On Thursday evening, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the 2018 Farm Bill on a vote of 86-11, with the few dissenting votes coming from Republicans.

The American Soybean Association (ASA) commends the Senate’s ongoing bipartisan work, which maintains much of the 2014 farm bill structure including protecting crop insurance and commodity programs, and ASA continues to advocate for on-time passage of a final bill before the 2014 Farm Bill expires the end of September.

John Heisdorffer, a soybean producer from Keota, Iowa and ASA president, said, “We are happy that the Senate’s bill continues the structure of Title 1 commodity programs and still offers producers a choice between the Price Loss Program (PLC) and the county Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC-CO) program. While we would like to see market development funding increased, we are pleased that funding for Foreign Market Development (FMD) and Market Access Program (MAP) remains intact and is protected by consolidating those two programs under one export promotion umbrella.”

The House version of the Farm Bill, passed June 21, has similar structures for crop insurance, commodity programs, and foreign market development funding.

There are, however, some contrasts between the competing bills: The House bill includes reforms in the SNAP (food stamp) program that are not included in the Senate version; the Senate reduces the Adjusted Gross Income cap for Title 1 program payment eligibility from $900,000 to $700,000; the House broadens the definition of “actively engaged in farming”; the House eliminates the Conservation Stewardship Program; and, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is increased from 24 million acres to 29 million in the House bill and to 25 million in the Senate bill.

Congress has adjourned for the 4th of July recess, but leaders of both the Senate and House Agriculture Committees say they want to convene a Conference Committee soon after they return on July 9. At that time, they will begin hammering out differences between their two versions of the bill.