What? You say you live in a city and you don’t care?
“Not caring” would be wrong. We all eat, and the Farm Bill is responsible for a wide range of issues, related to growing food, food nutrition and much more.
Barry Piatt reports in “Behind the Curtains” that it has been 942 days since a Farm Bill passed and we don’t have anything resembling final passage yet.
One good thing — Monsanto was denied a free ride for its sins: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., managed to remove a provision that offered liability protection to Monsanto and other chemical companies by restricting state labeling laws.
Sort of a nice thing — Rotisserie chicken recognized as real food that SNAP will fund. The bill was Rep. Rick Crawford’s, R-Ark. Well, yes, it’s nuts that Crawford had to fight for this … roast chicken is real food.
Oops! That was a short list.
House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) proudly stands by the bill, swearing that the one thing he will not let happen is for funding to be restored for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The Big Beautiful Bill cut $186 billion in food assistance, and apparently, House Ag Chair Thompson is happy to take food out of people’s mouths. SNAP is the US’s largest food aid program.
At a time that Trump’s tariffs are hitting farmers harder than almost anyone else, this follow-up Farm Bill did not begin to make up for what the Big Beautiful Bill offered, either for farmers or for working people who are struggling to deal with the inflation that Trump’s illegal was in Iran is causing — gas prices, food prices, and more.
The Hagstrom Report today featured National Farmers Union President Rob Larew’s remarks about the House version of the Farm Bill:
- “Today’s House vote is the largest step in eight years towards delivering a farm bill for family farmers, ranchers and rural America,” but “the bill largely continues existing farm safety net programs that do not match the scale of the current economic crisis family farmers are facing. It also maintains cuts to the nutrition safety net at a time when too many American families are struggling to make ends meet.”
“Other missed opportunities include authorizing year-round E15, restoring mandatory country-of-origin labeling, addressing rising input costs, protecting farmers and ranchers from the threat of market concentration and expanding domestic market opportunities for U.S. producers.”
Larew sums it up very well. The House-passed bill is more notable for what it fails to do than what it accomplishes. It must be noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill disrupted all of the food industry by doing some patchwork funds for certain issues usually dealt with in the Farm Bill. Usually, farmers and specialty crop growers, conservation, research, and the nutrition safety net interests all work together to make the farm bill stronger but this traditional coalition was disrupted by the not-so-beautiful bill.
Farmers Union’s news release about the House passage of the Farm Bill can be found at Statement on the House of Representatives Passing the Farm Bill.
Amelia Coffey, Heather Hahn, The Uban Institute: SNAP Cuts in One Big Beautiful Bill Act Leave Almost 3 Million Young Adults Vulnerable to Losing Nutrition Assistance
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