A bitter pill

After more than two years of partisan squabbles, a $100-billion-per-year compromise farm bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 251 to 166. In the end, 89 Democrats in the House voted for the bill and 66 Republicans voted against it. President Barack Obama has indicated he will sign the bill if the Senate approves it as well, which it appears will happen.

The bill contains cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) but leaves intact most crop subsidies. The bill cuts about 1 percent, or $800 million a year, from the $80-billion-per year SNAP program. House Republicans were asking for a 5 percent cut. Last June, the House approved a farm bill with $4 billion in cuts, but the legislation never made it through the Senate, where Democrats wanted to limit the cuts to SNAP to $400 million.

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"This bill is not perfect, and no bill is," admitted Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the most senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who was able to negotiate a compromise guaranteeing lower premium rates for small dairy farms in Vermont and other states and substantially higher rates for the country’s largest dairy farms. The farm bill also creates a new dairy product purchase program that would allow the Secretary of Agriculture to purchase dairy products for donation to food banks and other nonprofits that help low-income groups when margins (the difference between the cost of animal feed and farm milk prices) fall below a certain level.

"This is a huge and complicated bill which has some very positive provisions but also some negative ones," noted Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. "The good news is that this legislation provides support for family-based dairy farmers in Vermont and throughout the country. The bad news is that it makes harmful cuts in nutrition programs."

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