New Farm Bill Withers on the Vine as Congress & Iowa's Delegation Choose to Chase Right Wing Ideologies Instead

A New Farm Bill - For All Practical Purposes - Is Now Virtually Abandoned

Congress has virtually abandoned a new Farm Bill to replace the one that expired 638 days ago - just two months shy of two years ago. Today, it is barely, if ever mentioned in the halls of Congress. Instead, Congress and the Iowa congressional delegation have chosen to ignore the need to enact new basic farm legislation to chase right wing ideologies instead.

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serve on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees: Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA); and Reps. Zach Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA).

When it comes to actually passing a new Farm Bill, there is little evidence those once plum committee assignments for a state like Iowa amount to a tiny hill of beans today.

Little to nothing has been done in the first six months of this Congress to finish the work of writing and enacting a new Farm Bill to replace the one left undone when the old and expired Farm Bill, enacted in 2018, expired on September 30, 2023. Those six months of inaction in 2025 are on top of two years of promises, but no action in the previous Congress and the failure to enact a new Farm Bill before the old one expired in the Congress before that.

In this Congress:

• No House or Senate Ag Committee meetings dedicated to enacting a new Farm Bill so far this year.

• No floor action to enact a new edition of the nation’s basic farm policy law so far this year.

• No floor action scheduled in either the House or Senate toward that end so far this year.

• Not even any negotiations to get the legislation moving so far this year.

Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

What has pre-occupied Congress instead - including Iowa’s congressional delegation? Cheerleading for Trump’s increasingly anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian, fascist agenda. They praise his unconstitutional attack on a foreign country without congressional authorization or even consultation, as well as his Gestapo-like tactics, roundup, and deportation to intentional hell-holes of immigrants - many of them guilty of no crimes, many in the country legally, and a significant number even U.S. citizens. They support his budget bill, even has it rips a trillion dollars from Medicaid, causes millions to lose health insurance, threatens the survival of countless rural hospitals, and takes food. assistance away from the hungry poor.

All in the service of more huge tax breaks for billionaires. Right wing fantasies? Yes. And Republican majorities in Congress, including Iowans in Congress, are in the process of turning those fantasies into reality.

When Donald Trump once famously bragged he could shoot somebody in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City “and they’d still support me,” he might as well as have been talking about Iowa’s congressional delegation and the Farm Bill.

A new farm Bill is, for all intents and purposes, dead unless something dramatically changes. Trump had a big hand in its demise and is doing nothig to revive it. Iowans in Congress and the Reublicn majorities in the House and Senate, pulled the trigger.

They are, however, all still just wild about Trump, as a new Farm Bill bleeds out on “Fifth Avenue” in the Congress.

There is no precedent for allowing a new Farm Bill to wither on the vine like this one - to twist slowly, slowly in the wind - for nearly two years after the old one expired. And keep in mind, when that one expired in 2023, it was already five years old. The law that expired was enacted in 2018, which means farmers are now working with basic farm policy that is badly out of date.

Has the world changed at all in the last seven years? Has agriculture changed in the last seven years? Have agricultural markets - foreign and domestic - changed in the past sevn years?

Of course they have. Everything has changed.

But when it comes to farming, and the harsh, unforgiving realities farmers often have to deal with, basic farm policy hasn’t changed.

Neither Congress, Iowans in Congress, nor Trump seem to care. Not enough, anyway, to enact a new Farm Bill.

I. mean, really: who cares about farm policies when there are right wing, authoritarian, fascist fantasies to chase and make real?

Iowa farmers have long had a warm and cozy relationship with Republicans who now run Congress and control the executive branch.

In my view, that relationship has seldom been warranted. For example, Ronald Reagan’s farm policies brought us the farm crisis of the 1980s. Republican farm policies in the 1990s drained rural populations even more as their ”Freedom to Farm” policies turned out to be “Freedom to Fail” policies that only hastened big agriculture’s take over of family farms. Trump’s 1.0 trade war with China destroyed the U.S. farm export market with China as that country simply sought more reliable suppliers elsewhere.

Clearly, Trump’s 2.0 trade wars are repeating that destruction and introducing new elements of unfathomable uncertainty in an industry that requires long term planning. Farmers are left to navigate all this chaos with a Congress that won’t enact a new Farm Bill to put policies in place that deal with the world as it is, not as it was in 2018.

It is time for farmers - especially Iowa farmers - to re-think their relationship with Republican policy makers, which has been toxic - even abusive - for some time now.

There’s an old saying: We get what we tolerate.

Farmers - Iowa farmers in particular with this delegation - have tolerated too much for far too long.

Accountability is long overdue.

As is the long expired Farm Bill.

WEEKLY OVER DUE FARM BILL TRACKER: 638 days

638 days have passed since the 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30, 2023, without Congress passing a new one. (Total days as of Sunday, 06/29/2025).

Two thirds of Iowa’s congressional delegation serves on the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committees: Grassley (R-IA) and Ernst (R-IA) in the Senate; Nunn (R-3rd IA) and Feenstra (R-4th IA) in the House.

There is little indication Congress will act any time soon to pass a new Farm Bill, or if it does - given the Trump wrecking ball and the eagerness of Republicans in Congress to follow him in that effort - that it will be helpful to farmers.

This weekly “tracker” monitors the clock and the time that is passing as Congress - and Iowa’s congressional members, especially those who serve on the Ag Committees, fail to do their job of enacting a long over due Farm Bill.

Check back for weekly updates.

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