A Farm Bill Update: More Changes to Commodity Programs

After creating a one-year extension to the 2008 Farm Bill in the midst of larger budget issues at the end of last year, Congress has resumed the Farm Bill process.Both the Senate and House Ag Committees have released 2013 Farm Bill markups (see Senate version here; House version here).Both the Senate and House drafts are similar to the versions passed by the full Senate and House Ag Committee in 2012 (see previous posts from Carl Zulauf summarizing those here and here) in that the majority of existing commodity programs (direct, countercyclical, ACRE, and SURE programs) are repealed to achieve spending reductions.However, there have been some slight changes to the programs created to replace those being repealed, particularly in the new version from the Senate.Today's post provides a summary of some of those commodity program changes.Discussion of continued changes in other titles, such as Crop Insurance, and the budget implications will be saved for future posts.