Closeup of United States Capital buildingThe House and Senate Farm Bills reflect differing priorities. The House Bill leans toward production ag while the Senate Bill prioritizes food stamp/TFP, conservation and CCC program changes.

How will these differing priorities impact crop insurance? The House Farm Bill and the Senate Farm Bill increase premium support for producers for 10 years. From there, the similarities begin to diverge.

These are the key differences in the current House and Senate Farm Bills:

House Farm Bill

  • Encourages research and development on improved risk management tools for specialty crops.
  • Increases SCO and WFRP coverage to 90%, with 80% premium support under SCO.
  • Requires development of new policies to meet the risk management needs of producers.
  • Addresses private sector delivery concerns by re-establishing an annual inflation adjustment for A&O. This eliminates the current flaw that harms specialty crop A&O. It ensures states with high losses the A&O necessary to accurately adjust the higher volume of claims in a timely fashion.

Senate House Bill

  • Increases premium support for SCO at 80% and increases coverage level to 88%.
  • Includes performance-based discounts for climate and other environmental practices.
  • Expands native sod regulations from Prairie Pothole Region to the entire country.
  • Increases support for Whole Farm and Micro Farm insurance policies to serve small and underserved producers.
  • Prioritizes underserved producers and crops for new policy development.
  • Codifies the cease-and-desist order of RMA relative to the cancelation of policies
  • Allows FCIC to bypass private sector delivery to deliver certain crop insurance policies.
  • Overhauls A&O.
  • Provides a seat at the table for agent groups in any new SRA renegotiation.

Read more about the differences between the House and Senate Farm Bills here.