The horde of Democrats headed for Capitol Hill in January will offer a chance to reset how agriculture and food policy is handled, says former House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson.
“We have a real opportunity in rural America because of this election,” Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat who served 15 terms in Congress, tells Agri-Pulse in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Peterson, known as a centrist, has been concerned about Democrats vanishing from farming districts and creating a dysfunctional situation in Congress.
“You can’t run farm policy on just one party. If you do that, you’re going to end up going back and forth and farmers are going to get whipsawed,” he said. “They need to get back to doing things the way they used to do them, and maybe this election was enough to get their attention to make them do that.”
Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., echoed Peterson’s concern.
“I have long said that rural America voting exclusively red is a very dangerous policy because then you get taken for granted, and you saw that with what happened with tariffs, what happened with our markets, what happened with our input costs beyond even tariff-related input costs,” Heitkamp said in a phone interview with Agri-Pulse. “So now, hopefully, there will be an awareness and a reset for ag policy that will bring it back to bipartisanship.”
Peterson, who lost his bid for reelection in 2020 to GOP Rep. Michelle Fischbach, also said Democratic victories in ag-heavy areas like Iowa send a clear message from ag producers to the White House.
“People are sick and tired of this chaos and partisanship and back and forth,” he said, adding that President Donald Trump’s last big event before the elections on Tuesday was about the reflecting pool in Washington.
“I think farmers got just fed up with it, some of them — enough to change the election,” Peterson said.
Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill on Monday with Senate and House Ag committee leaders from both parties vowing to work on passing a farm bill this year. However, it’s not clear if Democrats will decide to hold back and wait to restart efforts for an already delayed farm bill next year when they are in majority control of both chambers.
Senate Republicans and Democrats are at an impasse over how long to delay cost shifts to states under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The issue of whether to include the one-year delay offered by Republicans or the two-year postponement sought by Democrats in a final farm bill threatens to derail the legislation.
Peterson said his advice to Senate Ag Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., has been to take the two-year offer from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the panel’s top Democrat.
Boozman has said the one-year deal is the best and final offer from Republicans. Peterson said the situation is similar to SNAP disagreements around the farm bill in 2018, also a midterm year in which Democrats regained control of the House.
“At this point, even if they give Klobuchar what she wanted on the delay on SNAP, because of what happened in the election, [the Democrats] may not want to go along with it,” Peterson said.
Lawmakers should “sit down and work this thing out and get the farm bill done and get it locked into place for a while so that we can have some certainty.”
Boozman on Wednesday said he remains determined to get a farm bill passed.
“Family farmers contending with numerous challenges to their viability cannot afford another farm bill delay," Boozman said. “Congress has the opportunity to show them we understand how urgently they need these critical updates, and I remain committed to helping get them signed into law this year.”
Brighter farm policy outlook
Another challenge lawmakers have faced is Trump giving billions of dollars in support to farmers struggling with high costs of fuel and other inputs.
“One of the problems is the president kept giving the farmers all this money and it took the pressure off,” Peterson said.
The financial assistance is “driving up the pricing of land and inputs,” he said. “It’s not really solving any problem.”
Overall, Peterson is optimistic that having more Democrats representing rural and farm districts will lead to a new bipartisan era in Congress, at least for ag.
“It’s going to force Democrats and the Republicans to work together if they want to get anything done,” he said. “If they don’t, in my opinion, what’s going to happen is in the next election the Republicans are going to win back the situation.”
He added: “That’s what I’m going to tell Democrats — that you better sit down and figure out how to work this out, and maybe you can save some of those seats in rural America. For the future of the country, that’s what needs to happen. We can’t just have one party control all the seats in farm country and rural America.”