The Farm Bill has Expired, What’s Next?
The Farm Bill has now expired. What follows is the excerpt of an article from Food and Water Watch (By Patty Lovera) which explains the process, the implications, and what’s next. It’s worth a read:
October 1 is an important date around Washington, DC, because it’s the first day of the government’s fiscal year. So for the federal government, it is now 2013.
While that might seem irrelevant unless you’re an accountant, it does matter for how government agencies run their programs. And like so many things happening in D.C. this year, budgets have not been done in a normal process. One thing Congress did manage to do before leaving town was to deal (kind of) with the budget situation, by passing a “continuing resolution” that extends the 2012 budget for another six months instead of passing a new one. This means they will have to re-examine the budgets for the rest of 2013 after the election, in the new Congress. (And this will happen after the budget cuts required by last year’s deficit reduction deal, called “sequestration,” kicks in. Which is a topic for a different day.)
But one thing that did NOT get done was to pass a new Farm Bill. And the 2008 Farm Bill expired yesterday. We are now running without a Farm Bill, a situation that most ag policy veterans swore would never happen because it was just too disruptive to contemplate. But here we are.
Read the full article at: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.
Also see Beginning Farmer’s Farm Policy and Agricultural Politics Page
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