The House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday approved a fiscal year 2017 bill to fund the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Farm Credit Administration.
The vote was by voice with the lone dissent appearing to be Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.
The bill followed the pattern of recent years with cuts to some mandatory conservation programs to fund committee discretionary priorities.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), which represents small, environmentally minded-farmers, praised increases in the value-added producer grants program and the appropriate technology transfer for rural areas program, and praised increased funding for the direct farm operating loan program and ag research.
But NSAC said it was disappointed the sustainable agriculture research and education program, was funded at its existing level rather than increased by $5.3 million to $30 million as requested by USDA.
Also, "despite a plea from 252 food and agriculture groups not to reopen the farm bill," the NSAC said, the 2017 Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) sign-up is cut by 20%, reducing its total farm bill baseline funding by over $300 million, and the 2017 Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) sign-up is cut by $113 million, plus a $98 million permanent rescission of earlier year EQIP funding.
That combination of cuts in turn also automatically reduces the farm-bill funding available for the Resource Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) by $46.5 million for 2017, since RCPP funding is drawn in large part from CSP and EQIP funding, NSAC said.