By RACHEL LANE

D.C. Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After more than two years of work, it is unlikely the 2018 farm bill will pass before its Sept. 30 deadline.

Right now, members of the House and Senate agriculture committees are working to reconcile differences between the two versions of the bill. The deadline signals the expiration of the 2014 farm bill, including funding for all programs.

Both chambers’ agriculture committees have stated they planned to get the bill done by the deadline, initially because “orphan programs” would lose their funding until the new bill. The Congressional Budget Office did not approve funding for these programs; instead, both versions of the 2018 farm bill include many of those programs in other areas of the bill.

If a new farm bill does not pass before the deadline, Congress will need to approve the money needed to continue funding those programs.

Rob LaRew, senior vice president of Public Policy at the National Farmers Union, said he does think the 2018 farm bill will be passed in 2018. It may happen in October, before members of Congress return to their home states to campaign for reelection, or it might happen after the election.

The orphan programs add value, like the national organic cost-share reimbursement program and Farmers Markets and Local Food Promotion Program. The programs are generally small and popular, he said.

Most titles in the farm bill have proceeded as expected, but there are still hard decisions to make. The work requirement on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the House bill was the primary hurdle to getting any Democratic support for the bill in that chamber; conservation programs was another major hurdle.

LaRew said his organization would like to keep the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) as two separate entities. If not completely separate, though, then distanced enough within the same program that CSP continues to be available for farmers.

The House version of the bill combines the programs too closely, he said.

CSP allows farmers to set aside land for conservation habitat and get a stewardship payment. EQIP is a cost-sharing program that can help farmers get funds to put a fence along a waterway for livestock.

Allison Rivera, executive director of Government Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc. (NCBA), said it supports the House bill combining the two programs into EQIP, and adding money to the EQIP program.

A foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccine bank was authorized in both bills, but only the House version funded it – about $150 million for the first year and $20 million in following years.

“We don’t usually come to the farm bill and ask for a lot … so you know this is important to us,” Rivera said.

FMD can spread rapidly and cause trading partners to block access to the markets, as a result. It is what happened in 2005, when a cow with FMD came across the border from Canada into the United States. China only recently let beef products from the U.S. back into that country (its ban on U.S. beef was imposed in 2003, unrelated to FMD).

It’s not just a livestock issue, Rivera said. If the animals die, then the crops used for feed would not be needed.

The vaccine bank would allow the USDA and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to respond more quickly to an outbreak, she said. Many countries have vaccine banks. Countries with active outbreaks of FMD actively vaccinate animals.

“We don’t have animals that have it … we just want to be better prepared,” she added.

Market Access and trade is the other issue the NCBA is watching, Rivera said.

The Margin Protection Program in the 2014 farm bill is tied to the calendar year. Funding won’t be cut to the important dairy program until the end of 2018, said Chris Galen, spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF).

The version in the 2014 farm bill didn’t do enough to protect dairy farmers, he said, but in February 2018, Congress made some changes, making premiums more affordable and, since then, more money has been distributed than in the years previously.

But the 2018 farm bill is still important. The NMPF has been working to make “the farm bill as robust as possible,” he explained. At the same time, it doesn’t impact dairy until the end of the year.

There are still three months left in the year and the USDA needs to reexamine the tariff mitigation program, too. It provides dairy farmers with pennies per cwt. (12 cents, to be exact). Galen said it’s an extremely small amount compared to the damage done by losing exports to China and Mexico.

LaRew said the farm bill has always had bipartisan support in the past. This year, the House bill had no Democratic support while the Senate bill had the largest bipartisan support in the history of a farm bill.

“Most folks recognize that the only way we can get a farm bill through is to remove the onerous SNAP nutrition programs they put in there,” he said.

The farm bill seldom passes on time, he said – but it has always passed. In 2008, for instance, then-President George W. Bush vetoed what was sent to him. It was returned to Congress to be voted on again.

The trade title was missing from the bill, so the House and Senate passed a second version of the bill and returned it to Bush, who vetoed it again. When it was returned to the House and Senate a second time, it received enough votes to finally pass.