When we hear news broadcasters speak about the "farm bill" or see headlines about how farmers will be affected by the new farm bill, we probably don't realize what the farm bill is really about?
More than just a piece of legislation, the farm bill affects everyone who eats, sells, buys or grows food.
The farm bill was first created during the Great Depression to give financial assistance to farmers, who were struggling due to an excess crop supply creating low prices, and also to control and ensure an adequate food supply.
The first farm bill, known as the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA), was passed by Congress in 1933 as a part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
The bill allowed farmers to receive payment for not growing food on a percentage of their land as allocated by the United States Secretary of Agriculture. It also enabled the government to buy excess grain from farmers, which could then be sold later if bad weather or other circumstances negatively affected output. The AAA also included a nutrition program, the precursor to food stamps.
In 1938, Congress created a more permanent farm bill (the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938) with a built-in requirement to update it every five years.
In 1996, the first major structural change was made to the farm bill when Congress decided farm incomes should be managed by the free market and stopped subsidizing farmland and purchasing extra grain. Instead, the government began requiring farmers to enroll in a crop insurance program in order to receive farm payments.
Direct payments also began in the late 1990s as a way to support struggling farmers, regardless of crop output. These payments allowed grain farmers to receive a government check every year based on yields and acreage of the farm as recorded the previous decade.
Currently, domestic nutrition programs make up the largest portion of the estimated $300 billion farm bill. Crop subsidies make up only 14 percent, foreign food aid less than one percent. Here is a breakdown of the bill:
• Food stamps and other domestic nutrition programs, such as emergency food assistance: just over 66 percent, about $200 billion.
• Subsidies for rice, cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops: 14 percent, around $43 billion.
• Conservation programs to set aside or protect environmentally sensitive farmland: 9 percent, about $27 billion.
• Crop insurance to help farmers protect against losses: 8 percent, about $23 billion.
• Foreign food aid would make up less than one percent of the bill, costing less than $200 million. The bulk of international food assistance is in annual appropriations bills.
Currently, congress is debating the new proposed farm bill. Some Republicans have said the estimated $2 billion in annual cuts to the program are not enough, while Democrats said they were too steep.
The full Senate, which passed its bill earlier in June, reduced the program by $400 million each of the following five years. Some Republican leaders are gauging support in the House for splitting the farm bill in two - the agriculture components and the nutrition section, which includes the food stamp program.
The two programs have been linked since 1973 when Congress decided to tie together the interests of lawmakers representing rural, farm-country districts with those representing urban areas with large numbers of lower-income residents.
So, why are food stamps and other domestic nutrition programs included in the farm bill?
Long ago, conservative rural lawmakers whose numbers in Congress were declining became aware that they alone couldn't gather enough votes to pass a measure paying for farm programs. So they agreed to include food-stamp money in the farm bill in exchange for support from their more liberal urban peers.
It was a mutually beneficial relationship. Conservative lawmakers were mindful that the measures included subsidies for farm-growing regions home to their core constituents, while liberal lawmakers were keenly aware that they contained dollars for food assistance that largely went to their voters in big cities.
Each party needed the other to pass the measure that combined both farm and food money, and it almost always passed with bipartisan support.
But this year, it failed to get enough support, surprising observers and lawmakers alike. Conservatives refused to budge in their demands for even deeper cuts to the food stamp program, which has doubled in cost over the last five years to almost $80 billion annually and now helps feed one in seven Americans.
So, if the separation of farm subsidies and food assistance programs occurs, we'll finally be accurate when we call the "farm bill" the "farm bill."[[In-content Ad]]
