The federal government surpassed its 20th day of shutdown on Monday, making it the longest full government shutdown in the history of the U.S.
Senators returned to Capitol Hill on that same day, but Democratic and Republican lawmakers remain at a standoff over health care subsidies, food aid, economic assistance and the Farm Bill 2.0.
Brad Bales, senior director of state and national policy with the Ohio Farm Bureau, said this shutdown has deeper ramifications for Ohio’s farmers who have already been dealing with a challenged ag economy.
"If you're going to the grocery store, everything's more expensive. Well, what it takes for us to put product on those shelves is a lot more expensive than what it used to be just four or five years ago," he said.
In addition to higher costs, Bales said Ohio's farmers are dealing with thin margins on soybeans, corn and wheat.
"Commodity prices are the same price that they would have been in 1974," he said. "It's a perfect storm when you have high input costs, low margins or very thin margins."
And to top it all off, a federal trade deficit has cut into bottom lines for farmers over the last eight to nine months.
"We're willing to weather the storm, we want fair trade. And this is not just about tariffs, I mean, this is about other countries playing gimmicks or games with our products," said Bales. "Just five years ago, a third of Ohio's soybean product was planted, produced, harvested and sent directly to China. Now today, that number's zero."
"Just five years ago, a third of Ohio's soybean product was planted, produced, harvested and sent directly to China. Now today, that number's zero."
While farmers across the state are scrambling to find new, reliable markets, the Farm Service Agency, which they would normally turn to for financial aid, is shut off.
"Right now there is no aid. They would have to take an act of Congress and so with the federal shutdown, that has really taken up all the oxygen in the room," said Bales.
According to Bales, aid in the previous year, came in the form of economic assistance, with checks covering a majority of the issues that farmers ran into. Now, with no updated Farm Bill and a lengthy government shutdown, those checks are being withheld.
Bales said he expects that Ohio’s farmers will soon feel the impact of this freeze as their October checks run out.
“I think we're going to start seeing after this week, maybe even next week, the pinch really, really starting to sink in," he said.
Farm Safety Net programs typically help farmers access loans, commodity or program payments and disaster assistance in a time of need. But those services have been halted as agencies across the US await a resolution in Washington.
"We gotta find a way to develop some economic assistance to help these farmers out, or else we're going to really start to see an impact to your smaller family farms," said Bales.
He said looking at the short term, most farmers do not even want a cash a "bailout" check, but they will if it means keeping their family farm open.
"They would rather take their product to market and be profitable themselves and so, long term, what we have to do is figure out what can we do to expand our markets year-round," he said. "E-15 is a perfect example of that."
Currently, under the Clean Air Act, Ohio is prohibited from selling E-15 — a gasoline blend containing 15% ethanol also known as UNL88 — year-round unless it receives an exemption from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Bales said this is preventing investment in biofuels for the state's producers.
"We've been very fortunate as a state the past three years to get those exemptions from U.S. EPA," he said. "But if we were to codify, that would give us some more confidence to the markets, especially those in ethanol, and get them to make those investments in Ohio."
Bales is concerned this shutdown is nowhere near a resolution.
“Hopefully they are able to come together on a bill, and that is just the one thing that breaks everything loose," he said. "But for the time being, based on what I saw at the end of last week and the beginning of this week, they are still in their corners.”
While the shutdown continues, Bales said the administration won’t take action on USDA dollars identified for farm aid, and
for the time being, farmers will have to continue wait in limbo until an agreement is reached and an updated Farm Bill is released.
"At this point, Congress is trying to push another continuing resolution," he said. "The original continuing resolution that was proposed was for seven weeks so now there's a conversation about what does the rest of the year look like? What has to happen or what needs to occur for both sides to come together and keep the government funded and open?"
