Washington —- In Tifton last week, Don Koehler, director of the Georgia Peanut Commission, finished some work on his farm and went inside to digest the news from Capitol Hill about tighter limits for agriculture subsidies.

Congress had announced that it had completed a $286 billion farm bill with a lower income limit for subsidy recipients, ending months of negotiations dramatically overshadowed by veto threats from President Bush and media scrutiny at a time of worldwide anxiety over record food prices.

"When I look at it, I just don't think it's going to affect a lot of us in Georgia," Koehler said. "I don't think I know anybody who even reaches that new limit."

Koehler, who some call the jolly "ambassador" of Georgia's peanut producers large and small, would be the last opponent of subsidies. But for all the hype on Capitol Hill, he says most Georgia farmers will receive relatively unchanged levels of direct farm payments under the new five-year farm bill, the sprawling legislation that also dictates funding for low-income food aid, conservation programs, crop insurance and biofuel initiatives.

Under the 2008 framework, possibly the costliest in history, the income limit above which farmers are ineligible to receive direct payments, the subsidies given by the government regardless of commodity prices, have been drastically cut. Farmers with non-farming income of more than $500,000 and married couples jointly earning more than $1 million will no longer be eligible. For those who farm exclusively, thresholds are $750,000 and $1.5 million for singles and couples, respectively.

The figures are considerably lower than before, when farmers who made as much as $2.5 million annually could exploit loopholes to get millions of dollars in subsidies under the 2002 framework. The cap on the actual subsidy will remain fixed at $40,000 and $80,000 for single and joint filers, respectively.

President Bush, who wanted to tighten income cut-offs much more, remains unhappy and the House and Senate are now expected to gather enough support to override a likely veto.

He's not the only one grumbling in this complex debate.

An unlikely alliance of critics, from environmental activists to presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain to coalitions of small farmers, has argued against the bill while farmers themselves say they are unfairly vilified at a time when production costs have soared even faster than the surge in food prices.

Despite consistently attracting controversy, subsidies are a small portion of the overall funding. Lawmakers are eager to tout that the payments will account for less than 14 percent of the bill's total cost, compared to 28 percent in 2002.

By far the largest spending is on nutrition, a source of concern to U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and urban Atlanta.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank will be among hundreds of food assistance programs nationwide set to benefit from a $10.4 billion increase in funding for low-income families.

Annual funding for emergency food banks is set to jump to $250 million from $140 million, while food stamp programs will be injected with $7.8 billion over the next 10 years to keep pace with soaring food prices.

The pressures of recession and rising living costs have driven hundreds of families into poverty, requiring food aid. Metro Atlanta's unemployment figures in March were 35 percent higher than a year prior, while the city's food bank distributed nearly 73,500 more pounds of food this February than during the same month in 2007.

An injection of funds is "absolutely timely," said Bill Bolling, the Atlanta food bank director, who said he worked closely with Chambliss. After recently seeing part of New Jersey's emergency food budget shrink by half because of high prices, Bolling said he feared Georgia's funds might disappear.

"I don't know what's going to happen in Georgia," he said. "But funds have been going down and without this farm bill they will go away at a time when we have historic demand for our services."

In past years, farm-state lawmakers bargained such food aid and subsidy levels among themselves, while fending off subsidy critics and fiscal conservatives without much difficulty or media attention. But this year's bill was, in the words of U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), like "passing a kidney stone."

Lawmakers worked with $58 billion less than what was available in 2002, and many, including Chambliss, are facing re-election in states with powerful farm interests. The bill also gained a higher profile as widespread drought, growing demand in developing countries, and, to a lesser extent, legislation such as food-based biofuel incentives help drive world food prices to historic heights, inciting food riots on nearly every continent.

"It's not the time to ask American families who are already paying more in the checkout line to pay more in subsidies for wealthy farmers," Bush told a news conference in April as he threatened a veto. Bush expressed regret that he failed to push through farm bill reforms in 2002, and urged Congress to take this year's opportunity to limit direct payment subsidies to those earning less than $200,000, far below the final figures agreed upon Thursday by legislators.

Chambliss has had to play the liaison between his Republican president and the rest of the conferees.

The reforms will indeed target the richest farmers, but critics say the target may be set so high that its effect is practically negligible.

The IRS says only 0.4 percent of all Americans have an adjusted gross income of between $500,000 and $1,000,000. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans claim farming as an occupation.

"That's no reform," said Stephen Houston Jr., a farmer who owns 200 acres on the southwestern Georgia border. "They went from nobody hitting the income cutoff to maybe one or two farmers who will have to restructure."

Houston is a critic of direct payments, which are paid in proportion to acreage. With help from subsidies, large farmers, who already benefit from economies of scale, can outbid smaller farmers like Houston for land and drive them out of business.

But many farmers say that subsidies are a crucial —- if not always effective —- lifeline. Four of Georgia's 10 top recipients over the past decade left the business.

Georgia's highest direct payments recipient in 2007, Minor Brothers Farms in Andersonville, lost money in each of the past four years.

And, fuel costs have doubled in the past year. In the past two years, fertilizer prices have nearly tripled.

Armond Morris, a farmer in Irwin County with 2,000 acres, says the bill's changes might affect the top 10 percent of Georgia's richest farmers. But most of the rest don't make that much. "The reality is prices in everything are going up and it affects me as a farmer and you as a consumer," he said.