From Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative
The Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate this past weekend. As the bill continues to move through Congress, we want to make our members aware of changes to agricultural provisions.
Many items remained the same from a deal struck a week ago:
$20 billion for various USDA conservation programs
- $8.45 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program
- $6.75 billion for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program
- $3.25 billion for the Conservation Stewardship Program
- $1.4 billion for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program
$14 billion for rural development
- $9.7 billion in grants and loans for to rural electric cooperatives for renewable energy projects
- $1.96 billion to the Rural Energy for America Program
- $1 billion for forgivable Section 317 loans for electric generation from renewable energy resources for resale to rural and nonrural residents
- A provision for direct pay credits for rural electric cooperatives investing in renewables, which would bring the tax-exempt entities into parity with for-profit counterparts that have received renewable energy tax credits for years
- $500 million for biofuels infrastructure
$5 billion for fighting wildfires and boosting carbon sequestration
projects via climate-smart forestry
$9 billion in new provisions:
- $4 billion for Western drought resilience
- $3.1 billion in relief funds for “distressed” borrowers of USDA loans
- $2.2 billion to administer aid to farmers who have experienced
discrimination from USDA
What’s next?
The House must pass the bill and is expected to vote later this week.
While there are wider considerations than just agriculture in this far-reaching bill, we are watching to see how this will affect future farm bill discussions, in particular how it will impact the “baseline”, or budget. Some lawmakers see this as potentially setting a bad precedent by which future farm bills would be determined by just one political party through the reconciliation process.
Additionally, these funds are to be released over several years, so there are still many unknowns about how the agricultural provisions will be distributed.
Edge will continue to closely monitor parts of the bill that will affect our farmers and processors.
