Flinchbaugh: No farm bill seen until April

By Larry Dreiling

Barry Flinchbaugh, it's been said, has been working on farm bills since Chevys had tailfins.

The emeritus professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University told the American Bankers Association's recent Agricultural Bankers Conference at Milwaukee his experience doesn't foretell a new farm bill being signed into law until next April.

"We will get a farm bill in April of 2013," Flinchbaugh. "It will look a lot like the (current) Senate version that puts a strong foundation under crop insurance and adds a county-by-county or farm-by-farm shallow loss revenue payment."

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, Flinchbaugh said, was forced by wheat growers in Oklahoma and Texas to place the longtime target price program back into his group's farm bill, a provision that Flinchbaugh said doesn't work.

"It's backwards. In a year like this where farmers have no crop, how can you convince congressmen that if you don't have a crop you don't get a price? I don't know. So they're in trouble, since prices are above target," Flinchbaugh said.

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