Senate Passes Long-Stalled Farm Bill, With

Clear Winners and Losers

By RON NIXONFEB. 4, 2014

WASHINGTON No one was happier than Danny Murphy, a Mississippi soybean farmer with
1,500 acres, when the Senate on Tuesday passed a farm bill that expanded crop insurance and
other benefits for agribusiness. Its a relief, Mr. Murphy said.

Few were as unhappy as Sheena Wright, the president of the United Way in New York, who
expects to see a surge of hungry people seeking help because the bill cuts $8 billion in food
stamps over a decade. You are going to have to make a decision on what you are going to do,
buy food or pay rent, Ms. Wright said.

The long-stalled farm bill, which represents nearly $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years
and passed on a rare bipartisan vote, 68 to 32, produced clear winners and losers. Over all,
farmers fared far better than the poor.

The nearly 1,000-page bill, which President Obama is to sign at Michigan State University on
Friday, among other things expanded crop insurance for farmers by $7 billion over a decade and
created new subsidies for rice and peanut growers that would kick in when prices drop. But anti-
hunger advocates said the bill would harm 850,000 American households, about 1.7 million
people spread across 15 states, which would lose an average of $90 per month in benefits
because of the cuts in the food stamp program.

Its absolutely devastating, Ms. Wright said.

Nonetheless, supporters of the bill said it was a success given that lawmakers had to address the
competing concerns of agriculture interests, anti-hunger advocates, proponents of changes to the
international food aid program and budget watchdog groups that want to cut government
spending. They noted that it is projected to cut $17 billion from the budget over a decade.

Lawmakers also drew praise for new soil conservation measures in the bill and for creating a
pilot program to encourage recipients of food stamps to buy more fruits and vegetables.

This is not your fathers farm bill, said Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat and
chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who is the bills author.

Specifically, Ms. Stabenow pointed out that the bill eliminates a much-criticized $5 billion-a-
year crop subsidy to farmers who received the payments whether they grew crops or not.
Instead of getting a government check even in good times, farmers will pay an insurance bill
every year and will only receive support from that insurance in years when they take a loss, Ms.
Stabenow said.
In addition, she said, the food stamp cuts affect 4 percent of recipients and do not remove anyone
from the program. It closes a loophole that states use to increase benefits for food stamp
recipients.

But critics said that the bill continued an age-old Washington tradition of doling out favors to
economic interests in lawmakers home states. Among its pages are dozens of obscure but
economically valuable provisions that benefit not only crop insurers but also sugar producers and
catfish farmers.

The agriculture industry simply does not need all of these supports, said William Frenzel, a
former Republican congressman from Minnesota and a budget analyst at the Brookings
Institution. They saved a little bit of money, but still left us with bad budget and agriculture
policy.

Unlike the food stamp program, the federally subsidized crop insurance program was not cut.
The program, which is administered by 18 companies that are paid $1.4 billion annually by the
government to sell policies to farmers, pays 62 percent of farmers premiums.

Crop insurers scored a major victory from a provision in the bill that bars the Agriculture
Department from renegotiating lesser payments to those companies over the five-year life of the
bill. In previous years, the Agriculture Departments renegotiations with insurance companies
have resulted in billions of dollars in savings for the government.

But the industry said it lobbied for the provision because it was opposed to any further cuts that
would affect an important program for farmers.

Critics of the crop insurance program, like Craig Cox of the Washington-based Environmental
Working Group, said that even for a farm bill, the provision was blatant. It seems remarkable to
me that Congress would pass a law that gives private insurance companies such favorable
treatment, Mr. Cox said.

Other winners in the farm bill included the catfish industry, which benefited from a provision
that moved catfish inspections out of the Food and Drug Administration and into a new $20
million office at the Agriculture Department.

Southern lawmakers said the office was needed because the F.D.A. lacks the resources needed to
inspect imported catfish properly. But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a vocal
opponent of the office, called it a protectionist measure intended to limit imports from countries
like Vietnam.

It seems that catfish is one bottom feeder with friends in high places, Mr. McCain said.

Not all the winners in the farm bill were agriculture groups. Consumer groups foiled an effort to
remove a labeling provision in the bill that requires beef, lamb and poultry producers, among
others, to stamp their products with the country of origin. The meat industry has complained that
the rule is too onerous.
Correction: February 6, 2014

A picture caption on Wednesday with an article about the Senates approval of a long-stalled
farm bill misstated the vote of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. She voted
against not for the legislation.

A version of this article appears in print on February 5, 2014, on page A15 of the New York
edition with the headline: Senate Passes Long-Stalled Farm Bill, With Clear Winners and Losers.