Cars pack a gravel lot outside Hope Ministries, a Methodist nonprofit situated in the 70805 zip code, where the per capita yearly income is $18,340. The organization’s mission is to prevent homelessness and promote dignity.

A week before Thanksgiving, residents wait patiently for their turn at the organization’s Client Choice Food Pantry.

David Tidwell, the chief operating officer, says they serve around 3,000 people annually. The pantry’s busiest periods often coincide with month’s end, when many families exhaust their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also known as food stamps.

“The amount varies for each family,” Tidwell said, referring to SNAP benefits that about half his clients use. “There are plenty of people in need. We’ll never serve everyone.”

Thirty minutes west in Port Allen, the Schexnayder brothers cultivate wheat, oats, and sugarcane, though corn and soybeans are their primary profit drivers. Like most American farmers, they depend on federal government reimbursements and insurance to sustain their annual harvest.

Hope Ministries’ clients and the Schexnayder brothers heavily rely on the same New Deal-Era legislation to stay afloat: the farm bill. The complex legislative package is set to allocate a staggering $1.5 trillion through 2029, making it one of the most expensive bills in U.S. history, rivaled only by COVID-19 stimulus release packages.

The 80-year-old bill requires updates from Congress every five years to account for inflation and shifting welfare and agricultural policies. While some conservative circles argue the subsidies distort free markets, the omnibus bill has traditionally enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Urban and rural constituencies depend on its programs, while policymakers view a stable food source as imperative to national security.

But the bill has largely remained unchanged since 2018, and a recent extension expired this September. The gridlock has particularly impacted growers in Louisiana, where agriculture is the third-largest industry and generates an annual economic impact of $30 billion.

Louisiana farm loss

Between 2017 and 2022, America lost more than 140,000 farms, with Louisiana losing 2,000 during the same time, according to USDA data. While Louisiana farmers are accustomed to natural disasters, they also face a more insidious threat: increasing climate variability across the state, which poses a greater long-term risk to agricultural sustainability

“These last two years have been tough,” said Donald Schexnayder, who has tilled the same plot of land since 1978. Flooding during critical harvesting times in 2022, followed by historic droughts the next year, ruined the quality of many yields.

Like Schexnayder, the majority of planters in Louisiana are row-crop farmers, cultivating soybeans, cotton, corn, rice, wheat, or milo. They rely on a portion of the farm bill known as Price Loss Coverage (PLC). The program establishes reference prices for certain commodities; when market prices fall below those reference prices, PLC triggers payments that prevent farmers from bankruptcy.

“If the market falls out…which it has. There are supposed to be levels in the program that prevent you from bankruptcy,” said Andy Brown, managing director of commodities and public policy for the Louisiana Farm Bureau. “Those pricing levels haven’t been updated since 2012.”

Meanwhile, production costs around the country are at record highs. According to LSU AgCenter Economist Michael Diliberto, input costs for fuel and fertilizer have tripled in recent years. In Louisiana, the cost of growing an acre of corn has jumped from $650 three years ago to $900 today, according to Diliberto

Outdated PLC payments coupled with erratic weather, soaring input costs, and rising interest rates have led to three straight years of farmers operating on negative margins, according to Brown.

“We have a lot of farms this year that knew, even if they harvest at record yield on their farm…they would lose money.”

Because Schexnayder owns the land he plants on, he’s confident he’ll be able to plant in 2025, though the farmers around him may fare differently.

“The bank won’t give them a loan. That’s how dire it is…that how much the input cost has gone up,” said Schnexdayer

“It’s gonna get real dicey if we don’t get a farm bill come New Year,” added Brown.

Brief history

The farm bill was originally passed to help struggling farmers in the wake of the Great Depression. To shrink supply and boost prices, farmers were subsidized to harvest lower yields. In the 1950s, more sophisticated pricing mechanisms, crop insurance, conservation programs, and trade policies were added.

“Since that time, we’ve seen our country use that as a tool. They use it in their global policy for trade,” said Brown

The farm bill’s tariff-quota program, for example, protects Louisiana sugarcane farmers from Mexico’s growing role in the U.S. market. To improve trade balance sheets, the program requires 85% of sugar purchases come from domestic producers, imposing steep tariffs on buyers who don’t meet the quota.

The farm bill has also evolved alongside America’s demographic shifts. In the 1970s, following a Green Revolution that dramatically increased agricultural productivity, lawmakers from growing urban constituencies began introducing nutrition and food assistance programs. Over time, early iterations of SNAP gained priority, leading to a current reality where SNAP, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), and other food assistance programs account for more than 80% of the bill’s appropriations.

Today, the bill’s complexity and market implications have attracted numerous special interest groups—from environmentalists and nonprofits focused on world hunger to Fortune 500 leaders in banking, energy, trade, and transportation—all vying for a share of the trillion-dollar pie. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed that between 2019 and 2023, 561 agribusiness companies and industry associations spent more than half a billion dollars lobbying Congress to influence the next farm bill, outpacing oil and defense contracting industries, according to the report.

The Frankenstein mix of stakeholders has made an updated version too cumbersome to drag out of committee sessions; like the fate of its contemporary from Schoolhouse Rock, the bill is effectively stuck on Capitol Hill.

