With both the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee and the full Senate Appropriations Committee now having taken action on their Fiscal Year 2011 agricultural spending bills, NSAC is posting a revised version of its annual agriculture appropriations chart to our website.  The chart provides detailed funding level decisions on a program-by-program basis for about 40 USDA programs that we follow closely each year.

Appropriations bills generally only become public once the full appropriations committees have voted on them.  Since that has not yet happened for the House bill yet, the numbers represented in our chart for the House bill are based on the best available information we have been able to obtain.  In a few instances there are blanks where information has either been lacking or inconsistent and therefore possibly unreliable.  The Senate numbers are all confirmed.  The Senate bill and committee report can be found here.

Looking ahead to later this year when a final bill is put together, we will be emphasizing:

• attaining the historic House Subcommittee-approved $30 million funding level for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program;
• removing the cuts to mandatory farm bill conservation funding contained in the Senate bill for the Wetlands Reserve, Grasslands Reserve, Farm and Ranch Land Protection, and Agricultural Management Assistance program;
• achieving the higher Senate total funding level ($8.35 million) for the Rural Micro-entrepreneurship Assistance Program and farm operating and ownership loans;
• obtaining the higher House funding level ($7 million) for the USDA Office of Advocacy and Outreach that coordinates policy and programs for beginning and minority farmers and farmworkers; and
• inserting into the final bill funding for the groundbreaking Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account program.

As the process continues, we will update our appropriations chart as information changes.