In a rare show of bipartisanship, the Senate passed the farm bill on Thursday by a vote of 64 to 35. The bill, which sets the nation’s agriculture and nutrition policy for the next five years, would end direct payments for commodity crop farmers, but ramp up subsidized crop insurance to save nearly $24 billion…
crop insurance
Senate Farm Bill ‘Vote-o-rama’ Rejects Catfish Inspection Program
By Helena Bottemiller on
The Senate was hard at work Tuesday considering dozens of farm bill amendments in an hours-long “vote-o-rama” that included repealing a 2008 farm bill provision to create a catfish inspection program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Unless the House decides that the program — which the Government Accountability Office has deemed duplicative and an …
Growing Crops with Conservation and Food Safety in Mind
By Alli Condra on
The subsidy discussion in the United States most often focuses on the impact of subsidizing certain crops, such as corn, wheat and soybeans, through the direct and counter-cyclical payments program to the exclusion of fruits and vegetables and therefore to the detriment of our national health (see, for example, The Fat of the Land: Do …