U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said Tuesday that the long-awaited farm bill is nearly finalized and could be passed as early as next week.

The bill should be filed Monday, the House should take it up Wednesday or Thursday and the Senate the day after that. It would have been introduced this week if not for the funeral of President George H.W. Bush, whose death prompted cancellation of votes in the House for the week.

The five-year bill mostly maintains the status quo in the nation’s agriculture industry, but it includes extra help for dairy farmers and a modest expansion of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Peterson said. Republican efforts to overhaul the food stamp program have been mostly unsuccessful, he said.

The bill maintains two programs that offer loss coverage and price guarantees for farmers, and it will allow farmers to switch back and forth between the programs. The draft will also, by a complicated mechanism, guarantee break-even milk prices for dairy farmers with about 240 cows or less.

“They’re the ones that need it the worst,” Peterson said. The bill also includes $300 million in funding for animal disease detection, protection and preparedness.

Peterson said the bill is far from perfect — he would have liked to set higher crop-price guarantees for farmers — but it was the best politically possible compromise.

The Conservation Reserve Program, a federal payout to farmers to convert cropland into grassland, will expand by 3 million acres under the bill, Peterson said. Since 2007, Congress has lowered the nationwide cap on acres from 40 million to 24 million, and this would reverse that trend.