It’s likely to pass but not guaranteed.

ENID, Okla. — Congressman Frank Lucas is back on the House Agriculture Committee that is going to be hard at work over the coming months drafting a new Farm Bill, to replace legislation set to expire Oct. 1, 2023.

The current Farm Bill has been in effect since 2018, and was a reauthorization of the 2014 Farm Bill, which was enacted when Lucas was chairman of the Ag Committee, Lucas said in an interview with the News & Eagle.

From 1933 to 1996, farm legislation based on supply management, such as quotas, allotments and limitations on what could be raised. He said from 1996 to 2014, the U.S. operated under the Freedom to Farm Bill, which provided a direct payment annually based on production history that could be used however the recipient saw fit. By 2014, even though it was a strong economic policy, Lucas said, it wasn’t politically sustainable.

Lucas said when he was committee chairman, he had to put together something entirely different for what he terms the “third-generation Farm Bill.” He said principles of insurance were used to provide a safety net, so if crop insurance for weather were taken out, there would be the potential to protect prices. He said in the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills, the difference between those bills and older ones, participation was optional.

If a new Farm Bill is not passed, the 2018 Farm Bill begins to expire Oct. 1. Lucas said not everything shuts off at once, as the programs are based on the crop year. He said he predicts a new Farm Bill will be agreed upon, although he can’t guarantee it.

“It has to be passed, or extended, but it has to stay in place,” Lucas said. “The Farm Bill is a five-year document, and if it were to ever completely expire, we go back to something called permanent law, which goes back to farm bills passed in the 1930s and 1940s. If we are successful in putting together the next Farm Bill, and it’s still based on the principles of the 2014 and 2018 bill, I would like to repeal the old antiquated language from the ’ 30s and ’ 40s and make what would become the 2023 Farm Bill permanent law, so if there ever came a time in the future through some kind of political gyration or craziness in Congress, that we couldn’t pass a Farm Bill, we’d still have the basic Farm Bill we work under now.”