KSHB 41 reporter Ryan Gamboa covers Miami County in Kansas and Cass County in Missouri. He also covers agricultural topics. Ryan has extensively covered Farm Bill-related issues since it expired in 2023. Share your story idea with Ryan.
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Kansas City-area farmers are reacting to new legislation passed Thursday out of the U.S. House of Representatives to fund $390 billion in farm programs.
It's a topic KSHB 41 News Reporter Ryan Gamboa has covered extensively, sharing the concerns and needs of agriculture producers across Kansas and Missouri.
Gamboa first visited Rick Miller's southern Johnson County, Kan., farm in October 2024.
"As difficult as it is for farmers to make a living off the ground from one year to another, farm bill programs create a safety net in a drought year," Miller explained to KSHB 41 in 2024. "Or that flood year, or the hail right before the wheat crop harvest. That farm provision is going to help you pay some of those bills when you may make no money that year."
In the past, farm bill's have included several major spending bills that provide a variety of protections for agriculture producers, including 85% of the bill funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.
Funding cuts to the SNAP program were not popular among Democrats. Republican leaders found themselves in disputes over pesticides, ethanol, and regulating pork producers.
The Farm Bill, is traditionally passed every five years with updated figures. The bill has been expired since 2023 and operating at 2018 numbers.
"It is good to finally see some movement in the farm bill," Nick Levendofsky, executive director for Kansas Farmers Union, said. "This is long overdue. We’ve extended the current version of the farm bill, which is the 2018 version of the bill, three times now. This is not the farm bill that we want, or the farm bill that we need to address the challenges that farmers, ranchers, and frankly rural people and all people are dealing with. It’s just not the right bill at this time."
For farmers like Miller, who Gamboa caught up with on Thursday, the farm bill almost became a lost cause, and he focused on other areas of his life to supplement his farm income.
"You see the saw behind me, I'm a woodworker," he said.
KSHB 41's Gamboa caught up with Miller while he installed cabinets for a family friend in Mission.
"Certainly, having that off-farm incomes makes it possible to make that land payment," Miller said.
That's where farmers are today, according to Miller and Levendofsky.
High fuel and input costs, land costs, and drought in some areas of Kansas are what they face.
Row crop growers are working to get this year's crop into the ground while battling the weather.
That's what the focus is right now, not keeping an eye on a Congress that hasn't made an effort to pass a new bill in three years.
"I'm pleasantly surprised and shocked that something passed," Miller said. "I haven’t been paying attention to the farm bill."
Gamboa talked with a Miami County farmer on the phone Thursday afternoon. The farmer told Gamboa he had no idea this bill was being worked on.
That was not a surprise to Levendofsky.
"I’m not surprised that farmer’s are surprised by the fact that this farm bill has moved forward the way that it has," he said. "I think they have given up hope that there might be a chance of it moving forward."
There's plenty of areas where the Kansas Farmers Union thinks this legislation can do better — including addressing the current economic state of farm country and funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other consumer nutrition programs cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
"It doesn’t do a lot of things that it needs to do," Levendofsky said.
Miller would like to see international trade markets reopened that have been lost in trade wars.
"Not only do we need the farm bill, but we need trade negotiations fixed with other countries so it gives us a degree of certainty for the future," Miller said.
The one glimmer of certainty that farmers have in Miller's eyes is a little bipartisanship in the House version of the bill.
"I want to applaud our Kansas delegates for voting for this bill," he said. "Let’s hope the Senate gets the point and they do the same thing."
The new version of the farm bill must pass the Senate, then head to the President's desk.
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