By MATTHEW D. ERNST

Missouri Correspondent

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Unprecedented politics are creating an environment where Congress could break with tradition and in which a farm bill could again take longer than usual to finalize, according to Ferd Hoefner, senior strategic advisor at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Hoefner, who is working on his eighth farm bill, gave a Washington insider’s perspective on the probable process in sessions April 3-4 at the Our Farms, Our Future Conference in St. Louis. At that time, he noted that the House majority was planning to present a bill draft in the House the week of April 9.

“The following week after that, the week of April 16, the committee will mark it up and approve something, and the week after that, the week of April 23, the farm bill will be on the floor of the House of Representatives. That’s sort of what’s being said in Washington right now,” he explained.

But it may not be that simple. “The farm bill process has become more highly partisan than it would normally be,” he said. The issue driving the partisan divide is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “The Democratic leadership of the (House Agriculture) committee has made it clear that the rumored bill that will be maybe dropped (this) week is something that the minority cannot accept and will not be party to.

“The proposition basically is, will the House majority proceed with a bill that they would have to take to the floor of the House and pass on a partisan basis?”

That is unlikely, according to Hoefner. “Many observers would say passing a farm bill on a partisan basis is likely impossible because there are a substantial number of House majority members who vote against every farm bill, no matter what’s in it,” he said.

“There are also a smaller number, but still a large number, of moderates within the majority caucus who would have great difficulty winning reelection were they to vote for a bill that cut food assistance by a large amount.”

The takeaway is that a farm bill with large cuts to SNAP would most certainly be opposed by Democrats and would have to pass on a partisan basis. “We’ve never proceeded on the basis of a strictly partisan farm bill before,” said Hoefner. “But that is what the word on the street is in Washington.”

Still, a farm bill has to be approved by both House and Senate, and Senate leaders have indicated that large cuts to SNAP would not pass there.

“The Senate, by contrast, is waiting to see, can the House do something, or can’t they?” he noted. “The Senate, if they proceed, will proceed in a more normal bipartisan fashion without any major cuts to the SNAP program.”

That could mean this farm bill breaks with the tradition of being first introduced in the House, said Hoefner. “By tradition, the House goes first. But it’s only tradition. There’s no rule that says the Senate can’t go first.

“So, one possible way this works out is: House attempts, House does not go all the way through the process and Senate says, ‘Hey, maybe we’ll give it a try;’ they pass something and then send it over to the House. That’s possible. It’s not traditionally how it’s done, but it’s possible.”

Hoefner said he gives about a 50 percent chance for Congress to pass a farm bill this year. “I don’t think it’s certainly outside the realm of imagination that this one may not be the 2018 farm bill. It may ultimately be the 2019 farm bill. Time will tell.”