WASHINGTON - The nearly $300 billion, five-year farm bill scheduled to be voted on in Congress today reaches into the Triangle's roadside stands and school lunchrooms, into university laboratories, food banks and the grocery sacks of the region's poorest families.

There is money to research how to transform just about any growing thing, including algae and grass stalks, into bio-based fuels. There's a new federal institute to raise the national profile of agriculture research toward the level of cancer research.

There's money to market specialty crops, to boost very small businesses, to protect farmland and to extend water and sewer to rural areas. More than $10 billion in new money would go to nutrition programs, much of it to buy fresh fruits and vegetables for schoolchildren and low-income families.

President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, though, saying it doesn't go far enough to cut the "irresponsible" subsidy payments given to producers of corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat and other row crops -- even during a strong farm economy.

Bush wanted the bill to ban all subsidy payments to farmers with incomes exceeding $200,000. Instead, the bill bans one form of subsidy to farmers with agricultural incomes exceeding $750,000. For a married couple, the outside income limit will be $1.5 million.

Congress' approach, Bush said, "jeopardizes America's support for necessary farm programs."

The Club for Growth in Washington, an organization that promotes economic growth, said the bill hides spending through "gimmicks," eliminates payment limits on some programs and gives tax breaks for special interests such as racehorse owners.

"The farm bill is a slap in the face to American taxpayers," said Pat Toomey, the group's president.

The bill also includes some focused spending, including help for salmon fishermen in the Northwest, potato growers in Idaho and water quality projects near Sacramento, Calif.

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat who helped write the bill, said farmers need the subsidy safety net.

"I think we've worked on a compromise on many of issues he wanted to deal with," said Etheridge, who leads the commodities panel on the Agriculture Committee. "At the end of the day, you have to take care of that farmer that's out there on the tractor, making it happen."

Support in N.C.

There is bipartisan support in North Carolina, though some Republicans have expressed skepticism about parts of the bill. Sen. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem said he is still reviewing the bill, while Sen. Elizabeth Dole of Salisbury supports it.

And though the bill is almost certain to pass the U.S. House of Representatives and then the Senate, backers are scrambling to secure a veto-proof margin.

In North Carolina, for example, Farm Bureau lobbyist Jake Parker was still working the phones Tuesday to make sure the bill becomes law.

"We had to give a little bit, and the folks in the White House, you'd hope they'd give a little, too," Parker said. "It's a good bill. It's very balanced, we think."

For nearly two years, farmers across the state have been lobbying Washington for a new farm bill to replace the one passed in 2002.

It is one of the largest pieces of legislation that Congress deals with, covering a huge swath of the economy. In the Tar Heel state, one in four people is employed in a job related to the agriculture industry. Nationally, the number is one in five.

At N.C. State University, researchers like the new National Institute for Food and Agriculture. It would funnel money to scientists through competitive grants, almost akin to the National Institutes of Health, with a director appointed by the president.

"It'll raise the profile so that people will understand that the food on your plate is really a business, but that there's a science behind that," said Jon Ort, assistant vice chancellor for extension and engagement, and associate dean of the N.C. State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

For the first time, the farm bill also includes its own section on specialty crops, setting aside millions for research and marketing into fruits and vegetables, a fast-growing segment of North Carolina's agriculture.

"I think it's fantastic," said Brent Jackson, an Autryville watermelon and strawberry farmer who lobbied Congress in January to support specialty crops. "We've never asked for subsidies, but we have asked for research for better varieties."

Farmers like Jackson also are helped indirectly as more money flows into school systems and food banks to buy locally grown foods, possibly increasing demand.

"Anything that's going to get a lot of fruits and vegetables into schools is great, and if they can come from a North Carolina farmer, that's even better," said Brian Long, spokesman for the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which manages some of the programs.

Off the farm, the bill also authorizes $40 million to create a new economic development region across seven Southeastern states, curling along eastern counties from Virginia down to Florida, then across to Mississippi.

U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, who first proposed the idea five years ago, said it will draw money into struggling rural areas with help for entrepreneurs, "micro-businesses" with fewer than 10 workers and infrastructure such as new water and sewer lines.

"We need that kind of help Down East," said McIntyre, a Lumberton Democrat who heads a subcommittee on the Agriculture Committee.

(McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Michael Doyle contributed to this report.)

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