House Releases Proposed Farm Bill Last week the House Agriculture Committee released the text of its draft Farm Bill, that massive piece of federal omnibus spending legislation that comes around roughly every five years to re-set policy and allocate large sums of tax dollars to a wide array of programs and institutions. Although the Farm Bill addresses federal agricultural policy and spending for the major farm commodities, it also addresses a host of other issues, such as food assistance, foreign trade, energy, forestry, farm credit, and rural development, among others. Thus, it represents one of the rare opportunities for stakeholders across almost every sector of the economy to lobby Congress for
