Wednesday, January 29, 2014

What's In the Farm Bill?

SNAP and a little bit of spending on ag programs:

A little bit of detail on the farm side of things:
Commodity programs, $44.4 billion over 10 years ($14 billion less than existing law). This section includes a variety of programs to shield farmers against sharp fluctuations in prices, particularly corn, wheat, soybean, cotton, rice, peanut, and dairy producers.
In past years, this was an even bigger chunk of various farm bills, which often provided “direct payments” to farmers regardless of how much they actually planted or how much they would sell their crops for. This latest farm bill would cut most of these direct payments, saving about $19 billion over 10 years.
Those cuts are arguably the biggest policy change in the farm bill — and they're controversial among farmers. Many of the savings have been channeled into other types of farm aid, including billions of dollars in disaster assistance for livestock producers and subsidized loans for farmers. Meanwhile, the crop insurance program has been expanded (see below).
Notably, the bill would also abandon the 70-year-old practice of setting minimum prices for milk, cheese, and butter. Instead, the bill would offer insurance to dairy farmers to protect themselves against falling milk prices or rising feed costs.
Crop insurance, $90 billion over 10 years ($7 billion more than existing law). For decades, farmers have been able to buy federally-subsidized crop insurance in case their crops fail or prices decline. But under the new farm bill, the government would also spend an additional $7 billion over 10 years covering the deductibles that farmers have to pay before the insurance kicks in. This is supposed to help cushion the blow from the loss of direct payments.
This is one of the more contentious parts of the farm bill. Some critics have warned that this insurance program could cost far more than expected, depending on how crop prices shift. And the Environmental Working Group has argued that a disproportionate amount of these subsidies go to the wealthiest farm operators.
Conservation, $57.6 billion over 10 years ($4 billion less than existing law). This includes programs to help farmers protect against soil erosion and to use ecologically friendly methods like drop irrigation. It also includes programs that pay farmers to grow on less land.
This part of the farm bill was cut by about $4 billion (compared with previous bills) — in part because the government will be supervising a smaller total area. There's also a fair bit of consolidation here: 23 different conservation programs will be shrunk into 13 programs.
That's about 90% of the ag spending in the bill.

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