Congresswoman Annie Kuster (NH-02), a member of the House Agriculture Committee, released the following statement on House passage of a partisan Farm Bill:

“This vote represents the worst of Washington partisan horse trading. This exact same bill was voted down just weeks ago because it’s bad legislation that fails to deliver for small family famers across the country. This Republican Farm Bill slashes hundreds of millions of dollars in mandatory funding for conservation programs, rolls back critical protections from harmful pesticides and will lead to thousands of Granite State families losing nutrition assistance. The Farm Bill historically has been a bipartisan piece of legislation, but unfortunately Democrats on the Agriculture Committee were shut out of the process of drafting this bill. In addition to benefiting large agribusiness at the expense of small family farms, this bill cuts over $23 billion in benefits to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which supports nearly 92,000 food insecure people in New Hampshire. I’m encouraged that the Agriculture Committee in the Senate has worked across the aisle on a bipartisan Farm Bill and I hope we can work with the Senate to do right by small farmers nationwide.”

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