Who Benefits from the Farm Bill?

THE FARM BILL IS DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE SHORTHAND for the gargantuan package of legislation about food and farming that the US Congress drafts, debates, and ultimately passes every five to seven years. Each bill, as well as the drafts now under consideration, actually has a formal name—such as the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977; the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996; the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002; the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008; the Agricultural Act of 2014—but people generally refer to each as simply “the Farm Bill.” Since its origins in 1933 as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the bill has snowballed into one of the most—if not the most—significant legislative measures affecting land use in the United States.