Farm Bill Primer Series: A Guide to Omnibus Legislation on Agriculture and Food Programs

This report constitutes a guide to a series of two-page reports that examine the various programs and policies that comprise periodic omnibus legislation on farm and food policy, commonly known as "the farm bill." The current farm bill (P.L. 113-79) was signed into law in February 2014. Many of the programs authorized by the 2014 farm bill are scheduled to expire in 2018 unless Congress provides for an extension, or reauthorizes them. Without congressional action, key commodity support programs would revert to permanently authorized legislation from the 1930s and 1940s. This report summarizes the farm bill primers listed below while also providing hyperlinks to the full reports. This report in not comprehensive but rather a work in progress in that summaries of additional primer reports will be added as they become available