NSAC's Blog

Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Funding Decisions Loom Large for New Farmers, Rural Communities, Local Food

July 9, 2012

Program funding decisions are always front and center in farm bill debates.  Generally, most of the attention goes to the big money titles — nutrition, crop insurance, commodity programs, and conservation.  Though smaller programs for beginning farmers, rural economic development, renewable energy, organic agriculture, and healthy food get less attention, those funding choices are nonetheless critical for the communities they serve.  That is even more the case in the 2012 Farm Bill debate because the vast majority of those smaller programs do not have the same automatic renewal of their mandatory funding authority that the big money title programs are favored with.  Thus, whatever does not get renewed funding in the pending farm bill becomes a dormant program for the next five years.

To help readers keep track of the decisions made by the Senate when it passed its version (Agricultural Reform, Food, and Jobs Act) of the 2012 Farm Bill and by House Committee leadership in introducing their draft bill (Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act) last week, we are publishing the charts below (and linked here).  As House Committee markup and floor action take place, we will update the charts to reflect any amendments that pass that impact funding for any of these programs.

Comparison on Current Level, Senate-Passed Bill, and House Mark ($ millions)

Beginning and Minority Farmers

Rural Development

Renewable Energy

Specialty Crops, Organic Agriculture, Local & Regional Food

Categories: Farm Bill

One response to “Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Funding Decisions Loom Large for New Farmers, Rural Communities, Local Food”

1. Richard Wahl says:

   July 20, 2012 at 9:47 am

   This is good information that is hard to get from other sources and is ignored by the commodity focused and large agri-industrial supported farm press. It would be good to track the funding through to USDA implementations. Thank you.