UPDATE: The House Farm Bill was voted down 212-198 on Friday, May 18; click here for details.

Today (Friday May 18th), the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on the 2018 Farm Bill, H.R. 2.

This is a disastrous bill and your Representative needs to hear your opposition.

Click here for instructions on how to call your Representative right now.

This bill eliminates conservation programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), cuts funding for local foods programs, allows the largest farm operations to receive unlimited subsidies, and makes unnecessary changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that would force many to lose assistance.

It is a disaster for family farmers, the land and our communities—and offers a gravy train for corporate agriculture. You know what bad Farm Bills do: they result in more land consolidation, suffering communities, farm foreclosures, depleted soil and contaminated water.

We cannot let this happen. You need to call your Representative today.

Click here for the office telephone number of your Representative and a sample script.

The bill does not respond to the needs of family farmers and the land.

H.R. 2:

• Eliminates our nation’s largest working lands conservation program, the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and dramatically cuts conservation funding over the next decade.

• Leaves untouched unfair and damaging aspects of the largest farm safety net, federal crop insurance, while creating new loopholes to help large operations avoid commodity subsidy limits, rendering these limits ineffective. This will continue to tilt the playing field in favor of the largest corporate farm operations and accelerate the consolidation of wealth and land.

• Invests little in the next generation of farmers, rural development, local foods and programs that advance racial justice on the land.

• Creates unneeded requirements for participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest support system for rural and urban communities that are food insecure. These unneeded requirements make it more challenging for millions to obtain the food they need from farmers that grow it. These unneeded requirements ignore the basic human value that everyone deserves having enough nutrition and food to live a healthy life.

We need a much better Farm Bill and your voice makes a difference.