Lawmakers of both parties are pivoting to stand-alone legislation to address at least one priority in agriculture, a concrete sign that some are abandoning hope that the farm bill will pass.
A bill to increase federal oversight of foreign acquisitions of American farmland was broken out from the would-be farm bill for its own track through Capitol Hill. The House passed the legislation 269-149 on Wednesday, with dozens of Democrats joining almost all Republicans on the vote. Senators introduced their bipartisan version of the legislation earlier in the week.
The bill would permanently add the secretary of agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, who would then be required to flag farmland purchases by foreign adversaries like China, North Korea, Russia and Iran for CFIUS.
The House Republicans’ farm bill, which passed out of committee, already includes language that requires the secretary of agriculture to provide CFIUS with all information on foreign land acquisitions.
But given the farm bill’s unstable path through Congress, members lamented to NOTUS in May that the foreign acquisitions priority could also end up dying. They were divided on whether including it in a farm bill might be its best shot through Congress or if they’d be better off trying to move it on its own.
The vote this week is a sign that they felt pressure to do the latter.
“[I’m] generally not interested in seeing bills that we put into the farm bill language be considered individually. But you know, there’s not that much time left,” Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, told NOTUS.
While Thompson voted for the legislation, he expressed uncertainty on whether the vote was necessary given its inclusion in Republicans’ farm bill framework. He said he wasn’t worried about other priorities getting their own vote “because there’s not enough time to do that.”
Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, who sponsored the bill, did not return a request for comment on whether his decision to introduce the bill reflected concern that a farm bill would not happen.
When asked by NOTUS if they preferred the legislation in the farm bill, other members were ambivalent at best.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican member of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, is a co-sponsor of the Senate’s companion bill. He told NOTUS in May that he was upset that priorities included in the farm bill that he wanted to vote on wouldn’t come up for a vote this year.
Now, his first suggestion for how this new foreign acquisitions bill could pass through Congress isn’t the farm bill but a defense bill. Asked if he’d like to see it included in the farm bill instead, he said yes but added that “we aren’t going to have a five-year farm bill.”
Other lawmakers were noncommittal in how they wanted to see the legislation passed.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat and another co-sponsor who is running a competitive race, said he could see it in the “farm bill — or any other piece of legislation.”
Democratic Rep. Don Davis, a member in a swing North Carolina district with thousands of acres of Chinese-owned farmland, supported the House bill and said he is “still optimistic” that Congress can pass a farm bill. But that wasn’t the only way forward for him.
“I’m here to see it pass however it passes,” Davis, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said.
Even as lawmakers were noticeably abandoning the idea of this legislation hitching a ride on farm bill legislation, leadership continued to sound optimistic about the fate of the farm bill.
Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, put out a statement that she is “determined to do everything in my power to pass a farm bill that keeps families fed, farmers farming and rural communities strong.”
Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, ranking member on the Senate’s Agriculture Committee, echoed that lawmakers were “doing a good job” of explaining the need for a farm bill.
Like Thompson, Boozman said he wasn’t concerned other bills might get broken out like this one “because it takes so much time.”
“That’s why they get pushed into things, and the farm bill would be the most likely” vehicle for them, Boozman added.
Stabenow told NOTUS Thursday that she hadn’t seen the bill introduced this week, but she thinks “oversight on foreign land ownership makes sense. We’ve put that in my farm bill.”
Is she concerned at all that members will move bipartisan priorities into individual legislation? “We’ll see.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.