Farm bill addresses hemp, insurance, conservation

    On Dec. 20, President Donald Trump signed into law the nation’s $867 billion farm bill, approved by substantial bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, promising support for an industry hurting from tariffs and recent drops in commodity prices.
    The bill removes industrial hemp from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of controlled substances, rewrites rules concerning the United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency’s Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage, and allocates 3 million acres of land for rent by the Conservation Reserve Program.
    Other provisions include permanent baseline funding for farmers markets and the expansion of subsidies to cover the nieces, nephews and first cousins of farmers.
    
Hemp descheduled, made an agricultural commodity
    Colorado defined hemp separately from cannabis with a concentration of THC greater than 0.3 percent when it legalized recreational marijuana in 2012. However, tensions between state and federal laws regarding hemp have historically kept farmers and banks from investing in large-scale cultivation.
    Prior to the passage of the farm bill, hemp was considered a Schedule I controlled substance by the DEA, along with heroin, ecstasy and LSD.
    The USDA will now be taking over regulation of the crop as an agricultural commodity.
    Hemp was also addressed in the 2014 farm bill, which allowed cultivation by state and academic institutions for research purposes. However, anxiety over criminal prosecution remained for growers and investors.
    
Farmers given increased flexibility with loss insurance
    In 2014, the United States Department of Agriculture began offering insurance to farmers in the form of their ARC and PLC programs.
    ARC payments are issued when the actual county crop revenue of a covered commodity is less than the program’s guarantee for that commodity. PLC kicks in when the effective price of a covered commodity is less than the reference price for that commodity.
    The plans are each geared toward different types of operations and crops, and farmers were formerly required to commit to a program for five years.

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