Andrew Zhang is a third year law student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. Earlier this November, with the passage of a continuing resolution that ended the longest government shutdown in United States history, Congress extended the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 Farm Bill—the nation’s current and most recent Farm Bill) for one more year. This extension—the third of its kind since the 2018 Farm Bill first expired…
Andrew Zhang is a third year law student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. In the shadow of a government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finds its conservation programs facing an uncertain future. In some respects, there may be areas of stability or relief. For one, despite the 2018 Farm Bill’s expiration this…
Andrew Zhang is a third year law student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. Americans are drinking a lot less milk. Despite production reaching an all-time high of 26.4 billion gallons in 2023, per capita milk consumption in the U.S. is down 47% from 1975. And, while consumption of dairy milk dropped by 4% between…
Rachael Lange is a second year student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. Bipartisan recognition of growing wildfire impacts across the country has led to the introduction of several wildfire-related bills that could become part of a future farm bill. The devastating wildfires in Southern California in early 2025, as well as the growing risk…
Rachael Lange is a second year student at Harvard Law School and a guest contributor to this blog. In the midst of a tumultuous legislative session, the critical question for agriculture policy stakeholders and observers is: when will we get a new farm bill and what will it look like? Fallout from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), entrenched…
Rebecca Lin is a second year student at the Harvard Kennedy School and a guest contributor to this blog. How programs become “orphan programs” In the early hours of December 21, 2024, the American Relief Act of 2025 was signed into law. The act provided a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, which had already expired three months earlier….
Matt Suzor is a third-year law student at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and a guest contributor to this blog. Update: Since this blog post was written, the 2025 budget reconciliation bill passed. The impacts of the budget bill on the Thrifty Food Plan, effective immediately, call for cost neutrality every five years. This could prevent benefits…
Grace Huddleston is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. The SNAP proposal in H.R. 8467, Section 4129, the most recent House version of the 2024 Farm Bill, would implement research-oriented programs to commence over the next several years with the goal of gathering data to better understand the efficiency…
Isabel Yin is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. To the dismay of many lawmakers, farmers, and advocacy groups alike, the September 30 expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill extension came and went with no passage of a farm bill. When Congress returns to a lame-duck session after this…
Katie Kraska is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Despite the potential that cultivated meat products hold for revolutionizing how food is produced, mention of this technology is nowhere to be found in House or Senate Farm Bill drafts or outlines. Given some recent state-level developments, that may be…