House And Senate Pass farm bilL

Get the latest farm bill news as it happens. Subscribe to our RSS feed.

Both the House and Senate passed the Farm Bill with overwhelming margins - 318-106 in the House, 85-15 in the Senate. It is anticipated the President will veto the bill by May 23rd.

The bill includes many program improvements and critical funding to improve our environment, make local foods more widely available, protect farm and ranch land, and dramatically increase food assistance for families struggling with rising food costs.

We’ve also fought hard for subsidy reform with the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program, and won a victory for inclusion of this new program.

• ACRE is subsidy reform (PDF)
• Conservation title overview including the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (PDF)
• Local Foods overview (PDF)
• Nutrition title overview

A White House veto threat is prompting lawmakers to build support for a veto override—which would require a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate. While the final compromise bill does not include all the reforms we would like to see, there is no question it is better than the alternative—an extension of current policies. AFT along with over 500 other organizations support the farm bill (PDF) and agree we must lock in the funding and program improvements we’ve achieved now so we can continue building on them in the future.

More Information:

• AFT press release on House-Senate farm bill package
• Overview of 2008 Farm Bill improvements (PDF)
• Full farm bill text and title-by-title fact sheets from the House Agriculture Committee website
• Farm bill legislative process