House Passes Farm Bill

House Passes Farm Bill

House Passes Farm Bill. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

It is almost done. The House of Representatives passed their version of the Food, Farms and Jobs Act or simply, the farm bill. Washington Congressman Doc Hastings was pleased with most of what their version contained.

HASTINGS: I was a little bit concerned that we didn't address the Country of Origin Labeling for example. That's going to cause some hardship with our livestock industry for example. But when you look overall - and you've heard me say many times - if we're going to get a handle on our national debt we have to deal with mandatory spending and because 80% of this bill is non-farm, a lot of it is other mandatory spending, this bill saves some $23-billion dollars in mandatory spending.

Northwest specialty crop producers have been protected with this version of the bill as well. Oregon Congressman Greg Walden

WALDEN: This legislation contains support for vital agricultural research that fights diseases and pests in everything from our onions to pears to potatoes. And it permanently reauthorizes and provides retroactive disaster funding for livestock producers like those who lost grazing land and livestock to those fires in Eastern and Southern Oregon.

The Senate must now pass it before it goes to the President for his signature.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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