Andy Brown recently returned from a trip to D.C. with a group of Louisiana farmers. Following Election Day, he hoped lawmakers would be motivated to pass a farm bill during the lame-duck session, but so far, no potential bill has made it to either floor of Congress.

“There’s the far right, which opposes what they see as waste in SNAP and WIC programs, calling for stricter work requirements and fewer enrollees,” said Brown. “On the other hand, the far left argues there are too many pesticides and too much environmental damage in farming.”

The House Agriculture Committee, controlled by Republicans, and the Senate Agriculture Committee, led by Democrats, have each released their versions of the farm bill.

The Republican bill, spearheaded by “GT” Thompson proposes transferring $20 billion from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—originally allocated for conservation—to the Farm Bill. Brown, who along with most farmers supports the bill, said the funding would still support conservation efforts but provide more flexibility to farmers implementing it.

“There’s a lot of leftover money that we can invest in programs that farmers would utilize, but it needs to be included in the farm bill,” he added.

While there are countless other points of contention between the two bills, the main difference lies in SNAP funding—specifically regarding the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which estimates the cost of a nutritious diet. The Republican bill aims to keep TFP cost-neutral, adjusting SNAP benefits solely for cost-of-living increases. Meanwhile, Democrats, including Senate Agriculture leader Debbie Stabenow, say the plan should be more robust to accurately reflect the cost of healthy meals, at least in line with USDA standards for nutritious diets.

A seemingly minor discrepancy, the Republican approach is estimated to reduce direct spending by $35.6 billion, which they argue should be redirected to farm spending.

“I absolutely will not support the largest cut to SNAP in 30 years, as proposed in the House bill,” Stabenow said on Nov. 18.

SNAP implications

Across the country, more than 42 million Americans – roughly 12.1% of the population – will use food assistance programs to help pay for their meals at some time during the holiday season. In Louisiana, the proportion jumps to around 20%, according to the Public Affairs Research Council.

“We know that we live in a very food-insecure state. And we can only assume that’s going to continue to grow until we see our grocery bills going down or our wages going up,” said Pat Van Burkleo, executive director of Feeding Louisiana. “Neither one of those is going to happen anytime soon.”

Unlike many farm subsidies, SNAP is automatically adjusted for inflation. However, nutrition advocacy groups say the status quo isn’t enough to match rising levels of food insecurity. In Louisiana, Van Burkleo says innovative approaches are needed to feed a rising population of food-insecure senior citizens, a demographic in which Louisiana leads the nation.

“We see a division in Washington that can’t seem to agree on anything,” he said. “So the vulnerable populations get caught in the middle of that.”

Some worry that if a new farm bill isn’t passed, the next Republican-dominated administration will look to slash SNAP benefits. Though Van Burkleo said it was never intended to pay for 100% of groceries, significantly weakened SNAP programs would overwhelm food banks in the state.

“If SNAP decreased, the capacity of food banks are not there to support 800,000 families to put food on the table.”

70805

Back in Hope Ministries, a classroom full of Tidwell’s clients were wrapping up their last day of a two-week course on an adult essential work skills class.

“Conflict resolution, time management, attitude. We are teaching those things that help someone get a job,” he said.

The last class entails a mock interview before students work to clean up their resumes. In October, Tidwell says they’ll have the option to obtain online certifications in nine different industries.

“If they finish, they walk away with OSHA 10, OSHA 30, and other career-specific certifications in hand,” he said. “Then we connect them with employers. “

Many of the students are required to participate in the program to continue receiving SNAP benefits, and up to half of what Hope Ministries spends on the program can be reimbursed through the farm bill’s SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) programs.

If a new farm bill doesn’t pass this year, it’s unclear how the next administration would handle such programs, and Tidwell isn’t sure if his new workforce training would continue.

“If the programs are weakened, or heaven forbid the programs go away…it would hurt us…but ultimately it would hurt the clients.”

As for the agricultural sector, Brown is hopeful Congress will pass aid in the event a new farm bill doesn’t pass before the New Year, mainly because the alternative would be chaos – subsidies for many programs would automatically go back to Depression-era prices, which would force excessive government bailouts and extinction of many safety nets.

Instead, Brown is hopeful a $20 billion revenue mitigation package to help farmers harvest in the spring will pass. Introduced by Louisiana Congresswoman Julia Letlow and dubbed the Farm Act, to Brown it represents a necessary but expensive Band-Aid.

“When Congress lets you down on your free market programs and doesn’t update those in a dozen years. Then there’s a cost of doing business,” he said.

If the bill is punted to the next administration, Congress would be forced to start the process from scratch. As with SNAP benefits and conservation programs, what farmers can expect is a toss-up. Possible Project 2025 initiatives, Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of nutrition programs, and a yet-to-be-decided ag commissioner could all – for better or worse – influence the projected $1.5 trillion program, and the millions of lives that rely on it.

Brown says he’s counting on old-guard Louisiana Republican leaders Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise to continue support for traditional agriculture interests.

“All that red that was all over rural America and voted for y’all are counting on you right now to do something before it’s too late,” said Brown. “We can’t be a causality of the D.C. bubble. There are real issues going on at home that y’all need to take care of.”