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Senate approves sweeping five-year farm bill

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping, $500 billion farm bill that would end direct payments and other subsidies to farmers, while expanding crop insurance and funneling new money to "specialty" crop growers.

The legislation was approved with a rare bipartisan vote, with 64 senators voting for the measure. Thirty-five voted against it.

The five-year measure slashes money from the federal food stamp program, and overall cuts federal spending by about $23 billion over 10 years.

"This is a very fine day in the recent history of the Senate," said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The bill now goes to the House, but its fate in the lower chamber is less certain. Conservative House Republicans are pressing for deeper cuts to food stamps, among other changes.

The Senate bill would make some major changes to U.S. farm policy.

Direct payments to farmers irrespective of whether they plant a crop will be ended. The program now costs $5 billion a year.

The bill also ends subsidies to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $750,000.

"This farm bill is unlike any other before it," Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said earlier this week. "It cuts spending, ends subsidies, improves accountability and strengthens healthy food systems. We are now closer than ever to achieving real reform in America's agriculture policy."

At the same time, the bill also expands the federal crop insurance program, and contains new spending, such as money for farmers who grow so-called specialty crops like fruits, vegetables and nuts.

The bulk of the spending in the 1,010-page bill is on the federal food stamp program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Lawmakers saved about $4 billion over 10 years from that program mainly by changing a heating program related to food-stamp benefits.

The House Agriculture Committee will take up the bill in mid-July, about two and a half months before the current farm bill expires at the end of September.

"My colleagues on both sides of the aisle understand we must act as soon as possible to give farmers the certainty they need to keep growing the economy," Stabenow said this week.