United States farm bill
Powerful interest groups are poised to intervene, including organizations claiming to represent farmers (such as the American Farm Bureau Federation), as well as big agribusiness corporations (such as John Deere, Cargill, Pioneer Hi Bred International (owned by Corteva since 2019), and Monsanto (owned by Bayer since 2018).
However, doing so helps to bridge some of the politically relevant cultural differences that exist between legislators of urban and rural, coastal and heartland areas of the country.
Farmers had a powerful voice in Congress, and demanded federal subsidies, most notably the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill.
The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) made 12-month loans of cash against the farmers newly planted crops at a fixed price.
The limited benefit to farmers was supposed to outweigh the ongoing hurt to consumers who paid higher food prices.
[15] The AAA of 1933 was an abrupt change in policy and was designed as an emergency response to the low prices of commodity crops during the Great Depression.
[16] President Roosevelt's New Deal agriculture focused legislation paid farmers to reduce the number of productive acres on their farms, hoping to limit the supply of commodity crops on the market.
This was, however, a voluntary program, meaning farmers were not required to remove farm acres from production if they were not interested in government subsidy.
Those who participated tended to remove land from production that was already producing poorly, thereby reducing their yield as little as possible, and ultimately limiting the effectiveness of the Act.
[12] In 1938, Congress created a more permanent farm bill (the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938) with a built-in requirement to update it every five years.
The Commodity Credit Corporation limited farm acreage and purchased surplus crops to maintain high prices for farmers.
It was proposed by Charles Brannan, who served as the fourteenth United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1948 to 1953 as a member of President Harry S. Truman's cabinet.
[18] Senator Hubert Humphrey, a leading Democrat, in 1953 convinced bipartisan majorities in Congress to use the Commodity Credit Corporation's store of surplus crops as part of American foreign aid.
Federal budget outlays reached $60 billion during his first term, but real farm income declined to its lowest level in postwar years.
The 1981 farm bill involved only small changes and continued the policy of restricting supply rather than increasing demand.
Instead, the government began requiring farmers to enroll in a crop insurance program in order to receive farm payments.
[17] These payments allowed grain farmers to receive a government check every year based on yields and acreage of the farm as recorded the previous decade.
[17] However, food stamps and nutrition remained the largest portion of the bill's cost, amounting to a proposed $768.2 billion over ten years.
[29] This was enacted as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, passed by Congress on January 1, 2013, and signed into law the next day by President Barack Obama.
[37] The 2018 farm bill, or Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 20, 2018.
About three-quarters of the budget was allocated for nutritional programs such as SNAP, though the remaining quarter placed a higher emphasis on conservation efforts.
[41] Resulting in the formation of the CBD Policy Working Group, the FDA employed cannabidiol as an active ingredient in pediatric treatments and other innovations.
One expert said of the farm bill that:"It is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with Congress, revealing how life-sustaining policies can be taken hostage by a handful of parochial lawmakers; how incredibly difficult it is to make even minor changes that would actually help consumers and small businesses; and how intractable the divide on Capitol Hill has become, particularly between urban and rural legislators.
