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Senate GOP says adding conservation funds to farm bill strengthens baseline

An analysis from Senate Agriculture Committee’s GOP staff says including the Inflation Reduction Act’s conservation funding in the next farm bill could provide a boost to its baseline over time.

There’s $13 billion available in conservation funding and Senate Ag Committee Ranking Member John Boozman tells Brownfield “I think we could capture most of it.”

Boozman says lawmakers are willing to put guardrails around the money to keep it in the conservation title of the farm bill.

“I’m not interested in taking those dollars away and sticking them into risk management tools or whatever. We’d like to keep them in conservation, it’s just a matter of how you do that.”

He says there are places outside the farm bill to find money for farm program updates, but didn’t elaborate.

Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow has made it clear she won’t allow IRA funds to be repurposed and Boozman says “I don’t want to take those dollars from conservation programs, I just want to make sure the conservation programs are the things farmers ask for.”

Boozman says a farmer’s conservation needs vary from Minnesota to Florida and everywhere in-between and there was no input from Republicans when the IRA was finalized through the reconciliation process.

Boozman also tells Brownfield a new farm bill without updates isn’t worth doing and lawmakers are doing their best to get the bill across the finish line this year.