Page 50 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

Some conservation groups also want to shore up the Agricultural Conservation Easement
Program (ACEP), which is used to purchase long-term easements for protection of wetlands,
grasslands and other sensitive acreage.

Spending on ACEP is expected to peak in the current fiscal year at about $450 million and then
drop sharply in 2018. ACEP’s baseline for the next farm bill will only be about $250 million.

Front-loading the ACEP spending in the first five years reduced the 10-year cost estimate and
made it easier to fit into the spending targets lawmakers were working with when they wrote the
2014 bill.

A much smaller farm bill provision popular with beginning farmers has no baseline beyond the
farm bill – the CRP Transition Incentives Program. (CRP-TIP). The program offers farmers and
landowners with expiring CRP contracts two additional annual payments if they sell or rent the
land to a beginning farmer or rancher, a veteran, or someone classified as “socially
disadvantaged.” The 2014 farm bill provided the program with $33 million to be spent over five
years.

Mandated spending levels for two other popular programs that subsidize farm practices and
equipment, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation
Stewardship Program (CSP), have been reduced since the 2014 bill passed by appropriators.

Nutrition. Democrats would like to increase SNAP benefits, but with Republicans in control of
the White House and Congress, that is unlikely to happen. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., proposed
a Closing the Meals Gap Act that would change the food spending benchmark used for
calculating SNAP benefits from USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan to the somewhat higher priced Low-
Cost Food Plan.

Some lawmakers may look for savings by restricting
the types of foods and beverages that can be
purchased with SNAP benefits.
A USDA study released in November found that
SNAP recipients spent about 20 cents of every dollar
on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks and candy.
Some conservatives say the finding justifies putting
limits on SNAP purchases.

However, only a small portion of the House Agriculture Committee expressed interest in the idea
during a hearing earlier this week.

House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, has been guarded on the issue. He issued
a statement after the hearing that simply reflected the division of opinion: “While there is a case
to be made for encouraging recipients to make healthy purchasing decisions, there are also
concerns worth noting when it comes to restricting certain food and beverage options.”

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, said that imposing
restrictions on SNAP would “open a real can of worms. Grocery stores have no interest
being the food police, and USDA has been resistant to that effort as well,” Peterson said.

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