Food and Agriculture Committee Report

I. No New Farm Bill, but a Farm Bill Extension

Every five years, Congress considers the Farm Bill, a package of legislation affecting commodity prices, conservation measures, trade and subsidy programs, nutrition and food infrastructure programs (such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), loan programs and crop insurance for farmers, rural development and economic growth, agricultural and food research and development, energy programs (biofuel, research programs, etc.), and more. The last Farm Bill was passed in 2018, so negotiations for the next Farm Bill came to a head in 2023. Unfortunately, a Congress caught up in looming shutdowns and leadership challenges was unable to pass a new Farm Bill in 2024, which threatened funding for hundreds of agricultural- and food-based programs. Congress did, however, agree to extend the 2018 Farm Bill through September 2024, providing ten additional months to reach a compromise – albeit by a deadline just weeks before the next Presidential election.

There are two principal expiration dates for the Farm Bill: the end of the fiscal year (September 2024) and the end of the crop year (December 2024). The one-year extension during 2024 continues all of the 2018 Farm Bill provided $177 million of mandatory funding, with offsets, to 19 of 21 programs from the 2018 Farm Bill that did not have continuing funding. If Congress passes another extension or Farm Bill, the threat of expiration would disappear.

Not surprisingly, September 2024 came and went without either a new Farm Bill or another extension. As Congressional leaders dealt with an impending government shutdown just before Christmas, a short-term budget deal was reached that extended the 2018 Farm Bill by another year (depending on the Farm Bill program at issue, through either September 30, 2025 or December 31, 2025). Unlike the 2023 extension, this 2024 extension did not provide any funding in 2025 for programs without a baseline, which includes certain programs relating to biofuels, trade promotion and facilitation, and agricultural outreach.

While the agriculture leaders in both parties continue to call for a new, modernized Farm Bill, the incoming Trump administration, including proposed Department of Agricultural nominee Brooke Rollins, has provided little indication as to its intentions.

II. California Climate Reporting Requirements Continue to Take Shape

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rule remains in limbo—subject to a pending legal challenge in the Eighth Circuit and likely withdrawal under the incoming Trump administration. But California’s climate disclosure laws—SB 253 and SB 261, enacted in 2023 and amended in 2024 by SB 219—continue to move toward implementation, with the first set of climate disclosures under the laws required by 2026. SB 253 requires public and private US companies that do business in California and that have annual revenues in excess of $1 billion to annually report their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions beginning in 2026 and Scope 3 emissions beginning in 2027. SB 261, which applies to entities with total annual revenues in excess of $500 million dollars, requires the preparation and publication of a report disclosing and analyzing the climate-related financial risks associated with their businesses. The first report is due in 2026, with reporting required on a biennial basis thereafter.

In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom sought to extend the disclosure deadlines under SB 253 and SB 261 by two years. Ultimately, that proposal was unsuccessful and California instead enacted a law—SB 219—that amended SB 253 to provide the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with an additional six months (until July 1, 2025) to promulgate implementing regulations, but that left the original Scope 1, 2, and 3 disclosure deadlines unchanged.

In December 2024, CARB issued an enforcement notice announcing that the agency does not intend to take enforcement action for incomplete reporting under SB 253 during the first reporting year (2026), so long as reporting entities “make a good faith effort to retain all data relevant to emissions reporting for the entity’s prior fiscal year.” The agency further specified that “for the first report due in 2026, reporting entities may submit [S]cope 1 and [S]cope 2 emissions from ‘the reporting entity’s prior fiscal year’ that can be determined from information the reporting entity already possesse[d] or [was] already collecting at the time” the agency issued its enforcement notice (i.e., December 5, 2024).

The California climate disclosure laws remain subject to an ongoing legal challenge led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asserting the laws violate the First Amendment and constitutional limits on extraterritorial regulation by states, including the Dormant Commerce Clause. In November 2024, the Chamber’s summary judgment motion was denied on the grounds that further factual development was necessary before determining the First Amendment issues presented by the case. The case remains pending in the Central District of California.

III. Artificial Intelligence

AI offers aid to all farmers at a time in human history when the sustainability of agriculture is key to human survival. 150 years from now, men will look at AI as something more useful than plows, hybrid seed and GMOS. AI in use today offers tools to allow farmers to grow crops more sustainably, with increased efficiency, yield, and attention to environmental impacts. Our “precision agriculture” will become standard practice as farmers utilize AI algorithms, to analyze existing “Big Data” tracking soil conditions, environmental impacts, and weather patterns, allowing informed decisions that increase the efficiency of agriculture. Farming equipment makers sell AI tractors that can plant seeds and apply fertilizers and pesticides more accurately, reducing waste and increasing efficiency.

Big Data concerns about sharing data with online systems were addressed ten years ago via American Farm Bureau’s program. Farmers will increasingly use AI-driven online systems like irrigation controls that monitor soil moisture levels and adjust irrigation daily to meet specific field needs. Similar precise control is coming to dairies. In the US, 2% of them are robotic in the US and nearly all new construction of dairies is robotic, with yield upticks reported as justifying the cost. The EU’s smaller dairies are 30% robotic, with more adoption likely in the near future. Increases in productivity and animal welfare will combine with reduced labor costs to make the robotic dairy the future dominant mode of milk production.

