Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Now I know we talk a lot on here about how little Congress gets done, but there are at least

attempts. And today we're going to talk about one piece of legislation

that after being stalled for ages seems to be starting to move. It's the Farm Bill. Now,

farm bills are massive pieces of legislation that cover a whole range of issues, and ideally

they're supposed to be updated every five years. But the last time Congress actually passed one was in 2018.

So we are several years overdue.

That said, earlier this month, the House Agriculture Committee finally advanced a proposed farm bill.

But the road ahead for the legislation is pretty uncertain.

So here to make a smart about this is Chris Newbert. He's the Deputy Director. But the road ahead for the legislation is pretty uncertain.

So here to make us smart about this is Chris Newbert.

He's the deputy director of the Swedish Center for Sustainable Food Systems in the School

of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

And he previously held several positions working on agriculture policy in Congress.

Chris, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thanks,

Kimberly. I think when a lot of people hear the Farm Bill, they think it's something that

only affects farmers. Why would this matter? Why does this matter to the rest of the country?

So the Farm Bill is separated into 12 titles, and each one tackles a specific piece of all of these

programs, basically everything that USDA operates. And it covers not only farm subsidies, which I think

most people are familiar with, or things like crop insurance. But there are also conservation

programs in there. There are programs for rural development. And of course, the biggest one is Title IV,

which is nutrition. And that reauthorizes SNAP. It makes any adjustments. It's a very comprehensive

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