Trump also sat in office.

But that’s where the similarities end, the farmers said.

Back in 2018, there’d been strong commodity prices for crop farmers. That’s not the case now.

Moreover, Congress is two years behind in renewing the farm bill.

And there are rumblings of significant cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which would be taken out of the bill — legislation that usually enjoys bipartisan support.

Instead, Republican leaders have talked about sliding SNAP funding and other pieces into the omnibus budget reconciliation process to avoid a 60-vote threshold needed in the Senate.

That has Democrats pushing back.

“Cutting SNAP by $230 billion will result in children, seniors, veterans and disabled Americans going without food,” Rep. Angie Craig, a southeastern Minnesota Democrat and the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, said Wednesday at a rally at the Capitol.

“It’s also terrible for the farm economy.”

At a news conference Wednesday, farmers and SNAP recipients called for keeping the program whole.

“Rural areas [often] use more SNAP than a lot of urban areas,” said Kat Becker, an organic farmer from Athens, Wis. “Not everyone can drive to a farmers market.”

Rep. Brad Finstad, a Republican representing southern Minnesota who chairs a nutrition subcommittee, said his GOP majority is working to produce “accountability and efficiency” in federal nutrition programs.

In 2023, SNAP cost just over $112 billion. Finstad said he wants policies “that protect the purpose of SNAP, improve program integrity, and preserve nutrition assistance for who our neighbors who need it most,” particularly children, elderly and the disabled.

Farming is not a monolith, and many other production agriculture voices want to give Trump time to drive new trade deals, as well as refocus spending on the farm safety net.

The Trump administration is also responding to a mandate to drive down the size of the federal government,

Schwagerl, though, fears a rupturing to the farm bill’s past success: passing a farm safety net with nutrition funding, which has traditionally brought along Democrats and Republicans.

Instead, farmers are left with more uncertainty, she said.

Back home in Minnesota, farmers from the Driftless Area in the southeastern corner of the state to the Red River Valley in the northwest are planting.

The latest crop report finds nearly half of Minnesota’s corn crop is in the ground. Nearly 80% of sugar beets have been planted, and soybeans are just getting started.

Schwagerl could not stay long in D.C. because she said she had to get back to help out on her family’s western Minnesota farm, where they are hoping for sunshine plus a bit of rain to get the soybeans off to a good start.