It’s a critical lever to overcome a divided Congress.

The farm bill, officially titled the Agriculture Improvement Act, is a major agriculture policy bill that is passed every five years and subject to the influence of both parties. This year it will go before a GOP-led House and Democratic-led Senate — where it needs 60 votes to pass — with both chambers very narrowly divided.

Some of the most contentious areas in the climate arena pertain to whether Congress should be incentivizing climate-smart farming practices.

Many Democrats and environmental advocates have expressed support for providing incentives to farmers in order to encourage them to take on these climate-smart practices, such as planting cover crops.

Cover crops are ones that are grown to cover soil rather than to be sold as their own product. They can capture planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in soil, and also contribute to climate change resilience by preventing erosion.

However, Republicans have pushed back on the idea of incentivizing such actions — saying that the government shouldn’t be telling farmers how to best manage their fields.

“We need to make sure that conservation programs remain locally-led and that we are not promoting specific practices from the top down,” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pa.) told The Hill in a statement.

If incentives for cover crops do move ahead, there may also be some debate over how. The Biden administration has pitched, in the president’s annual budget proposal, giving farmers subsidies toward their crop insurance if they plant cover crops.