Dairy Title in Farm Bill Framework Versions

Now that both the House and the Senate have released their initial versions of a new farm bill, National Milk Producers Federation, Senior Vice President of Member Services and Governance, Chris Galan outlines the main differences between the two sets of framework.

“One is that the USDA has a significant amount of new funding in the past couple years to the Inflation Reduction Act to spend on what we call climate-smart farming. And at least some of the Republicans have been interested in shifting some of the money for climate-smart farming practices into supporting the commodity insurance titles. And so that's of greater interest, I think, to the Republicans and to the Democrats. The other issue has been nutrition funding, let's remember that most of the money in these Farm Bills goes for feeding programs, not for farm programs. And so there's been some interest in shifting money out of nutrition or putting more limits on who qualifies for USDA food assistance. And that's a more appeal to people in one party than the other. So those I think are going to be sort of a flashpoint where hopefully cooler heads will prevail and they'll end up with compromise. If we're going to get a bill done this year."

Galen explains that both bills contain additional support for the dairy title and both bills support food processors using common food names.”

Galen says they're happy to have something for people to look at. And not just Farm Bill, rumors and hearsay.