Partisan fights over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP), more commonly called food stamps, resulted in the 2018 Farm Bill being voted out of the Agriculture Committee along party lines. This is significant because partisan SNAP fights caused the last farm bill to be delayed by two years.

SNAP funding can be up to 80 percent of a farm bill’s final price tag, so the bill risks losing support on both ends of the political spectrum when voted on the House floor—by conservatives who believe SNAP reforms don’t go far enough and by liberals who believe they are too restrictive. This farm bill is expected to cost $860 billion over a decade—$100 billion less than the 2014 Farm Bill.

The biggest change in SNAP comes in the form of work requirements. Able-bodied adults with no dependents between the ages of 18 and 59 would be subject to a weekly 20-hour work or work training requirement. Democrats on the agriculture committee say the work and work training requirements are not feasible and would unfairly remove people in need from the SNAP rolls. The conservative House Freedom Caucus has not taken a stance on the bill. The Senate is drafting its own version of the farm bill that will likely be more bipartisan and without changes to SNAP because 60 votes are needed to move the legislation forward for a final vote, requiring an additional nine votes from Democrats and perhaps Independents in the Senate.

With a belt-tightened farm bill, farm state legislators, such as U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), chairman of the House Ag Committee, included a number of  provisions in the bill important to aerial applicators and ag producers alike. The provisions include several regulatory reform proposals, and the Pesticide Policy Coalition (PPC), a group representing growers, registrants and applicators, sent a letter to Chairman Conaway strongly supporting these regulatory reforms. NAAA Executive Director Andrew Moore serves on the PPC’s Executive Committee and is chair of the applicator committee. The provisions beneficial to ag aviators include:

NPDES PGP Exemption  

NAAA has long sought to remove the duplicative requirement to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Pesticide General Permit (PGP) for crop protection products already covered under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). In addition to being costly and burdensome for small businesses, the NPDES PGP can subject applicators to unfounded litigation and is also unnecessary because pesticides are already tested and regulated under FIFRA for water safety, with strict instructions indicated on the EPA-approved product label to protect water. The EPA has previously testified to the adequacy of FIFRA’s comprehensive regulatory requirements including protection of aquatic species and drinking water.

This vital regulatory reform was almost included in the 2014 Farm Bill but was removed at the last minute at the request of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who is no longer in Congress.

Cooperative Federalism 

In recent years, it has become more common for local counties and municipalities to regulate the use of crop protection products, notably the enacted ballot measure in Lincoln County, Ore., that effectively banned aerial application in the county. The measure in the farm bill would allow only state lead pesticide agencies to regulate crop protection products. While there is a risk states could impose burdensome statewide regulations, the crop protection industry believes state-level experts are better equipped to make those decisions as opposed to having a patchwork of different regulations decided by towns and counties.

FIFRA Consultation Reform

Under the current system, the consultation process for determining if a product will harm an endangered species is duplicative, backlogged and broken. With tangles of lawsuits going back decades, the development of new, more efficient products is stifled, hurting endangered species, growers and applicators. The 2018 Farm Bill would incorporate the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) current standard of protection for threatened and endangered species and their critical habitat into the FIFRA registration standard. This would strengthen FIFRA’s already extensive testing requirements but remove the need for duplicative testing for the government agencies responsible for the ESA, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the National Marine Fisheries Service.  

Rural Broadband

Under this bill, up to $582 million a year could be appropriated for rural broadband loan and grant programs. It is estimated this could lead to up to $1 billion in annual investments, and with it, a slew of new communication towers. NAAA has worked with the House Agriculture Committee to request language is included in the bill’s report directing the agencies responsible for these monies, that towers under 200 feet in rural areas must be properly marked in accordance with Section 2110 of the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016.

Aerial Application Research