Sounding the Alarm on a Harmful Farm Bill

The House Farm Bill would take food out of the refrigerators and off the kitchen tables of households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and set up an unproven workforce bureaucracy that would burden states and participants alike. Low-income seniors, people with disabilities, veterans, unemployed adults, and families with children already are struggling to purchase adequate diets throughout the month on low wages and modest SNAP benefits . Cutting SNAP eligibility and reducing benefits will increase hardship and food insecurity and depress purchasing power that drives local economic activity across America .  -Food Research and Action Center

While the Committee was successful in passing its version of the farm bill (albeit on a strict party line vote), there was no real markup nor substantial debate over the policies put forth in the draft bill. The draft bill came out just days before the scheduled markup, it did not go through the regular order through markup in the various subcommittees and then on to the full committee, and it went through the full committee in the shortest amount of time ever for a farm bill — hardly a stellar case of democracy in action. -National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Anti-hunger organizations agree that the version of the Farm Bill that was approved in the House Agriculture Committee last week could harm working families and vulnerable populations in our country. One of the most harmful provisions of the proposed legislation is a reduction in funding and stringent and unrealistic work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). A handful of respected anti-hunger organizations have put together a brief analysis of the proposed legislation, including links to contact our members of Congress. We included the input from a couple of organizations in New Mexico.

Bread for the World
The bill maintains and improves international food aid programs. However, it also proposes changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that would put millions of Americans at risk of hunger.

Take Action: Call (800-826-3688) or email your congressional representative and tell them to protect SNAP and oppose the House Farm Bill as written.

Write to Congress The proposed bill also imposes benefit and eligibility cuts in addition to stricter work requirements, in the name of getting SNAP recipients back to work. But SNAP already encourages work. When individuals can meet their basic needs, they don't need to worry about where their next meal will come from. Rather, they can focus on finding and keeping a job.

Food Researh and Action Center

Members of the House and Senate are out for a one-week recess from Monday, May 1, through Friday, May 4. Things are moving in Congress, now that the House Agriculture Committee reported out a Farm Bill, H.R.2. House floor action is expected in mid-May. The Senate Agriculture Committee is currently drafting its version of the Farm Bill.  Read FRAC Analysis

Take Action: Recess is the opportune time to engage with your Members of Congress while they are home. Send them back to D.C. with a clear message: the House Farm Bill would take food out of the refrigerators and off the kitchen tables of more than one million households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), leading to greater hunger and poverty and reduced economic growth and productivity in communities across the country.

New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council

The federal farm bill provides resources to almost all New Mexicans through a wide variety of programs. Concerns over losing valuable programs that benefit New Mexico’s families, children, seniors, farmers, ranchers, and communities are at play. These programs benefit our local economies, the health of our people and the stewardship of our resources, provide safety nets to those who are most vulnerable, and provide innovative programs that enhance livelihoods and economic opportunities for rural and urban dwellers alike. The New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council is urging supporters to heed FRAC's call to action.  

New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty

The Farm Bill. It includes a large number of changes to the SNAP program that would reduce or end benefits for a substantial number of New Mexico families. Some of these changes include:

• New work requirements that would require SNAP beneficiaries between ages 18 and 59 who aren’t disabled or caring for a child under 6 to work at least 20 hours and week or participate 20 hours a week in a work program. States would need to build systems and procedures to track hours and participants every month.
• The Farm Bill would cut eligibility for SNAP for hundreds of thousands of families by reducing the income limits from 165% to 130% of the Federal Poverty level and removing any options for New Mexico to increase the eligibility level. 
• Eliminates the Standard Utility Allowance (SUA) for majority a of households. This would require those with out of pocket utility expenses to produce the actual bills for each expense to receive LIHEAP.  

In this video, Sovereign Hager, supervising attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law on Poverty, explained how the SNAP program, benefits New Mexicans, and how proposed cuts could hurt low-income families in our state.



Food Policy Action

The Farm Bill was released Thursday by the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, friends – and while Food Polciy Action is still reading through it line by line, it’s clear this legislation would wreak havoc on working families and falls far short of creating real change that would rebalance our agriculture system.

Writing this bill should’ve been a bipartisan process. But instead, it was crafted in a hyper-partisan series of backroom dealings – and now, vulnerable families and our precious food system will be forced to pay the price.

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition 

An analysis by NSAC
Now that the House Agriculture Committee has passed its draft of the farm bill, The Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 (H.R.2) heads to the House floor for consideration and debate. The House is not expected to take up the bill until the week of May 14, though possibly a week earlier or a week later. While in years past, floor debate has created an opportunity for members who don’t serve on the Agriculture Committee to weigh in and propose amendments to improve the bill, it is uncertain how House leadership will govern debate on the bill and how many amendments they will allow.

In order to pass the House, the farm bill will need at least 218 members to vote in support of the final bill. If every single Democrat votes against the bill, as seems likely at this point, that will leave 237 Republicans – 32 of whom are members of the ultra- conservative Freedom Caucus whose vote on a nearly $1 trillion spending package is far from guaranteed given their historic opposition to farm programs. There are another roughly 30 GOP Members who are more moderate, predominantly from the Northeast and West Coast with a scattering elsewhere, for whom voting for large SNAP cuts, unlimited farm subsidy payments, huge cuts to working lands conservation, and a direct attack on state and local home rule on food and agriculture law is not without some significant political risk.