Russell Black
In July, members of the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee held a public listening session in Maine. The topic was the Farm Bill, the five-year omnibus spending package that funds agricultural priorities from farming commodities and rural development to livestock, conservation and forestry.
The last bill of this nature, the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, was passed by Congress that year and signed into law by former President Donald Trump. It funded U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that many farms in Maine and across the nation need to access specialty crop grants and capital, credit and insurance markets.
It also established the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP), which has helped farmers’ markets in Maine through the Farmer’s Market Promotion and Local Food Promotion programs. These LAMP initiatives, along with block grants, have been instrumental the past five years in growing Maine’s regional and local direct producer-to-consumer marketing, including agritourism training and branding efforts like Real Maine.
The five-year cycle is upon us, and the listening session held July 31 — one of six held across the nation — was a chance for House members to hear directly from Maine officials and local farmers. Topics ranged from the contamination of dozens of farms with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and insurance to nutrition and food security.
Maine has about 7,600 farms spanning 1.3 million acres and employing around 13,000 workers, which includes about 100 dairy farms and 80,000 head of cattle. We are the top producer in the world for wild blueberries, third highest in the nation for maple syrup after Vermont and New York, and ranked ninth overall for potato production. According to the USDA, Maine’s farming industry on average contributes $1.38 billion, or about 5%, to the state’s overall economy.
Yet the rainy weather this summer has some farmers worried, including myself, which is why access to crop insurance and other federally backed programs through the USDA is important. While the rain in May and June delayed the planting of some crops like potatoes, we also couldn’t harvest hay, our third-largest crop that many farms depend upon to sustain their livestock.
Maine normally produces about 220,000 tons of hay a year, while last year saw a great harvest of 271,000 tons. That is accomplished through two or three (if you’re lucky) cycles of cutting, and much of the success of subsequent harvests is entirely dependent upon the timing of the first.
With so much rain this summer, those first harvests had to be delayed, since you can’t cut and bale wet hay due to mold. And the longer you delay, hay loses its nutritional value, and other undesired weeds can overtake an entire field, leaving the quality of the hay so poor that it’s often better to abandon it altogether until the next season.
In fact, farms have only produced about a third of the hay we’ll need to get through the winter, when we should already have about 75% of it done by now. The effects of delayed or unharvested crops will affect Maine’s farmers for years, especially if they have to pay top dollar for feed.
These and other issues are why passage of the Farm Bill is so important to Maine. The current Farm Bill expires on Saturday, Sept. 30 and, unfortunately, the new bill is in jeopardy amid the potential disruptions of a federal government shutdown if Congress doesn’t come together to pass a compromise budget.
If no new law or an extension of the current one is in place by then, there could be immediate effects on the price guarantees and even supply of milk. Commodity support and food programs like Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could also be impacted; and other agricultural production controls, based on laws set nearly a century ago in 1938 and 1949, come into play.
With the poor harvests we’ve experienced this year, this is the worst possible timing. Consumers cannot afford any increase in food prices or jeopardy to programs like WIC or SNAP; and farmers cannot endure any more hardships.
That is why I implore our Congressional Delegation and others in Congress to get the Farm Bill passed.
Sen. Russell Black represents District 5, which includes communities in Franklin, Kennebec and Somerset counties. He is the Senate Republican Lead for the Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee and the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee.
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