Stalled US farm talks to affect milk price

As the fight over the farm bill’s $80 billion-a-year food stamps program continues in US Congress, stalled negotiations could soon have impacts on milk price, the Associated Press reports.

If members of the House and Senate don’t reach agreement on the enormous $500 billion farm bill, food stamp recipients would be hit hard and dairy products support could expire at the end of the year, sending the price of milk skyward, the AP said.

Lawmakers of both floors are set to start the long-due farm bill negotiations this week.

The farm bill, which sets policy for farm subsidies, the food stamps and other rural development projects, has been moving in Congress very slowly as lawmakers were busy, earlier this month, dealing with other national crises like budget negotiations, healthcare and immigration legislation.

The long-delayed farm bill is normally reauthorized by lawmakers every 5 years, but this time Congress passed an eight-month extension over the 2008 legislation, to deal with the gridlock over food stamp funding.

Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps program, helps Americans with low income buy food. The latest statistics show a near-record 47.8 million people received benefits averaging $133 a month

The GOP-led House wants to cut the food stamps program by $39 billion over a decade, a reduction that is almost ten times more than the one proposed by the Democrat-run Senate.

Four million people would be cut from the program in 2014 if the tight eligibility rules in the House pass.

Nutrition and farm subsidy programs have been part of a package since the 1970s, creating a coalition of farm-state and urban lawmakers.

As Think Progress reports, these are some of the programs that will disappear until the end of the crop year: Dairy safety net programs, disaster relief, conservation programs, Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, trade and export, international food aid.

AN/ARA