Across these decades, the breadth of policy areas addressed through such farm bills has expanded beyond providing support for a limited number of agricultural commodities to include establishing programs and policies that address a broad spectrum of related areas. The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 ( P.L. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected at enactment that outlays of the 2018 farm bill will amount to $428 billion over the five-year life of the law (FY2019-FY2023). CBO estimated that in its first five years, the enacted 2018 farm bill will increase spending by $1.8 billion, compared with a simple extension of the 2014 farm bill, but that this initial increase will be entirely offset in the second five years of the budget window. Generally, many programs (such as the farm commodity programs or supplemental nutrition assistance) are assumed to continue in the baseline as if there were no change in policy and the program did not expire. Relative to the baseline, the overall score of the 2018 farm bill is budget neutral over a 10-year period. Major field-crop programs include the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) programs and the Marketing Assistance Loan (MAL) program (see Table 5 ). The dairy program involves protecting a portion of the margin between milk and feed prices. Also, ARC will use a trend-adjusted yield, as is done by RMA for the federal crop insurance program. This has the potential to raise ARC revenue guarantees for producers. Thus, raising the loan rate for a commodity lowers its potential PLC program payment rate. Also, the definition of family farm is expanded to include first cousins, nieces, and nephews, thus increasing the potential pool of individuals eligible for individual payment limits on family farming operations. The two largest working lands programs—Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)—account for more than half of all conservation program funding. The largest land retirement program—the Conservation Reserve Program—is reauthorized and expanded under the enacted 2018 farm bill. Under the new law, annual CRP enrollment is increased incrementally from 24 million acres in FY2019 to 27 million by FY2023. The enacted bill also makes a number of other changes that would further expand grazing and commercial uses on CRP acres as well as transition options for new and limited resource producers. While the enacted provisions incorporate some of the SNAP policies included in the House- and/or Senate-passed bills, the Nutrition title does not include the House-passed bill's expansion of work requirements and SNAP employment and training (E&T) programs. The law reauthorizes SNAP and related programs for five years through the end of FY2023. The enacted 2018 farm bill includes policies intended to reduce errors and fraud in SNAP. Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) and retailers . The Nutrition title reauthorizes and makes some policy changes to the nutrition assistance programs that distribute USDA foods to low-income households. The enacted bill also increases funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program. The State Agricultural Loan Mediation Program is reauthorized through FY2023, and the range of issues covered by the program is expanded. 115-334 also directs the Secretary to prioritize assistance under certain programs between FY2019 and FY2025 to combat substance use disorder. The law amends the Rural Broadband Access Loan and Loan Guarantee Program to allow USDA to provide grants, in addition to loans and loan guarantees, to fund broadband deployment projects. 115-334 amends the definition of rural in the ConAct (P.L. A new provision creates a "Hemp Production" subtitle under the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, expanding the existing statutory definition of hemp and expanding eligibility to other producers and groups, including tribes and territories. The forestry title also addresses issues related to the accumulation of biomass in many forests and the associated increased risk for uncharacteristic wildfires on both federal and nonfederal land. The new law makes changes both to farmers markets and local foods promotion programs, combining and expanding the Farmers Market Promotion Program and Local Food Promotion Program, along with the Value-Added Agricultural Product Market Development Grants program, to create a new "Local Agriculture Market Program" with an expanded mission and mandatory funding of $50 million for FY2019 and each year thereafter, plus authorized appropriations. The new law also includes a number of provisions that further facilitate the commercial cultivation, processing, and marketing of industrial hemp in the United States. Other provisions in the law's crop insurance title make hemp producers eligible to participate in federal crop insurance programs, while provisions in the Research title of the law make hemp production eligible for certain USDA research and development programs. Within the 2018 farm bill's Crop Insurance title, the section with the highest projected increase in outlays ($90 million increase over FY2019-FY2028, Section 11109) expands coverage for forage and grazing by authorizing catastrophic level coverage for insurance plans covering grazing crops and grasses It also allows producers to purchase separate crop insurance policies for crops that can be both grazed and mechanically harvested on the same acres during the same growing season and to receive independent indemnities for each intended use. Two other sections of the 2018 farm bill have projected outlay increases compared with prior law. The livestock subtitle of the enacted 2018 farm bill establishes the National Animal Disease Preparedness Response Program (NADPRP) and the National Animal Vaccine and Veterinary Countermeasures Bank (NAVVCB), both under the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) in the Animal Health Protection Act (7 U.S.C. For one, the act requires USDA to re-establish the position of Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development that USDA abolished and replaced with an Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development in its May 2017 reorganization. In addition, the enacted bill requires USDA to conduct and issue various studies and reports on a variety of topics, among which are food waste; the business centers of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Farm Service Agency, and the Risk Management Agency; the number of personnel in USDA agencies each year; the effect of absentee landlords; the level of funding that would allow the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to address evolving research and extension needs in rural and farming communities; an FDA food labeling regulation (81 Fed.
