The House of Representatives is expected to take up the 2018 Farm Bill this week, one of the outstanding big ticket items Congress must contemplate before the end of the year. A curious Beltway quirk is that the farm bill has actually very little to do with farming. In fact, an overwhelming majority of the spending in the bill is dedicated to food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The unholy alliance of agricultural subsidies and SNAP is facing a Sept. 30 deadline for renewal, and as is the case every five years or so when this debate must be renewed, observers worry political posturing will again upend the opportunity for true reforms.

The last time farm bill authorization was signed into law in 2014. Despite the Obama administration’s claims then that the ‘recovery’ from the Great Recession was several years underway, efforts to refine requirements for nutrition programs were rejected by opponents who argued the economy was still too fragile to withstand changes to assistance programs.