Reaching Well Beyond the Farm

Few pieces of legislation generate the level of public scorn consistently heaped upon the farm bill.

Presidents and agriculture secretaries denounce it. Editorial boards rail against it. Good-government groups mock it. Global trading partners formally protest it. Even farmers gripe about it.

But as Congress proved again last week, few pieces of major legislation also get such overwhelming bipartisan support — enough, in the case of the current farm bill, to override the veto expected by President Bush any day now. The Senate vote on Thursday, 81 to 15, was the widest margin for a farm bill since 1973, when food stamps were added.

While most of the complaints are directed at Congress for squandering an opportunity to revamp farm subsidies when crops are at record-high prices, the sweeping 673-page bill touches on so many other issues of enormous importance to lawmakers and their constituents, rural and urban alike, that many say it is no longer accurate to call it the “farm bill.”

Amid high food prices, it increases spending on food stamps and other nutrition programs, sealing the support of urban lawmakers. It aids fruit and vegetable growers for the first time, attracting votes from California, Florida and Michigan.

High gasoline prices added urgency to the bill’s creation of a subsidy for ethanol made from prairie grass and other plant matter with strong backing from Minnesota lawmakers who see economic opportunity for parts of the state that do not grow corn.

The bill also helps the dairy industry that is crucial to New England milk producers and the sugar beet farmers concentrated in the Dakotas. It sets up a disaster fund sought by Senator Max Baucus of Montana, among others, and appeals to cattlemen in Kansas, Nebraska and Texas by adjusting country-of-origin labeling rules for meat and produce.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, emphasized the abundance of reasons for lawmakers to vote for the bill, even as critics derided its subsidies as an unconscionable giveaway of taxpayer money at a time of booming profits for many farmers. “I, too, am not satisfied that it does enough in terms of subsidies, but I want to talk about what it does do,” Ms. Pelosi said, adding, “If there was one reason for members to vote for this bill, it would be the nutrition piece of it, but there are other reasons as well.”