United States farm bill
In the United States, the farm bill is a comprehensive omnibus bill that is the primary agricultural and food policy instrument of the federal government. Congress typically passes a new farm bill every five to six years.
Congress makes amendments to provisions of permanent law, reauthorizes, amends, or repeals provisions of preceding temporary agricultural acts, and puts forth new policy provisions for a limited time into the future. Beginning in 1933, farm bills have included sections on commodity programs, trade, rural development, farm credit, conservation, agricultural research, food and nutrition programs, marketing, etc.
Some provisions are highly controversial. Provisions can impact international trade, the environment, the food supply, food safety, and the economies of rural America. Powerful interest groups are poised to intervene, including organizations claiming to represent farmers, as well as big agribusiness corporations, and Monsanto. Congress is polarized along lines of ideology and interest groups. Republicans are more conservative, represent rural areas, and are tied to agricultural groups. On the other hand, Democrats are more liberal and represent rural areas and beneficiaries of nutrition programs. Critics sometimes warn against putting together the agricultural and nutrition parts. However, doing so helps to bridge some of the politically relevant cultural differences that exist between legislators of urban and rural, coastal and heartland areas of the country. Traditionally, the agriculture programs have been more important for rural areas of the heartland, while urban and coastal regions have been more concerned with the nutrition assistance programs. There are stakeholders outside of the government that are also interested in food and agriculture issues. These include national farm groups, commodity associations, state organizations, nutrition and public health officials, advocacy groups representing conservation, recreation, rural development, faith-based interests, local food systems, and organic production. Putting nutrition and agriculture topics together allows for stakeholders and advocacy coalitions with different interests to find common ground on topics that are potentially contentious between them.
Some of the programs that are authorized in a farm bill fall into the spending category of mandatory, while others are discretionary. Programs with mandatory funding have their funds authorized directly within the farm bill. On the other hand, programs with discretionary funding require for congressional appropriators to designate funding to them because they are not funded directly in the farm bill. Cost projections for funding estimates are calculated by the Congressional Budget Office using a baseline, which is an estimate of future costs over ten years if the existing costs were to continue unchanged. Adjustments to funding levels between programs generally occurs from one year to the next, incrementally.
The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act, 2026 included in Public Law 119-37 which ended the 2025 United States federal government shutdown extended the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also known as the 2018 United States farm bill, until September 30, 2026.
History of farm bills: 1914 to 1981
1920s
Farmers demanded relief as the agricultural depression grew steadily worse in the mid-1920s, while the rest of the economy flourished. Farmers had a powerful voice in Congress, and demanded federal subsidies, most notably the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill. It was passed but vetoed by President Coolidge. Coolidge instead supported the alternative program of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover and Agriculture Secretary William M. Jardine to modernize farming, by bringing in more electricity, more efficient equipment, better seeds and breeds, more rural education, and better business practices. As president, Hoover set up the Federal Farm Board to promote efficiency and assist funding of cooperatives.New Deal
When the Great Depression began in 1929, farm prices fell sharply, and exports fell as well. In this time of agricultural crisis, farmers continued to produce as much as possible in the hopes that selling high quantities would make up for low prices, further contributing to the surplus and low prices. At the same time, the urban areas faced high unemployment, so the entire nation was struggling economically.The New Deal started three closely related programs after 1933. The Commodity Credit Corporation made 12-month loans of cash against the farmers newly planted crops at a fixed price. If the market price rose higher, the farmer could pay off the loan by selling the crop for a profit. If the market price dropped below the fixed loan price, the farmer would give the harvested crop to the CCC. That would cancel the debt and leave the CCC with a storage issue. In effect CCC set a minimum price for crops such as corn, cotton and wheat. The second program was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. It paid farmers to replace part of their cash crops with soil conservation grasses. This hoped to reduce the crop supply on the open market and was intended to artificially inflate prices. The CCC and AAA were permanent. The third program was the temporary Farm Credit Administration which refinanced farm mortgages in 1934–1935, at lower interest rates.
Farm bills gave financial assistance to farmers who were struggling due to an excess crop supply creating low prices, and also to control and ensure an adequate food supply. The limited benefit to farmers was supposed to outweigh the ongoing hurt to consumers who paid higher food prices. On May 12, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 into law. The AAA also included a nutrition program for consumers, the precursor to food stamps.
The AAA of 1933 was an abrupt change in policy and was designed as an emergency response to the low prices of commodity crops during the Great Depression. The AAA established a primary federal role in limiting the production of certain agricultural crops including wheat, corn, and cotton hoping to reduce supply in order to artificially inflate food crop prices.
President Roosevelt's New Deal agriculture focused legislation paid farmers to reduce the number of productive acres on their farms, hoping to limit the supply of commodity crops on the market. This was, however, a voluntary program, meaning farmers were not required to remove farm acres from production if they were not interested in government subsidy. Those who participated tended to remove land from production that was already producing poorly, thereby reducing their yield as little as possible, and ultimately limiting the effectiveness of the Act. The AAA was short-lived as the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional on January 6, 1936. This was partially due to the processing tax that was used to finance payments to farmers and partially because the Court ruled government regulation of agricultural production within the states unconstitutional.
In 1938, Congress created a more permanent farm bill with a built-in requirement to update it every five years. The Commodity Credit Corporation limited farm acreage and purchased surplus crops to maintain high prices for farmers.
1940–1980
The Brannan Plan was a 1949 proposal of "compensatory payments" to farmers in response to the problem of large agricultural surpluses stemming from price supports for farmers. It was proposed by Charles Brannan, who served as the fourteenth United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1948 to 1953 as a member of President Harry S. Truman's cabinet. It was blocked by conservatives. The start of the Korean War in June 1950 made the surpluses a vital weapon and prices soared as surpluses were used up, making the proposal irrelevant.Senator Hubert Humphrey, a leading Democrat, in 1953 convinced bipartisan majorities in Congress to use the Commodity Credit Corporation's store of surplus crops as part of American foreign aid. The idea was that needy nations could buy grain with local currencies rather than scarce dollars, thereby exporting American surpluses and become a major part of American foreign trade policy during the Cold War.