The farm bill draft released by the House Agriculture committee includes provisions that “would reverse decades of precedent,” and usher in an era of “unlimited farm subsidies for the nation’s largest mega-farms,” according to the National Sustainable Ag Coalition.
The coalition calls the farm bill a “brazen attempt to undo years of statute for the benefit of the nation’s largest farm operations.” The bill, according to the coalition, would exempt most corporate farms from being limited to a single payment, and make it easier for large farms to reorganize as family farms. The coalition also says the draft would remove payment limitations from marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments, and exempt partnerships, joint ventures, LLCs and Subchapter S corporations from the adjusted gross income means-testing provision. The coalition alleges that current rules already “allow for rampant abuse of subsidy payments,” making the reforms in the farm bill draft “unconscionable.”
The coalition is urging the House Committee to reject in its entirety the proposed changes to payment limitation and AGI provisions in the draft.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.