Congress sets national food and agriculture policy through periodic omnibus farm bills that address a broad range of farm and food programs and policies. The 115th Congress established the direction of farm and food policy for five years through 2023 by enacting the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, which the President signed into law on December 20, 2018, as P.L. 115-334.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the cost of programs with mandatory spending—such as nutrition programs, commodity support programs, major conservation programs, and crop insurance—in the enacted 2018 farm bill at $867 billion over a 10-year budget window of FY2019-FY2028. This amount is budget neutral compared with CBO's baseline scenario of an extension of 2014 farm bill (P.L. 113-79) programs with no changes. CBO estimates that over the five-year life of the law (FY2019-FY2023), outlays will amount to $428 billion, or $1.8 billion above the baseline scenario. In general, the new law largely extends many major programs through FY2023, thereby providing an overlay of continuity with the existing framework of agriculture and nutrition programs even as it modifies numerous programs, alters the amount and type of program funding that certain programs receive, and exercises discretion not to reauthorize some others.
The enacted 2018 farm bill extends agricultural commodity support programs largely along existing lines while modifying them in various ways. For instance, producers acquire greater flexibility, compared with prior law, to switch between the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) revenue support programs. Producers may update program yields that factor into payments under PLC, while a newly added escalator could raise a commodity's reference price under the program. The law also makes several modifications to ARC, including introducing a trend-adjusted yield that has the potential to raise ARC revenue guarantees for producers. Other changes include an increase in marketing assistance loan rates for a number of crops and revising the definition of family farm to include nephews, nieces, and cousins, making these individuals eligible for farm program payments. The law modifies dairy programs, including renaming the Margin Protection Program as Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) and revising it to expand the margin protection between milk prices and feed costs that milk producers may purchase, as well as lowering the cost of this coverage for the first 5 million pounds of milk produced. Loan rates under the sugar program are increased.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest domestic nutrition assistance program, is reauthorized through FY2023. The law amends SNAP in a number of ways, including making changes to policies intended to reduced errors and fraud in SNAP, limiting fees that electronic benefit transfer processors may charge, and requiring nationwide online acceptance of SNAP benefits. Not included in the enacted bill are provisions in the House-passed bill that would have expanded work requirements and SNAP employment and training programs. The enacted bill does make certain modifications to these elements of the program, such as expanding the employment and training activities that a state may provide. Beyond SNAP, the law amends programs that distribute U.S. Department of Agriculture foods to low-income households, and it increases funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).
The enacted farm bill addresses agricultural conservation on several fronts. For one, it reauthorizes the two largest working lands programs—the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)—while reducing the overall funding allocated for these two programs. It also reauthorizes the primary land retirement program, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), allowing it to expand from a maximum of 24 million acres in FY2019 to 27 million acres in FY2023 while offsetting the added cost of any enrollment increase through lower payments to participants. The law also expands grazing and commercial uses on CRP acres and provides options for new and limited resource producers for transitioning CRP land.
The enacted 2018 farm bill addresses a range of issues of importance to rural America, including combatting substance abuse by prioritizing assistance under certain programs, by expanding broadband access and providing additional authorized appropriations to that end and by amending the definition of rural by excluding certain groups of individuals from population-based criteria. The credit title increases the maximum loan amount for guaranteed loans, and these amounts are adjusted for inflation thereafter. The ceiling for direct loans is also raised, among other changes.
Among the broad and diverse array of other provisions in the law are provisions intended to facilitate the commercial cultivation, processing, and marketing of hemp. Among these, hemp with low levels of the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana is excluded from the statutory definition of marijuana. The law creates a new hemp program under USDA oversight and makes hemp an eligible crop under the federal crop insurance program. The enacted 2018 farm bill also strengthens the National Organic Program and increases funding for organic agricultural research.
Within the Miscellaneous title, the livestock industry is the object of several initiatives to guard against disease outbreaks and strengthen the response to such events. These include the establishment of the National Animal Disease Preparedness Response Program and the National Animal Vaccine and Veterinary Countermeasures Bank. The law also addresses USDA organizational changes in recent years, requiring USDA to reestablish the position of Under Secretary for Rural Development and creating a Rural Health Liaison, among other changes. Among its provisions, the Forestry title addresses the accumulation of biomass in many forests and the consequent risk of wildfires by establishing, reauthorizing, and modifying various assistance programs to promote wood use and biomass removal.
With these programs, policies, and initiatives codified into law, the job that remains is for USDA, other federal agencies, and entities designated by the enacted farm law to implement the will of Congress through regulatory actions and other administrative measures. As implementation of the farm law proceeds, Congress may find it prudent to monitor this process and to provide direction and feedback through the exercise of its oversight responsibilities.