IV. PFAS

The bad news for agriculture is clearly PFAS, fluorine salts that pose health risks. These beneficial products permeated products, firefighting foam and other sources for many decades despite increasing evidence of negative health effects. The EPA finally listed several PFAS compounds under CERCLA in 2024 after penalizing Dupont for PFAS mistakes in 2002. 3M, Dupont, and many other companies, face mass tort lawsuits including medical monitoring (nearly all citizens have traces of PFAS in their blood with no safe level yet determined). Uncertain health effects and unclear remediation scope make PFAS a looming threat farmers everywhere must address. Dairies with PFAS contamination are closing and more will close across America as states assess the scope of the PFAS contamination. EU NGOs estimated an annual cost of $17.4 trillion per year to clean up the PFAS mess worldwide.

In general, the laws regulating PFAS have been more expansive and more proscriptive as time goes on and health effects become more apparent. A few years ago, California and New York prohibited the intentional addition of PFAS chemicals in certain types of fiber-based packaging that comes into direct contact with foods. Subsequent laws, however, have begun chipping away of some of the qualifiers, such as removing the direct food contact requirement, expanding beyond intentionally added PFAS to capture any PFAS, applying to all food containers (not just those made out of plant fibers), or even defining food packaging to include things like shipping containers and pallets.

EPA and the states have also been taking action with respect to PFAS chemicals in pesticide products and pesticide product packaging. In the last year, for example, EPA has removed certain PFAS chemicals from its “approved inerts” ingredients list and issued TSCA orders directing a packaging supplier that supplies to the pesticide industry (among other industries) to cease producing PFAS chemicals as part of its production of fluorinated HDPE containers. Several states have begun passing laws prohibiting or regulating the intentional use of PFAS chemicals in pesticide products and packaging.

V. Beef Lawsuits Arising: Time for Lab-grown?

2024 saw two major beef lawsuits filed this year. Beef is the most beleaguered food in the world of food and agriculture, and what used to be iconic might become an ironic footnote in the history of food.

First, in September 2024, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) sued Tyson Foods for an injunction to stop Tyson’s false and misleading claims to consumers over their climate-smart beef program. EWG accused Tyson of violating the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, asserting that beef has a larger climate footprint than any other major food product. Tyson’s claim states that they are just getting started, stating:

Through transparency of practices and impact, we hope to accelerate our collective efforts to work towards a more sustainable food system…Our Climate-Smart Beef Program is just the beginning of our journey in working to become more sustainable for current and future generations. We’re proud to join many other independent supply partners, scientific experts and conservationists in working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from pasture to production.

Next, in October, McDonalds sued the beef packer’s oligopoly (Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef aka the “Big 4”) alleging a conspiracy to fix beef prices from 2015 forward. McDonald’s claimed that “[o]nly colluding meatpackers would expect to benefit by reducing their prices and purchases of slaughtered cattle because they would know that their conspiracy would shield them from the dynamics of a competitive marketplace.”

This combination of litigation threats signals a continued assault on beef from various quarters, not just environmental impacts. Beef is not “what’s for dinner” as much anymore, with a steady decline in US meat consumption for the second consecutive year, with beef’s decline starting a decade ago, despite a recent post-COVID uptick. In contrast, the global plant-based meat market is projected to grow from $7.5 billion in 2021 to $15.8 billion in 2028.

A new technology in beef is coming soon and may one day compete with beef. Cell-cultivated beef and other meats are grown from animal cells through biopsy not slaughter, giving it an improved animal welfare footprint. Developing cell-cultivated meat involves five steps:

1. taking a biopsy of animal cells, 
2. cell banking,
3. cell growth,
4. harvesting, and
5. food processing. As occurred in food production, there are non-GMO and biotech-assisted options emerging. The threat to meat must be real if they are passing laws against it. In 2024, 16 states had 28 bills pending to regulate and label cell-cultured meat. Seven states have banned it altogether.

The litigation over what can be called “meat” will surely parallel the legal battles over whether plant-based “milk” can use that word. Some cell-cultured meat will find a market – after all, NASA has been experimenting with making meat from turkey cells since 2001, hoping to create a food source for astronauts. Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station dined on a 3D-printed steak last month courtesy of Israeli startup “Aleph Farms.”

Lab-grown meat might have just enough green tinge from lowered climate and welfare issues to compete with beef if it can scale up without making more negative impacts from energy and waste. The earth-bound multitude might see tubes of cell-cultured meat or cell-based boneless chicken wings by Super Bowl 2030, if not sooner. But vegans will remain skeptical, as one vegetarian noted in Wired: “[l]ab-grown meat is a middle ground, and, like all compromises, it’s messy. Opposing it aligns you with the conventional meat industry [while also making] you a Luddite clubbing down machinery during the Industrial Revolution.”