The Farm Bill is comprehensive piece of federal legislation covering agriculture, conservation, nutrition assistance, and more. The U.S. Congress has negotiated and passed a Farm Bill about every five years since 1933. Provisions in the Farm Bill account for roughly 2% of federal spending, mostly in the form of nutritional assistance.
The last Farm Bill was passed in 2018 and expired in 2023. Since then, Farm Bill programs have been supported by annual temporary renewals. The U.S. House of Representatives released a new draft of its proposed Farm Bill renewal last week. This draft does not include the reintegration of Puerto Rico’s Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP) into the more heavily resourced federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an initiative more casually referred to as a “NAP to SNAP” transition.
SNAP is accessible in the 50 states as well as D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. The federal program expands benefit eligibility as needs increase, such as during economic downturns and after natural disasters. NAP, on the other hand, operates as a capped grant and has almost no Federal oversight or supervision. The program has more limited eligibility and smaller benefits than SNAP. Even though NAP is much less generous than SNAP, about 43% of Puerto Rico residents rely on NAP. This is because the poverty rate and the food insecurity rate are both much higher in Puerto Rico than in the states.
What does the Farm Bill say about Puerto Rico?
The House version of the Farm Bill leaves out a sought-after proposal to transition the NAP program back into the Federal SNAP program, of which it was a part until 1982. According to House Agriculture Committee Chairman, Glen Thompson (R-PA), the impediment was the price tag: $1 billion over ten years to transition from NAP to SNAP, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Gabriella Boffelli, director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration (PRFAA) in Washington, noted that the House proposal includes protections for coffee, bananas, cacao, and mangoes, all crops grown in Puerto Rico.
This provision is “based on bills introduced by Governor Jenniffer González Colón while she was Resident Commissioner, which we at PRFAA continue to promote. The measures aim to increase opportunities for study and research to combat pests and diseases in these and other tropical crops,” Boffelli told El Nuevo Dia.
Is this the last word?
Resident Commissioner Pablo Jose Hernandez told El Nuevo Dia that the lack of support for the NAP-to-SNAP transition is a temporary setback. “This was to be expected because Republicans typically oppose expanding social welfare programs,” he said in an interview. “If there were a bipartisan measure in the future, it would be more likely to pass.”
The House Farm Bill is not yet law. The Senate will need to create its own version, the two bills must be harmonized, and the resulting bill must be signed into law by the president. This process has not been successful over the past two years, and The Conversation has presented arguments that “current divisions in Congress mean the nation’s food and agriculture policy may remain stuck in limbo for yet another year.” Other observers agree with this outlook.
On the other hand, the Senate could include the NAP-to-SNAP transition in its Farm Bill proposal and bring the debate back to public awareness.
For now, Resident Commissioner Hernandez is the lone voice representing the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, an area with a population of over three million U.S. citizens, and yet he lacks voting privileges on the House floor. He also does not have a seat on the House Agriculture Committee. If Puerto Rico had four voting representatives in Congress, as it would if it were a state, odds are that one could be the voice of Puerto Rico on the Agriculture Committee. Puerto Rico lacks a voice, and it shows.
Congress Considers Equality for Puerto Rico in Nutrition Assistance
