Members of the House and Senate will hold a public meeting to merge the farm bills passed by each chamber this summer into one final bill. Likely sticking points for a deal will be a $35 billion gap between the bills on food stamp spending, the Senate's inclusion of mandatory crop insurance requirements.

By law, one meeting on the bill must be held in public, but negotiations are expected to be ongoing behind closed doors. The prior farm bill, passed in 2008, expired on September 30, 2013. Failing action, a January 1 deadline would see the implementation of a 1949 law requiring subsidy prices to increase, starting with dairy.