Senate Ag Committee sends farm bill to floor

By Jennifer M. Latzke

The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry passed its version of the Food and Energy Security Act, otherwise known as the 2007 farm bill, Oct. 25. The bill will be considered by the full Senate beginning Nov. 5.

The bill offers more programs for rural development, as well as energy and conservation titles. It also expands its coverage to specialty crops, making fruits and vegetables program crops for the first time, setting aside $500 million for research and marketing efforts.

The bill includes a new Producer Income Protection title, that gives producers an option, starting in 2010, to choose to participate in a state-level revenue protection system. The Average Crop Revenue program, or ACR, offers producers a way to manage risk on their operations.

In a conference call Oct. 25, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KS, told reporters that this bill protected crop insurance and direct payments to farmers. And, with the ACR Amendment, there has been some parity achieved between farmers across the nation. Farmers can sign up for the ACR program, and not have to lose offsets in regards to their crop insurance.

"We've found out in the last great number of years that the farm bill wasn't a great help to us because prices were above the target price in the counter cyclical program we had," Sen. Roberts said. The ACR program aims to fix that.

Those outside of the farming community have challenged the payments made to farmers in the past few years, considering the records commodity prices have reached. Sen. Roberts explained that there might have been record prices for commodities, but that farmers who had to contend with drought, floods, blizzards, tornadoes and high input and energy costs weren't realizing the record payouts people seemed to think they have been getting.

"We need a bill to help farmers when they need the help," he said. This bill should provide a safety net to farmers and ranchers, Roberts added. There is a permanent disaster fund that will be provided by the Senate Finance Committee, that will offer disaster funding once the farm bill reaches the finance committee, Roberts said. It will be based on producer revenue and then on the amount of disaster that occurred.

There will be some discussion on the floor as to payment limits in the farm bill, Sen. Roberts said. "We have all sorts of people with different ideas on different payment limits in the farm bill," he said. "Different crops have different costs and inputs, such as cotton and rice. One size doesn't work too well."

Also to be decided on the Senate floor will be just how well this farm bill will face WTO scrutiny. There is a question as to whether this bill will be WTO compliant or not, Sen. Roberts said. There are some questions as to what box this bill will fit in, he added.

Included in this farm bill are other provisions for conservation, energy, and other programs that the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees. Sen. Roberts took issue that really only 13 percent of the farm bill actually goes to farmers and ranchers through farm programs. "I see we have a farm bill, but we don't have a farm bill," he said.

A conservation title will increase funding and extend current programs. The Conservation Security Program (CSP) will now be named the Conservation Stewardship Program, and will add nearly 13 million acres a year, totaling about 80 million acres in five years. There will also be additional funding for the Wetland Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Grassland Reserve Program.

In a Democratic Congress, there was some issue over how the farm bill was handled in committee. Sen. Roberts told reporters that he and his staff received the bill from the chairman at about 10 p.m., and worked through its 1,200 pages all night so that by morning Sen. Roberts could understand what was proposed. Still, it only took the committee one and a half days of discussion before approving the bill by a voice vote. That will help on the Senate floor.

"We'll go to the floor unified form committee," Sen. Roberts said. "We'll be able to make our case for the bill as it is." If the bill remains as it reads coming from the committee, Sen. Roberts said he'd vote for it on the floor because it's superior to the House version. "I'll make my decision when I see the final package," he said. "It needs some work, some fine tuning, but we'll just have to see."

Jennifer M. Latzke can be reached by phone at 620-227-1807, or by e-mail at jlatzke@hpj.com.

11/5/07
1 Star WK\5-B

Date: 11/1/07

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