The Senate approved a sweeping new farm bill on Monday that will cost nearly $955 billion over the next 10 years, the first step in a renewed attempt at passing legislation that will set the country’s food and agriculture programs and policy.

The bill, which finances programs as diverse as crop insurance for farmers, food assistance for low-income families and foreign food aid, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 66 to 27. The Senate passed a similar bill last year, but the House failed to bring its bill to a vote. The last farm bill that was passed by both chambers, in 2008, was extended until Sept. 30.

“The Senate today voted to support 16 million American jobs, to save taxpayers billions and to implement the most significant reforms to agriculture programs in decades,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She was a co-author of the bill with Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the committee.

The Senate bill would cut $24 billion from current spending levels, including about $4.1 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years. Groups fighting hunger said the cuts in food stamps would put millions of poor families at risk. A House version of the bill would provide for food stamp cuts of $20 billion, just one major example of how far apart the two houses are in adjusting spending.

In the House, the farm bill faces a much tougher road. Last year, conservative lawmakers helped kill the bill because of their desire for deeper cuts in the food stamp program, which serves about 45 million Americans.

Hoping to satisfy conservatives, the House Agriculture Committee recently increased the amount of cuts to the program to the $20 billion mark over the next 10 years, up from $16 billion in last year’s bill. In a statement before the Senate vote, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said the House would begin work on its version of the farm bill this month.

Conservation programs that help protect farmland and waters would be cut by about $3.5 billion in the Senate bill, with additional reductions coming from the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.

Senators also left in place the decades-old international food aid program. The Obama administration had called for overhauling the $1.4 billion program to allow the government to buy food locally in less developed countries, instead of buying food in the United States and shipping it overseas. The Senate rejected the proposal but increased spending for buying food abroad to $60 million from $40 million.

The most significant change would be the elimination of about $5 billion a year in direct payments to farmers and farmland owners, whether or not they grew crops. Eliminating the age-old program would make the highly subsidized crop insurance program the primary safety net when crop prices drop. Currently, the government subsidizes about 62 percent of the crop insurance premiums, and the policies typically guarantee 75 percent to 85 percent of a farmer’s revenue.

The crop insurance subsidy would cost about $9 billion a year. The policies are sold by 15 private insurance companies, which receive a total of about $1.3 billion annually from the government. The government also backs the companies against losses.

Critics of crop insurance, including the conservative Heritage Foundation and environmental groups, said it had become more of a farm income support program than a system that protects farmers in times of disasters like the 2012 drought.

The Senate bill would add subsides for Southern rice and peanut farmers, who said crop insurance would provide an inadequate safety net for them. But unlike last year’s bill, the existing legislation would preserve a catfish inspection program that opponents like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, called duplicative and wasteful. The Food and Drug Administration has a similar inspection program.

The agriculture industry generally praised the bill. Environmental groups said it included some important changes but added that it fell short because it would expand crop insurance subsidies and price guarantees for the largest and most successful farmers while cutting nutrition and conservation programs.

Source: New York Times