Congress Farm Bill Debate – UPDATE!
First, thanks to the hundreds of young farmers (and supporters!) who have taken action so far today! We’ve received some updates on the House’s progress since we broke the Farm Bill news last night: The House rules committee finally released their list of 103 amendments that they consider “worthy” of being brought to the House floor. Of those, a few of them need you to act RIGHT NOW: Fortenberry #93 – This amendment... Read More
Take Action: Tell your representative to stand with beginning farmers
Today, the House will start voting on amendments for its final version of the 2013 Farm Bill. If you’ve been waiting, wondering how you can make a difference, this is it! The Senate passed its version of the 2013 Farm Bill earlier this month. The final product shows the hard work that we – the beginning farmer movement – put into keeping pressure on our politicians. You can read an in-depth analysis of the bill here. The... Read More
Final Review of the Senate Farm Bill and How It Affects You
Before we switch our focus over to the House, we need to do a quick run-through of the Farm Bill that made its way through the Senate over the past few weeks. With such a huge piece of legislation, it’s difficult to fully wrap one’s head around it; we are lucky to have the hotshots over at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition to guide us through it and give their opinion. Here’s a brief from their bill analysis, originally... Read More
Farm Bill passes Senate Yesterday, on to the House
The Senate officially passed its version of the US Farm Bill yesterday, throwing the ball in the court of the House of Representatives. We want to thank everyone who took actions – whether it was sending emails, signing petitions or making phone calls – to put pressure on their Senators. Due to the high levels of partisan politics last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to push through a cloture vote, meaning that discussion... Read More
Senate to pass its Farm Bill draft on Monday
Senator Reid on the Senate floor. Photo courtesy of Senate website. A quick follow up on the announcement earlier this week that the Senate would be wrapping up debates on Farm Bill amendments: The Senate approved the change, passing the cloture yesterday morning. This means, essentially, that there was enough debate and not enough consensus to the point that a super-majority of Senators decided to cut to the chase and skip the amendment process. Cloture... Read More
Farm Bill Update – Senate moves to cut debate
As the growing season moves into the height of summer, even the most politically-conscience of us start to get overwhelmed by the day-to-day activities on the farm. Unfortunately for us, it seems now’s the time that things are really moving in DC! Since it’s been a little while since our last Farm Bill update, here goes: As we reported last month, the current Farm Bill focus is in the Senate, where the Agriculture Committee has already... Read More
Farm Bill Update – the Committee Drafts are in
Last week we told you that the Senate and House Agriculture Committees were having their respective committee markup sessions, where the committees wrote a basic draft of the Farm Bill. A House Agriculture Committee meeting, photo courtesy of Ag Committee web site. Here’s a quick recap on the process: the Chairs and Ranking Members of each committee putting together an initial draft and presenting it to the members of the Ag committees. ... Read More
This week the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are working on the 2013 Farm Bill!
Things are really picking up with the new Farm Bill. After the painful slowness of last year, it’s surprising to see Congress actually building real momentum into writing the new five-year bill. Here is the latest news from Washington: Last week, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees released draft farm bills. Now, members of the Committees will “mark up” each draft bill by introducing amendments that will change the content... Read More
Farm Bill News – Mark-Up Starts Next Week!
It’s been a long wait, but things are starting to move on the next five-year Farm Bill. NYFC members at the Farmer Fly-in in Washington to push for better beginning farmer legislation. As a quick refresher, the Farm Bill, which normally is written every five years and dictates all federal spending on agricultural programs, expired last fall. Thanks to hyper-partisanship, Congress was unable to put together a successor bill all year (as you’ll... Read More
Young Farmers in the House at NSAC winter strategy meeting
Maya Wiley of CSI addresses the NSAC winter meeting. Photo courtesy of NSAC. Last month, the Young Farmers’ Coalition took part in the semi-annual planning meeting of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). NYFC is a member group of NSAC, which advocates nationally for agricultural reform and also coordinates the advocacy efforts of nearly 100 member organizations. The winter meeting – this most recent one held in Haines City,... Read More
