Trying to keep up with the Farm Bill is a bit challenging. As it did last year, the House’s inactivity lead to an extension of the earlier 5-year Farm Bill. That extension ends on September 30th.
In June, the Senate passed the Farm Bill with about 4 million in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP, formerly known as food stamps].
The House then divided the Farm Bill into Farm-Only and Nutrition-Only. The Farm-Only portion passed in the House in July. The Nutrition-Only part passed this month with 39 million in cuts to SNAP over the next 10 years. $19 million from limiting eligibility for adults with no children who cannot find a job.
Many people wonder why 47 million Americans are receiving food stamps. The number of people receiving food stamps rose dramatically in 2007 and 2008 in response to the economic decline. In addition, a much smaller increase is contributed to states relaxing some eligibility rules, such as, jobless adults could stay in the program if they lived in high-unemployment areas. You can read a good overview here.
Now the House needs to vote to rejoin their two parts so the one bill can go to conference to combine with the Senate version to create one Farm Bill. Some doubt this will happen. If all the revisions are combined into one bill, it then must go back to both House and Senate for approval before going to the President. Here is a nice graphic of the path.
With the delay in passing a the bill, many programs supporting local and organic farming are now stranded and might never come back to funding. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is planning to soon highlight some of the 37 stranded programs on their blog.
Keep up with the action at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s website – click here for blog posts related to the Farm Bill.
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