Obama's Department of Agriculture Budget

Excerpts from White House Home Page Agriculture Funding Highlights

Moderators Note: As a public information service and without comment, we are re-posting excerpts on the USDA budget as highlighted by the White House Home Page on the Web:

The budget proposal for the USDA:

• Provides over $20 billion in loans and grants to support and expand rural development activities, including small businesses, renewable energy, and telecommunications.

• Includes a $50 million increase to address deferred maintenance on the most critical health and safety infrastructure within our national forests.

• Supports the implementation of a $250,000 commodity program payment limit. The payment limit will help ensure that payments are made to those who most need them.

• Reflects the President’s commitment to wildfire management and community protection by fully funding suppression costs at the 10-year average, establishing a discretionary contingent reserve for wildfires, and including program reforms to ensure fire management resources are focused where they will do the most good.

• Fully funds the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to serve all eligible individuals.

• Includes $1 billion per year for the Child Nutrition reauthorization.

• Supports a pilot program to help increase senior participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

• Reflects the President’s commitment to supporting independent producers through improved enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act and investing in the full diversity of agricultural production, including organic farming and local food systems.

• Reflects the President’s commitment to fiscal responsibility by reducing direct payments to the largest farmers, reducing crop insurance subsidies, eliminating cotton storage credits, eliminating funding for the Resource Conservation and Development program, and reducing program funding for overseas brand promotion.

The White House homepage explains that the budget:

Supports rural revitalization, education, and land grant programs…[and] includes an additional $70 million for rural areas, for competitive research grants that provide incentives for teachers working in rural areas…

This page corrects an amount erroneously included in the printed version of A New Era of Responsibility.