Farm bill highlights

Main components of the Senate five-year farm and food bill:

The bill spends nearly $500 billion over its five-year life, or nearly $969 billion over 10 years. About 80 percent of the spending goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The bill would cut $23 billion from current spending levels, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The bill ends direct payments made to farmers regardless of whether they plant a crop - a program that currently costs $5 billion a year. It also terminates three other subsidy programs, including one based on price targets. It replaces the four programs with a revenue-based subsidy program that helps farmers suffering moderate losses before crop insurance kicks in.

It ends commodity subsidies to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $750,000 and ensures that those receiving subsidies are actively involved in farming operations.

It consolidates 23 conservation programs into 13, at projected savings of $6 billion over 10 years.

It saves about $4 billion over 10 years from the food-stamp program, which now provides benefits for 46 million people and costs about $80 billion a year. Most of that comes from stopping a practice whereby some states pay low-income people as little as $1 a year in heat assistance, even if they don’t have heating bills, so as to increase their food-stamp benefits.