With the Farm Bill up for discussion in the legislature, much attention has been focused on the intricacies of the program and the price tag associated with it. However, you do not see many headlines that read that less than one-half of 1 percent of our federal budget is spent on farm programs. Did you know that today’s federal budget equals nearly $3 trillion ($2,784 billion), but that the USDA budget is about $89 billion, or 3.2 percent of the entire federal budget? Of the USDA budget, only $12.4 billion goes to farm programs. The rest pays for things like nutrition, rural development and conservation and natural resource programs. The funding for farm programs is only 14 percent of the USDA budget and less than one-half of 1 percent (0.45 percent, to be exact) of the federal budget. U.S. taxpayers spend just pennies per meal for programs that help to ensure that farmers can produce Americans’ food in America.