The House Disapproves

The official September 30 deadline for Congress to pass its annual appropriations bills to fund the government for fiscal year 2025 looms closer by the day. So, what kind of progress—if any—are the Senate and House of Representatives making towards this goal? Quite a bit actually, in the arena—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that arriving at a final result will be smooth or easy, or guarantee that this legislation will support climate action, conservation, nutrition, equity, or food and farm workers. The House disappoints The House of Representatives released its FY25 agriculture appropriations bill in June, and since then both the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee and full House Appropriations Committee voted to approve the bill on party lines, with all Republicans supporting the bill and all Democrats voting against it. The House bill provides total funding of $25.9 billion, a decrease of 1 percent from last year. The legislation also includes cuts to several priority UCS programs, including: . The FY25 House appropriations bill funds conservation programming at approximately $903 million, a cut of $11.9 million from FY24 and well below UCS’s requested funding level of $1.2 billion. . The House bill funds SARE—a competitive grant program helping farmers, ranchers, and researchers improve agricultural sustainability—at $45 million. This is a $3 million cut from last year, and significantly below UCS’s request of $60 million, which is particularly disappointing considering that SARE supports critical agricultural research and should be funded robustly. The received $443 million, a slight cut from last year and below UCS’s $500 million request. Office of Urban Agriculture. The original House bill provided no funding for this office. However, an amendment was included during bill markup that added $4 million, which is great news! . The bill also provides no funding for the . This is very disappointing, as these hubs play a critical role in linking the USDA’s scientific research and expertise with the farmers and workers who feel the impacts of climate change in their work every day. Equity. The House bill funds the and at $10 million each, which is identical to FY24 and matches the amount UCS requested. There was no funding in the bill for the program; UCS had requested $10 million. Aside from funding cuts, the House agriculture appropriations bill also contained several harmful policy provisions. These included language to limit diversity/equity programming and a proposed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) pilot program that could restrict the types of foods people are able to buy for themselves and their families. The pilot program language, however, was later removed by an amendment in the Appropriations Committee vote, and no such language was included in the Senate bill, which is a big victory!