During the last farm bill the House and Senate Agriculture committees did their part to reduce government spending by drastically cutting funding for agriculture.  Now the American Farm Bureau Federation and 254 other ag groups are calling for Congress to reject further cuts to farm programs.  A recent letter to the Budget and Appropriations leaders opposes further reducing spending for conservation, nutrition assistance and the farm safety net.

Only two years ago the farm bill contributed a reduction of $16 billion over ten years to help meet the nation’s reform goals.  Budget cuts involve difficult decisions and difficult actions.  Some of those cuts are still being implemented today.

In addition to asking Budget and Appropriations leaders to oppose any additional cuts for the Agriculture Committees in the FY 2017 appropriations process, the groups also asked to oppose any proposals to re-open any title of the farm bill during the consideration of the 2017 Budget Resolution. The groups also requested that neither the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry nor the House Committee on Agriculture be subject to reconciliation instructions.

“The Congressional Budget Office projects that mandatory farm bill spending will decline over the next five years, while mandatory‎ federal spending outside the Agriculture committees’ jurisdiction will rise over the same time period,” the letter stated. “These committees have already done the hard work to make the difficult choices necessary to deliver bipartisan cuts, which the farm and food community have accepted in securing agriculture’s contribution to the goal of federal deficit reduction.”

You can read the letter here.