The Making of the 1,000-Page Farm Bill

To make sense of the long quarrel in Congress over the five-year, $500 billion farm bill, look back in time, way before red and blue became the colors that define U.S. politics. Instead, think the Blue and the Gray. It’s North vs. South, big state against small—rivalries that date to the earliest days of the Republic. Lawmakers from Georgia and Arkansas demand price protections for rice and peanuts. Midwesterners hold out for generous crop insurance for corn. Meanwhile, members from Northern cities stand guard over money for food stamps. “The Constitution was set up as a series of compromises among regions,” says former Kansas Representative Dan Glickman, who was Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton. “You still see that in the farm bill.”

A massive, twice-a-decade undertaking, the farm bill runs more than 1,000 pages, detailing the budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It spells out which crops and products will get special treatment (and, as important, which won’t); how far the government will go to protect farmers against losses; and how to divvy up billions of dollars for research, rural development, conservation, trade, and agricultural promotion abroad. Most of the money doesn’t even go to farmers: Four-fifths of the total is spent on food aid for children and the poor.