The proposed new farm bill, which sets out US agricultural policy for the next five years (2019-2023), has been rejected by members of the US House of Representatives.

The bill sets out the government spending on farm subsidies, crop insurance programmes, conservation and environmental schemes, as well as the food stamp programme in the US.

The most recent farm bill had a total budget of $489bn (€415bn). In comparison, the EU’s proposed budget for the next phase of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is set at €365bn.

In a vote on Friday, members of the House rejected the proposed new bill, with 213 votes against and just 198 votes in favour. The defeat will be seen as a major embarrassment for the Republican Party, which has a strong majority in the 435-member House of Representatives.

The bill was actually defeated by the Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republicans that had threatened to defeat the bill in a bid to push through their own separate bill that will clamp down on immigration into the US.

Contentious

Traditionally, the farm bill has received bipartisan support from Republican and Democrat members of the House of Representatives, which is the lower house of the US Congress that meets in Capitol Hill in Washington DC.

However, the 2018 bill has proved much more contentious because of a number issues including reform of the US sugar industry, food stamps and immigration.

The Senate, the upper house of the US Congress, will also be proposing its own farm bill policy in the coming weeks. The House of Representatives and the Senate will then have to come to a compromise on a final bill that will go to President Donald Trump to be signed as the new US farm bill up to 2023.

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House of Representatives to vote on contentious new US Farm Bill