Congress has spent almost three years bickering over a new farm bill. Now, it's down to the wire, with a Friday deadline to come to agreement on the details of the $300 billion bill.

The bill's origins go back to the Dust Bowl and the Depression, when midwestern farmers were in crisis, and Americans across the country were going hungry. Poor farming practices were one of the causes of the farmers' troubles, so the federal government responded with measures to promote soil conservation as well as to feed the hungry with surplus food distributions.

Subsequent farm bills have maintained that multiple focus of helping farmers, promoting conservation and feeding the hungry.

But the legislation also has evolved into a massive subsidy program for U.S. farmers, who currently get payments amounting to billions in the aggregate, even if they are making money and selling their crops for high prices.

Those subsidies -- which include payments to corporate, non-resident farm owners who live in Beverly Hills and along Park Avenue in New York -- have been a major sticking point as lawmakers argue over the reauthorization of the farm bill.

Despite President Bush's promise to veto any legislation that doesn't cut back those payments, the new bill's commodity subsidies look an awful lot like the old farm bills' commodity subsidies -- a function of the fact that many lawmakers from agricultural states get elected to bring home just this kind of bacon.

Along with those subsidies, though, both the Senate and House versions of the farm bill include significant and justifiable increases in federal nutrition programs such as food stamps and the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which distributes surplus commodities to organizations that serve the hungry, such as food banks.

Those increases are necessary because it's widely acknowledged that food stamp benefits of about $1 per meal aren't enough, and the cutoff level for food stamp eligibility is too low.

Right now, congressional negotiators are tangling over how to pay for the farm bill.

And while they engage in this latest conflict, the nation's food prices have increased at an alarming rate (just 5.5 percent in the last six months), rising fuel prices are taking up a larger portion of the family budget, and the number of hungry in the nation has grown.

The nutrition programs in the farm bill can help stem that hunger, so it's crucially important that a new farm bill get passed.

Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive of America's Second Harvest, the nation's primary network of food banks, said last week that, "Hungry Americans need a farm bill enacted now."

Maine's two Republican senators and two Democratic House members have all been strong advocates of increased farm bill spending on the hungry. Perhaps these four, from both sides of the aisle, can help bring the farm bill discussions to a fruitful close.

A lot of hungry people would be grateful.