T he 2014 farm bill (the Agricultural Act of 2014, P.L. That is, they have a "baseline" beyond the end of the farm bill that may be used to pay to continue those programs. The 2014 farm bill contains 39 programs that received mandatory funding that do not have a baseline beyond FY2018. For these programs to continue, they would need to be allocated new budgetary authority. The Importance of Baseline to the Farm Bill

Funding for farm bill programs is provided in two ways: 
1. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline is a projection at a particular point in time of what future federal spending on mandatory programs would be under current law. This baseline is the benchmark against which proposed changes in law are measured. Having a baseline essentially gives programs built-in future funding if policymakers decide that the programs should continue; straightforward reauthorization would not have a scoring effect. Generally, a program with estimated mandatory spending in the last year of its authorization will be assumed to continue in the baseline as if there were no change in policy and it did not expire. However, some programs may not be assumed to continue in the budget baseline beyond the end of a farm bill because they are either
programs with estimated mandatory spending less than a minimum $50 million scoring threshold in the last year of the farm bill, or new programs established after 1997 for which the Budget Committees determined that the mandatory spending shall not extend beyond expiration. These programs had estimated mandatory spending totaling $2.824 billion over the five-year window of the farm bill ( Table 1 ). Any extended authorization of these programs would be scored as new mandatory spending, which may require either offsets from existing baseline for other programs or an increase in net spending. As a share of the $489 billion five-year mandatory cost of the farm bill in 2014, programs without a baseline beyond FY2018 are relatively small: 0.6% of the total projected farm bill spending, or 2.5% of the total excluding the nutrition programs ( Table 1 ). For the rural development title, 100% of the mandatory spending in the 2014 farm bill was by programs that do not have baseline beyond FY2018.
The 2014 farm bill (the Agricultural Act of 2014, P.L. 113-79) provided mandatory funding for many programs. Some of these programs have a budget baseline beyond the end of the farm bill in FY2018, while others do not. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline is a projection at a particular point in time of what future federal spending on mandatory programs would be under current law. This baseline is the benchmark against which proposed changes in law are measured. This report identifies mandatory programs in the 2014 farm bill that lack a budget baseline and explains the significance of this for enacting a successor to the current farm bill.
Generally, a program with estimated mandatory spending in the last year of its authorization will be assumed to continue in the baseline as if there were no change in policy and it did not expire. However, some programs may not be assumed to continue in the budget baseline, because the program had estimated mandatory spending less than a minimum $50 million scoring threshold in the last year of the farm bill, or the Budget Committees and/or Agriculture Committees determined that mandatory spending shall not extend beyond expiration.
Having a baseline essentially gives programs built-in future funding if policymakers decide that the programs should continue. Programs without a continuing baseline beyond the end of farm bill do not have assured future funding. As such, any extended authorization of these latter programs would be scored as new mandatory spending.
The 2014 farm bill contains 39 programs that received mandatory funding that do not have baseline beyond FY2018. These programs had estimated mandatory spending totaling $2.824 billion over the five-year farm bill. While this total may be a relatively small fraction of total farm bill spending (0.6% of the $489 billion five-year total projection), the effect may be particularly important to specific farm bill titles and to the programs' beneficiaries.
Notable programs among this group include certain conservation programs; most of the bioenergy, rural development, and research title programs; various nutrition title pilot programs and studies; organic agriculture and farmers' market programs; trade promotion programs; and outreach to socially disadvantaged and military veteran farmers. If policymakers want to continue these programs in the next farm bill, they may need to find budgetary offsets to pay for the costs.