According to the Farm Bill Law Enterprise, "The next farm bill presents a unique opportunity to address diet-related health challenges facing millions of households. By integrating a health orientation into traditional food access programs, the next farm bill can support initiatives that improve both food security and long-term health outcomes for participants. Establishing new programs and expanding current programs will require some additional initial investments, but these expenses would be offset in part by broader savings through improved health outcomes and lower healthcare costs."

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) accounts for 76% of the funding in the farm bill. When stores serving SNAP recipients provide access to healthy fruit and vegetables they reduce meat consumption, thus reducing the strong greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide associated with meat production.

The Farm Bill is a super important piece of legislation. The estimated expenditure for the next 5 years are $648 billion, which is about $160 billion larger than the Inflation Reduction Act expenditures. The Farm Bill only gets reauthorized every five years and the next reauthorization is in 2023.  Watch for Farm Bill congressional hearings near you. NY, CA and other big ag states are also conducting Farm Bill hearings sponsored by the state agriculture departments. I testified at one and found our state folks very open to communicating messages re climate to their USDA colleagues working on the Farm Bill.

By the way, if any of you want to work with me more on the Farm Bill, my name is Marianne Krasny and my email is mekrasny@gmail.com. I am posting numerous Farm Bill actions on Climate Action Now.

Thanks for supporting strong climate action in the Farm Bill!