U.S. Senator Deb Fischer told Norfolk Radio she is confident a new Farm Bill can clear Congress by year-end, even as conference negotiations between the Senate and House Agriculture committees continue without a publicly available text.

The Nebraska Republican, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, framed the year-end target as achievable in remarks carried by the Norfolk, Nebraska, station.

What the Farm Bill covers

• Title I commodity programs — Agricultural Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage and marketing assistance loans
• Federal crop insurance, premium subsidies and reinsurance terms
• Conservation programs including the Conservation Reserve Program and EQIP
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other nutrition-title programs
• Rural development, research and energy programs

The current operating statute is the 2018 Farm Bill, which expired September 30, 2024. Congress has kept the old programs running under a series of short-term extensions.

What the source does and does not say

Norfolk Radio's brief report carried Fischer's confidence statement but did not include:

• A timeline for the release of a conference report
• A specific Congressional Budget Office score
• Detail on the spending offsets under negotiation
• Any change to reference prices for covered commodities

Why a delay matters for margins

Program payments triggered by ARC and PLC rely on reference prices set in 2018 dollars. Since then, fertilizer, fuel, seed and interest expenses have run well above 2018 baselines, eroding the per-acre safety net farmers receive when market prices fall below the reference. Marketing assistance loan rates still post in nominal dollars from the 2014 Farm Bill formula.

For Nebraska row-crop growers, the commodity title carries the highest stakes. The state ranks among the top producers of corn, soybeans and livestock — commodities all touched by the Farm Bill's Title I, crop insurance and livestock disaster provisions.

Where the bill stands procedurally

Conference negotiations must produce a final text that the Congressional Budget Office can score under the most recent budget resolution. Both the House and Senate committee versions advanced on bipartisan lines earlier in the cycle, but the conference report must reconcile differences on reference prices, crop insurance investment, SNAP work requirements and conservation funding.

Farm Bill passage has historically been hardest for the nutrition title, where House Republican proposals and Senate Democratic positions diverge most sharply. Conference negotiators can usually bridge commodity-title differences with CBO scoring flexibility; SNAP eligibility rules and Thrifty Food Plan updates require policy compromises that stretch across committee jurisdictions.

What to watch before adjournment

• Whether the conference committee releases text before Thanksgiving
• How CBO prices the offsets for any increase to Title I commodity programs
• Whether House and Senate floor schedules leave room for a multi-day debate before adjournment

The Senate has roughly six weeks of legislative days before its scheduled adjournment, and the House calendar runs even tighter. Both chambers would need to clear procedural hurdles and find floor time for a bill that regularly draws several hundred floor amendments in the House.

Forward-looking: Fischer's confidence signals the Senate intends to clear a year-end Farm Bill, but with no completed conference report, no public CBO score and a compressed legislative calendar, the most likely outcome through January is another short-term extension of the 2018 law if the conference agreement slips past mid-December.