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Congress Back to Work on Farm Bill Legislation

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

After a 16 day partial federal U.S. government shutdown, Congress is moving forward on business, which includes the farm bill. Talks are expected to start up again on Monday and continue for the rest of the week.

The 2008 Farm Bill extension expired Sept. 30, with no new bill currently in place. There are several different components to the bill, including crop insurance and perhaps the most contentious, food assistance - which Republicans and Democrats have yet to find a compromise.

It comes down to numbers. The Republicans advocate to cut food stamps by $40 billion, while Democrats propose a $4.5 billion cut. Let’s see if the House and Senate can reconcile its food and farm issues to draft a new Farm Bill law this week.
 


Trending Video

Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.