Busy making budget plans for the business year ahead, we've got you covered.

Switch to three business and choose from the latest handsets with unlimited data in our winter sale.

Plus, our business price promise means if you find a cheaper deal from one of our biggest competitors, we guarantee you to beat it.

Search three business or visit us in store.

Business price promise means we'll beat it directly.

Quote you've been given my e-vote for 0.02 for business plans by at least £1 per month, terms apply such three business price promise.

It's been a big year for labor unions, so the government's labor watchdog is getting a bigger budget.

Plus, artificial intelligence coming to a big rig near you.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

From Washington, DC, I'm Kimberly Adams in Forkai, Rizdal.

It's Wednesday, 28 December, good to have you along.

To that labor story in a moment, but first, one of the things coming up in 2023 is that Congress will start negotiating a new Farm Bill.

It's a sweeping piece of legislation that gets an update roughly every five years and has a huge impact on farming economies and livelihoods.

Now, the Farm Bill provides a financial safety net to, yes, farmers, but it also dictates how much the government spends on the social safety net, with decisions about hunger and nutrition assistance programs and who gets to access them.

Marketplace's Savannah Mar has more.

The Farm Bill has roots in the Great Depression when Congress signed off on what were supposed to be temporary handouts to the struggling agricultural sector.

And in the very old days, it used to be a Farm Bill, that is, it was about farming an agriculture and the like.

Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis, says the Farm Bill still props up American Ag with crop subsidies that have become a legislative fixture.

But now, about 90% of the spending and the interest in the so-called Farm Bill,

as food subsidies, things like food stamps, the program now known as SNAP plus public school lunches and the WIC nutrition program all stretch then in recent years according to Vince Hall with the nonprofit feeding America.

We are transitioning from a pandemic crisis to a hunger crisis.

His organization is pushing for big funding increases for nutrition assistance programs and it's prepared for showdowns over who can access them.

...