The statutory deadline for a new farm bill has come and gone without Congress delivering a replacement, and growers are starting to count the cost of the delay in dollars rather than calendar days.

One of them is a Colorado farmer who told CBS News that input costs and uncertainty are piling up on his operation as lawmakers let the deadline slip. His warning lands at a moment when producers are already squeezed between high expenses for the supplies they need and weak clarity over what support programs will look like when they next sign up.

The farm bill is the sprawling legislative package that sets the terms for commodity support, crop insurance, conservation spending and nutrition assistance. When Congress misses the reauthorization deadline, farm country does not immediately lose its programs — existing law carries forward — but the practical effect is a planning freeze. Farmers weighing crop mixes, input purchases and financing for the coming season cannot know with certainty which risk-management tools will exist, at what levels, or under what rules.

For a grower in Colorado, that uncertainty compounds an already difficult cost environment. Fertilizer, fuel, seed, chemicals and equipment have all run at elevated price levels in recent years, and producers have watched margins compress even in seasons with decent yields. Without a clear picture of the next farm bill's safety-net parameters, operators must make planting and purchasing decisions on assumptions rather than law.

The political reality behind the missed deadline reflects familiar fault lines. House and Senate negotiators have remained divided over the bill's overall spending, the balance between commodity title support and nutrition funding, and regional priorities that pit different crops and different states against one another. Each side has treated the other's numbers as negotiable; neither has produced a final text that can clear both chambers.

The delayed bill is not a new story — Congress has repeatedly blown past farm bill deadlines and relied on short-term extensions to keep programs running. Each extension buys time but pushes the underlying decisions further out, leaving growers like the Colorado producer CBS News interviewed to absorb the uncertainty in the meantime.

The cost of that drift shows up first in planning documents. Loans that farmers take out to cover inputs are written against expected revenues, and expected revenues depend in part on what federal programs will pay. Lenders, input suppliers and landowners all price risk, and legislative limbo is a risk. When Washington postpones the farm bill, that risk does not disappear — it gets transferred to the operator's balance sheet.

For now, farmers work under the old law and wait. Watch for signals on whether congressional leaders pursue another temporary extension or move to assemble a full five-year bill, because the choice will determine how quickly growers regain the program certainty they need to plan the next production cycle.