It’s official – we now have a farm bill. On Friday, President Obama officially signed it into law, marking the end of two years of campaigning.
As we previously reported, the bill is a mixed bag of good and bad. Funding for many beginning farmer programs, including the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, are at the highest level we could hope for. At the same time, there are some shortcomings, including a lack of real payment limit reforms (a maximum for how much large corporate farms can receive in subsidies) and a cut to the SNAP program.
We’ll be offering more detailed breakdowns of the bill, but in the mean time (and since it’s Monday morning!) we’ll start off with an easy-to-digest summary. Thanks to the folks at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition for the big-picture analysis and for putting together this great infographic:
