Why The Farm Bill’s Provisions Will Matter To You Enlarge Carrie Antlfinger / AP Dairy cows feed on a farm in Chilton, Wis., in May. The farm bill being considered by Congress contains a number of provisions affecting dairies, part of a massive package that could cost nearly $1 trillion over a decade. Carrie Antlfinger / AP Dairy cows feed on a farm in Chilton, Wis., in May. The farm bill being considered by Congress contains a number of provisions affecting dairies, part of a massive package that could cost nearly $1 trillion over a decade. If you think only farmers care about the farm bill currently being considered by Congress, you’re very, very mistaken. The measure will not only set policy and spending for the nation’s farms for years to come, but will affect dozens of other seemingly unrelated programs — all at a cost of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. Following are a few questions and answers about the massive legislation: Why is it called the farm bill, and where did it come from? First, the term “farm bill” is a bit misleading. It’s simply shorthand for legislation that invariably gets saddled with a different name. In 2002, it was the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, and in 2008, it was known as the Food, Conservation and Energy Act. The latest bill is the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012. Second, perhaps 80 percent of the bill has nothing to do with farms or farming. But more on that later. Modern farm bills date to the Great Depression and the New Deal. By the 1930s, U.S. farmers were victims of their own success. Mechanization and stepped up production during World War I, as America fed a war-weary Europe, eventually led to huge surpluses and falling prices for basic crops. The Agricultural Adjustment Act sought to do something that to this day remains controversial — pay farmers not to grow crops in an effort to boost prices. But the Supreme Court didn’t like a tax provision in the 1933 law and struck down the entire act. By 1938, a new Agricultural Adjustment Act, sans the offending tax, was passed by Congress. Farm bills have been passed about every five years ever since. “I would say the New Deal is the great-great-grandfather of all the farm bills as we currently know them,” says Dale Moore, director for public policy at the American Farm Bureau Federation. Why should you care? It’s not just about farmers. The farm bill is an all-encompassing piece of legislation comprising everything from farm subsidies and crop insurance — which have an indirect impact on food prices — to energy, forestry, food stamps and school lunches. “It covers what is, in a lot of ways, the rural economy in this country,” Moore says. Why is it controversial? In an age of rising deficits, the bill has come in for a lot of scrutiny. Chris Edwards, an economist with the libertarian Cato Institute, calls the farm bill “a bipartisan pork barrel spending spree.” “Farm subsidies redistribute wealth from taxpayers to often well-off farm businesses and landowners,” he says. “In 2010, the average income of farm households was 25 percent above the average of all U.S. households.” But the largest chunk of the farm bill in dollar terms is directed to the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as the food stamp program. Edwards says the growth in the program in recent years has been remarkable, “not just because of the recession but because of the increase in eligibility during the Bush administration.” However, Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thinks much of the criticism of food stamps has been over the top. “In my view, one of the biggest myths is the claim that some people make that SNAP is growing out of control and is contributing in a substantive way to the deficit,” she says. “To the extent it is growing, it’s for reasons that we very much understand — it’s about addressing the needs of people in a bad economy.” How much does it
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