| | | | |  | | By Garrett Downs | | | With help from Meredith Lee Hill
| | — Congress must race to avert a shutdown set to hit the Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration this week. They have only days to act. — Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that the appropriations logjam is holding up the farm bill. — President Joe Biden is planning to address “shrinkflation” in his State of the Union address. HAPPY MONDAY, Feb. 26. I’m your host, Garrett Downs. Send tips to gdowns@politico.com, and follow us at @Morning_Ag.
| | A message from CropLife America: U.S. farmers’ access to pesticides, which are critical for growing crops in an affordable and sustainable way, is in jeopardy because of misguided state regulatory efforts. Over 360 agricultural and other groups support the bipartisan Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act to help the U.S. correct course while still allowing for local use case restrictions. Find out how the Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act protects America’s farmers. | | | | | | | 
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the top Republican on the House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations subpanel. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN PART FOUR: USDA and FDA will shut down on Friday at midnight unless Congress takes quick action this week. It’s not looking so good. The latest: Top lawmakers hoped to unveil text for a small package of spending bills possibly alongside a small stopgap on Sunday, but the plans were scuttled as lawmakers continue to haggle over key policy debates, our Caitlin Emma reports. Any announcement will now slip into this week, risking a partial government shutdown affecting USDA and FDA, along with a number of other agencies. The House is not scheduled to return until Wednesday, just over 48 hours before the partial shutdown hits USDA. The Senate will convene on Monday. On a private caucus call last week, Speaker Mike Johnson expressed optimism for passing a tranche of funding bills before the March 1 deadline but acknowledged the possibility of a partial government shutdown. The finer details: The Agriculture-FDA bill has several tough sticking points. Negotiators in recent days have still been fighting over cuts to agriculture programs and limits on Commodity Credit Corporation spending, per Meredith. Also holding things up: a policy rider to ban mail delivery of abortion pills. There’s also a heated fight over tying additional WIC nutrition funding for low-income moms and babies to Rep. Andy Harris’ (R-Md.) five-state pilot program to restrict what types of food SNAP recipients can purchase with their benefits, known as SNAP-choice. Key House Democrats have been fighting to de-link Harris’ SNAP-choice demands from any WIC funding, worried about setting a precedent over what is traditionally a bipartisan effort. Food industry lobbyists, anti-hunger organizations and some parent groups are furiously trying to defeat the SNAP-choice pilot as well. What a shutdown would look like: USDA and FDA would be limited to only essential operations. That could impact food inspections at FDA, and also limit the delivery of key benefit programs at USDA. When the government nearly shut down last September, USDA warned it could only continue normal WIC service for a few days during a shutdown. SNAP would continue to operate in a short-term shutdown, but there’s a less clear roadmap for an extended shutdown.
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| | |  House Speaker Mike Johnson lamented that a farm bill cannot get done until fiscal 2024 appropriations are settled. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo | FARM BILL IMPLICATIONS: Johnson told his House GOP members on the private conference call Friday night that he had wanted to get the farm bill done by March, three GOP lawmakers told Meredith. But Johnson signaled to GOP members that the farm bill will have to wait after the funding mess is finalized. That’s been the general thinking among lawmakers. But Johnson’s reality-check essentially rules out a farm bill moving anytime in the next few weeks, likely into early April at least. “We can’t get farm bill done until we get approps done,” was his point, per a GOP member on the call. On the call, Johnson floated another short-term stopgap. A bitter reminder: Johnson’s reference to the farm bill delays served as a bitter reminder to many House Republicans on the call — who want a farm bill to pass this Congress and are well aware that the never-ending funding fight has held up the farm bill for months now. “We didn’t need to be reminded that a small group are holding up the farm bill, while the rest of us have been waiting for almost a full year now,” another GOP member said. Several GOP members noted to MA the farm bill is one of the next major fights ahead for the hard-right Republicans holding up the funding process, so bringing it up wasn’t going to help along the appropriations fight. March, really?: Some Republicans had been hoping that even if the funding talks weren’t finalized, as long as there was a firm sense of the way forward in early March, a farm bill could move through the House Ag Committee by the end of the month in a best-case scenario. Then the bill could wait for a floor opening, per Meredith. That appears to be out of the question now.
| | | | A message from CropLife America:   | | | | | BIDEN’S SOTU FOOD PRICE FOCUS: Biden is planning to target food “shrinkflation” and wider corporate greed in his State of the Union address, Meredith and Adam Cancryn scooped. State of play: Biden’s economic approval is in dangerous territory ahead of November, with higher food prices continuing to serve as a major drag on voter outlooks of the economy. Biden and his team now are weighing how hard to hammer big food companies over painfully high grocery prices in his upcoming address. But some aides remain wary of focusing too much on food inflation, given how little power the president has to single-handedly force down prices. The most recent drafts of Biden’s State of the Union address have included a reference to shrinkflation as part of a broader segment on administration efforts to pressure companies to lower costs across the board, a White House official said, though the speech is not yet finalized and could still change. Large packaged food companies and grocers, for their part, have been blindsided by the new White House push and are scrambling to avoid what they say are efforts to scapegoat their industry ahead of the November elections. Read more from Meredith and Adam.
| | | | Don’t sleep on it. Get breaking New York policy from POLITICO Pro—the platform that never sleeps—and use our Legislative Tracker to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more. | | | | | | | | — AT THE WHITE HOUSE: The White House is set to hold an event Tuesday to announce a new series of private sector commitments around goals the administration laid out in the fall of 2022 to end hunger and reduce diet-related diseases by 2030, Meredith reports. José Andrés is hosting a reception to follow at George Washington University for invited guests to celebrate the commitments. — USDA and the Energy Department today will launch the Rural and Agricultural Income & Savings from Renewable Energy initiative, the agency tells MA. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce the new RAISE initiative at the Distributed Wind Energy Association’s annual conference, which will help 400 individual farmers deploy small-scale wind projects using Rural Energy for America program funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. — Producers will be able to enroll in the Dairy Margin Coverage program on Wednesday, USDA announced. — European farmer protests hit a French ag fair. (POLITICO Europe) — Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner rebuked accusations of discrimination from a white male farmer. (Star Tribune)
| | A message from CropLife America: 360+ agricultural groups back the bipartisan Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act to protect our food supply, farmers’ livelihoods, and the environment. Some states are trying to enact pesticide labeling requirements that directly contradict scientific guidance from the EPA, jeopardizing farmers’ access to pesticides—a critical input for growing crops.
If not addressed, this will create an unworkable patchwork of regulations that directly impacts the availability of these essential products for farmers—lowering yields, increasing farmers’ costs, threatening domestic food security, and ultimately, raising prices for consumers, while erasing decades of conservation gains. The Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act ensures these products remain available while not affecting state and localities' ability to restrict pesticide use, or any individual’s rights in the legal process. Learn more. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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