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….
Josie Dudzik is a PhD candidate in Nutrition and Dietetics at New York University and is a guest contributor to this blog. She was an intern in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic during the summer of 2024. Background The 2018 Farm Bill paved the way for domestic hemp production by reclassifying hemp as legal to grow…
Denae Romero is a law student at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and is a guest contributor to this blog. She was an intern in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic during the summer of 2024. Passed over 100 years ago, the Packers and Stockyards Act (codified at 7 U.S.C. §§ 181-229) aims…
Marisa Koontz is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She is a guest contributor to this blog. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), signed into law by President Biden on August 16, 2022, is a budget reconciliation package that provides approximately $770 billion in new spending to reduce the federal government…
Marisa Koontz is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She is a guest contributor to this blog. On June 3, President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, H.R. 3746 (also known as the debt ceiling deal), into law after weeks of negotiations. These negotiations took place under a pressure cooker…
Emily Hatch is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 15, 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its most recent budget baseline for “USDA Farm Programs,” which projects a ten-year baseline cost for the relevant farm bill programs of over $1.4 trillion (about $140 billion each fiscal…
Robert Velazquez is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and a guest contributor to this blog. Between the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate there are 535 voting members who determine the future and scope of a farm bill. Zippy Duvall, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), recently remarked at the…
Emily Hatch is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 9, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry hosted its second hearing on the 2023 Farm Bill, which focused on commodity programs, crop insurance, and credit. In her opening remarks, Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow highlighted the fact that…
Alyssa Huang is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. This past week students and instructors from Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Food Not Feed Summit. The Summit was hosted by a growing coalition of organizations across a wide range…