Members of a flood-damaged acequia clear the irrigation canal during annual cleanup April 8, 2023, in the burn scar of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire. The version of the Farm Bill released by the House of Representatives late last week does not include a provision codifying acequias’ eligibility for a federal crop insurance program. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM)
In their 942-page Farm Bill proposal released late last week, Republican House leaders did not include a provision that would safeguard insurance for acequia associations facing lower crop yields amid multi-year drought.
Eligibility of acequias for insurance, a provision touted by members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation, is one of several differences between Senate Democrats and House Republicans’ plans for the two times per decade-long Farm Bill, which is up for renewal by September 30.
The Farm Bill is already a year overdue, having expired in September 2023 due to disagreements among a divided Congress over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, crop insurance and other aspects of the legislation.
The House version would spend up to $1.5 trillion over the next decade. While the Senate has not yet released the full text of its version of the Senate bill or provided an estimate of its cost, it has summaries of key provisions earlier this month, including one that would clarify acequias’ eligibility for the uninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.
The program provides insurance to farmers who are otherwise ineligible for other types of federal crop insurance and suffer from disasters such as drought, hurricanes, hail or floods.
Acequias are centuries-old irrigation canals that generations of New Mexico farmers have relied on. Many of them buy crop insurance to protect themselves against crops damaged by drought, which has increased across the state in recent years due to climate change.
In 2018, farmers along acequias in Rio Arriba County learned that a policy imposed by former President Donald Trump would make their farms ineligible for the insurance program. The federal Farm Service Agency office in the area also lowered the threshold for crops that would allow farmers to file an insurance claim, the U.S. senator said. Ben Ray Lujan‘s office.
In 2021, Lujan intervenedconvincing President-elect Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture to pause the policy and get farmers paid for their losses.
“New Mexico’s farmers and ranchers are essential workers who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” Luján said in a news release at the time. “This reversal in policy and practice represents a hard-fought victory that will give New Mexicans the benefits they deserve and paid for.”
In 2023, Luján sponsored the ACEQUIA Act, which would enshrine the pause into law, along with Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) in the House.
The law was never enacted, but Luján, as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, succeeded in getting the provision included in the Senate’s framework for the Farm Bill, said Luján spokesman Adan Serna.
But it is not in the House version released Thursday, and both chambers are now working to agree on a compromise, Serna said Tuesday.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement on May 17 that while the two bills have much in common, she was concerned that the House proposal would “disrupt the broad, bipartisan coalition distribution has always been the basis of a successful Farm Bill.”
While the House version of the Farm Bill does not include the insurance provision, it makes acequias eligible for funding from the Water Source Protection Program, which provides $30 million annually to help the federal Forest Service and farm partners provide relief watersheds and forests.
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