Purpose of the Farm Bill

Purpose of the Farm Bill

Purpose of the Farm Bill

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.

Every five years, the Farm Bill is debated and renewed and as most of you know, this is a Farm Bill passage year. So why should the general public care?

According to National Association of Wheat Growers Secretary-Treasurer and Washington Wheat grower Brett Blankenship the Farm Bill provides four important functions that affect all U.S. citizens in some way.

He says the first function is to feed our country’s hungry and take care of poor -- which uses 80 percent of the Farm Bill’s budget.

Blankenship: “The second thing the Farm Bill does is that it feeds the country. It gives us a stable, abundant, safe food supply. One of the safest and most certainly the most inexpensive and accessible food supplies in the world.”

The third Farm Bill function Blankenship says allows U.S. farmers to feed the world through its export and trade programs. Finally he says the fourth is to provide the security and risk management tools farmers need to stay on the farm and survive the fluctuations of uncontrollable elements like weather, disasters, market prices, and global politics.

Blankenship: “There was a lot of talk of economic stimulus a few years ago in the Great Recession but because the Farm Bill was in place, the Great Recession missed most of agriculture. Agriculture has done reasonably well and that is because the Farm Bill becomes the stimulus for the rest of America. The stimulus package that we call the Farm Bill not only keeps growers on the land, but it generates jobs and economy that percolates throughout greater economic good. The Farm Bill needs to been seen more in that light as an economic stimulus package.”

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
 

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