When House and Senate negotiators sit down in coming days to start writing the final version of a new farm bill, they will find that many of their sharpest differences will be over how far they should reshape and fund conservation programs.

Farm, conservation and hunger groups pan the lack of transparency as Congress writes the 2018 farm bill.

When Rep. Collin Peterson recently traveled home to his rural western Minnesota district, he opened his briefing by telling farmers that the number one thing to get done in a new farm bill is to help cotton producers. The livestock, corn, soy, wheat and sugar beet producers – who are thousands of miles from a cotton field - seemed a bit perplexed.

Policymakers and opinion leaders might want to think about farms and ranches as part of the infrastructure on which the modern economy depends, American Farmland Trust (AFT) President and CEO John Piotti told a Farm Foundation forum in Washington last week.