What The 2018 Farm Bill Means For The West

ACROSS COLORADO –By Jessica Kutz, High Country News. After a long journey through the Senate and House agriculture committees, the 2018 farm bill is expected to clear the president’s desk soon. The bill, which is projected to cost $428 billion over five years, is one of the largest spending packages in the country, doling out money for low-income nutrition assistance, crop insurance, commodity subsidies and conservation programs, among other things.

Drafting the bill is usually a bipartisan process, but this year the funding package was held up by House Republicans trying to increase work requirements for recipients of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, and a last-minute push from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to authorize more forest management activities on public lands.
But this week, the pressure to pass the legislation during Congress’s lame-duck session forced lawmakers to forego these more controversial moves in favor of getting the spending package signed into law.

The resulting legislation has important implications for the West. Here are the key takeaways:

It will be federally legal to grow hemp. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican poster child for industrial hemp, was able to pass his provision reclassifying the crop as a commodity into the final writing of the bill, which is big news for fledgling hemp growers in Western states like Colorado, Oregon and California. The crop is seen as a possible agricultural savior for farmers, but growth in the industry has been hampered by federal rules banning hemp growers from accessing water rights and bank loans. Now that industrial hemp will be legalized on the federal level, it will be easier for growers to cultivate the crop much like any other commodity, and qualify for benefits like crop insurance. Every state in the West except for Idaho allows the cultivation of hemp in some capacity, whether it is for research or commercial use.

READ MORE in The Colorado Independent

State Sen. Don Coram walks through his hemp field in Western Colorado. (Photo courtesy of Luna Anna Archey, High Country News)