The Senate Agriculture Committee announced on Tuesday that it would begin working on a new farm bill next week, reviving efforts to pass the once-every-five-years spending bill that sets the nation’s food and farm policy. The last farm bill was passed in 2008.
The announcement comes after House leaders announced recently that they also would begin work on a farm bill next week. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, sent a memo to his fellow House Republicans last week saying that a farm bill produced by the House Agriculture Committee, led by Representative Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, would be on the legislative agenda for the summer.
Mr. Lucas and committee members came up with a bill and passed it last year, but it was never voted on by the full House.
The Senate passed its version of the farm bill, but failure to take it up in the House doomed any chance of getting it through the last Congress. Lawmakers extended the current farm bill until September. But even though the bill was extended, several farm programs expired, leaving hundreds of cattle and poultry producers without critical support programs during the worst drought in 50 years.
No one knows what the new bills will contain, but several farm groups believe the bill will contain many of the programs and reforms from the failed bills in the last Congress. Although the Senate bill made significant changes to some farm programs and eliminated or consolidates others, it left in place several Depression-era programs, like supports for American sugar growers, that set prices and limit imports.
The bill eliminated about $5 billion a year in controversial direct payments that have been given to farmers and farmland owners, whether or not they grew crops. It made the highly subsidized crop insurance program the primary safety net when crop prices drop. Currently, the government subsidizes about 62 percent of the crop insurance premiums, and the policies typically guarantee 75 percent to 85 percent of a farmer’s revenue. The crop insurance subsidy would cost about $9 billion a year. The bill saved about $23 billion over 10 years and cut about $4.5 billion in food stamps.
The House bill contained similar provisions to the Senate version, but added deeper cuts to the food stamp program, about $16 billion, and it would have saved about $35 billion over the same time. The House bill was also friendlier to Southern farmers, adding subsidies for rice and peanut planters, who say they would be harmed by the elimination of direct payments.
