CRANSTON — People concerned about how the government cuts up the tax-revenue pie gathered yesterday at a ramshackle farm along Plainfield Pike to talk about the looming expiration of the federal farm bill.

Among the group gathered near the greenhouses and outbuildings of the Urban Edge Farm was U.S. Rep. James Langevin, who came to talk with people whose programs or agencies are affected in some way by the farm bill, more formally known as the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act.

The law governs a range of politically sensitive programs and issues, including: agricultural subsidies, food tariffs and trade, environmental regulations, land conservation, disaster relief and Food Stamps.

In Rhode Island, farm bill money helps restore marine habitat around Narragansett Bay, helps the Rhode Island Dairy Farms Cooperative sell Rhody Fresh milk, allows low-income state residents to buy fresh food, pays for school-lunch programs and allows private and state agencies to preserve farmland and open space.

The current farm bill expires in September.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture two years ago began holding meetings around the country to develop proposals for renewed farm legislation.

In January, the USDA unveiled more than 65 proposals it wanted included in a new farm bill. Along with traditional price-support funding requests, the agency wants $1.6 billion for renewable energy research, $5 billion for specialty-crop production and loan programs to help socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.

Congress is holding hearings on the bill this summer, including one this week on food security that Langevin said he will lead.

Looking for some insight into how Rhode Islanders could benefit from the farm bill, Langevin came out to Western Cranston, where he talked with people involved in various food and agriculture-related programs.

“Not many people are aware of the strong farm community we have here in Rhode Island,” Langevin said.

The participants sat, on banquet chairs for the most part, arranged in a circle near a fenced-in area where six women grow food destined for local farmers’ markets. As the sun turned pink and sweat broke out on a few foreheads, they shared their thoughts with Langevin.

“It’s so gratifying to know there are people in Washington who are thinking about . . . how food gets to our plate,” said Katherine Brown, executive director of the Southside Community Land Trust.

The Land Trust began in as a grass-roots effort in 1981 that now has a $500,000 annual budget, a staff of seven full-time workers, and properties such as City Farm in Providence and the 50-acre Urban Edge Farm off Plainfield Pike, which it bought to provide land for urban farmers.

The trust also sponsors the Broad Street Farmers’ market.

Many at yesterday’s meeting reminded Langevin about the interrelation of land use and local economies and how the farm bill can affect that relationship.

For instance, money from the farm bill goes to participants of the Women with Infant Children program so they can buy fresh food at events such as the Broad Street Farmers’ market, which is supplied in part by the women who grow produce at Urban Edge Farm . . . which was purchased, in part, with federal money that flowed to various agencies geared to land preservation . . . which helps keep down municipal tax outlays for road maintenance, trash pickup and like services . . .

Farm bill funding helps stave off the “great development pressures that are on farmers” in Rhode Island and the Northeast, said Gina DeMarco, district manager of the Northern Rhode Island Conservation District.

As always, the farm bill is the focus of intense lobbying from a number of quarters.

Commodity-producing agribusinesses vie this year with companies seeking money for renewable energy resources, the burgeoning organic farming movement, small-scale specialty food producers and agencies that help low-income families.

Rhode Island’s farms tend to be tiny when compared with farming operations elsewhere, and they lean toward specialty crops rather than corn, soybean and other commodities.

“We would benefit from the transfer of funds from commodities to specialty [crop] farms,” DeMarco said.

Moving money into specialty crops is likely to provoke a political fight, Brown noted.

“There’s going to be some resistance to moving those funds from the big [commodity-producing] farms,” Brown said. “That’s the big tension in the farm bill this year.”

There’s also tension around the “food security” issue, Langevin noted.

The congressman listed a series of contamination scares recently that affected spinach, toothpaste and other foods. Those incidents have legislators worried about the effectiveness of the country’s food-inspection programs.

“I’ve been increasingly concerned about the safety of our food supply,” Langevin said. “I look at food-supply contamination as an emerging threat.”

Inspection duties are divided primarily between the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration.

“The resources for food inspection are very limited,” he said.

He’s cosponsor of a bill that would require the USDA or the FDA to give a stamp of approval attesting to the safety of imported food.

“It obviously means more people on the ground,” he said.

pgrimald@projo.com