What is the Farm Bill?

Jun 17, 2024

In a simple explanation, the farm bill is a package of legislation that governs an assemblage of agriculture and food programs. However, there is nothing simple about the farm bill.

While the roots of the farm bill are planted deep in its farm support programs, the bill has expanded to address various issues in an ever-evolving world. From conservation initiatives and bioenergy to rural development and nutrition policy, the farm bill provides funding for programs that impact individuals of different regions and social demographics across the country.

The current farm bill is made up of 12 titles:

Title I: Commodities — Provides support for major commodity crops, including wheat, corn, soybeans, peanuts, rice, dairy, and sugar. Reauthorizes marketing loan and disaster programs. Title I includes funding for the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs.

Title II: Conservation — Encourages environmental stewardship of farmland and refined land management through land retirement programs and/ or working lands programs. Addresses environmental and natural resource concerns [HB2] . Title II includes funding for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP).

Title III: Trade — Supports the U.S. agricultural export programs as well as various international food assistance programs. Title III includes funding for the Foreign Market Development (FMD) and Market Access Development Programs (MAP).

Title IV: Nutrition — Provides nutrition assistance for low-income households through programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Title V: Credit — Provides lending opportunities that private commercial entities cannot offer, consisting of direct government loans for producers to buy land and operate farms and ranches.

Title VI: Rural Development — Provides funding to programs to build competitive advantages in rural communities. Supports rural housing, business, community facilities, and utility programs through grants, loans, and guarantees.

Title VII: Research, Extension, and Related Matters — Supports agriculture extension and research programs to develop academic knowledge and assist producers in becoming more productive. Title VII includes funding for programs such as the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

Title VIII: Forestry — Provides authority for the U.S. Forest service and supports forestry management programs.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”