Farm Bill 2012 - Update and Primer

The Farm Bill fast track was derailed last fall, but the bill is still under debate for 2012 and must be passed by September 30.  This means Congress must do one of the following:  pass a stand-alone farm bill, attach a farm bill proposal to another bill, or pass a short or long-term extension of the current law.

Here’s a selection of tools and articles to help you sort out the info.

This Farm Bill Budget Visualizer allowing you to slice and dice the current farm bill in a million different ways to understand where the funds go.

Farm Bill 101 This article covers the Farm Bill from scratch, in case you’ve don’t really know what the farm bill is or why we have one. The pdf report starts with the basics: “What is the Farm Bill” and includes definitions and facts.

Here’s a collection of infographics from a Farm Bill Hackathon, which brought together policy experts, journalists, and computer whizzes to create visual representations of facts contained in and related to the Farm Bill.

The National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition posted an article called “Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Major Factors Influencing the Debate” with a great summary of how the process works.