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July 12, 2012
House Ag Committee Approves Farm Bill
For more information on Newsline, contact: Johnna Miller, Director of Media Development, American Farm Bureau Federation johnnam@fb.org
After a day-long markup, the House Agriculture Committee has brought a new farm bill one step closer to being signed into law. American Farm Bureau Federation Farm Policy Specialist Mary Kay Thatcher weighs in on how this bill affects farmers and how it differs from the Senate version. AFBF’s Erika Hooker has the story.
| Hooker: | The House Agriculture Committee approved its draft of the farm bill early Thursday morning. Mary Kay Thatcher, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Farm Policy Specialist, says few amendments that made major changes to the bill were approved. But there are some differences between the bill just approved by the House Ag Committee and the version approved by the Senate in June. |
| Thatcher: | There are 12 titles to the farm bill and for the most part the titles dealing with things like conservation, research, rural development, livestock, specialty crops – those are very, very similar. The real differences are in the commodity title and the nutrition title. In nutrition, the House side cut four times more money than the Senate side. In the commodity title you have the major change being that the Senate offered an option where a producer could pick a shallow loss revenue type program based on county averages or individual farm yield averages, where on the House side they said pick between target prices and a county level revenue program. |
| Hooker: | While there is little time left to get a new farm bill signed into law before the current one expires at the end of September, Thatcher stressed the importance of taking these final steps as swiftly as possible. |
| Thatcher: | This farm bill is probably most different in the commodity perspective from past bills in that we’re moving away from support in the commodity title in things like marketing loans and counter cyclical payments and direct payments and we’re moving more towards revenue type programs and far more emphasis on the crop insurance program. |
| Hooker: | The farm bills in both houses of Congress depart from the traditional provisions that have been used to support farmers and decrease their level of risk. |
| Thatcher: | I think right now with the drought situation that’s happening in the country that members of Congress are seeing when they go home the problems and hopefully they’re understanding that we have to pass this bill because we need a strong crop insurance program and we need those livestock disaster programs to be retroactive in 2012. So hopefully we can push this bill along. |
| Hooker: | Erika Hooker, Washington. |
| Hooker: | We have two extra actualities with American Farm Bureau Federation Farm Policy Specialist Mary Kay Thatcher. In the first extra actuality Thatcher explains that a new farm bill will probably not be approved before the current one expires. The cut runs 32 seconds, in 3-2-1. |
| Thatcher: | Unfortunately, I think it’s very unlikely we finish this before September 30th. Our best option is probably to have some kind of a conference committee between what the House Ag Committee approved yesterday and what the Senate approved and hope to find a vehicle that’s moving. Possibly one of the tax extenders that’s expiring in December and the lame duck session tying this to that using some of the cost savings presumably somewhere between the 23 and the 35 billion dollars that is being saved and trying to use that to offset the cost of extending a tax provision and to get the farm bill done. |
| Hooker: | In the second actuality, Thatcher says one amendment, introduced by Representative Steve King of Iowa, could have a lasting effect on farmers and consumers. It is related to farming practices and interstate commerce.The cut runs 29 seconds, in 3-2-1. |
| Thatcher: | If you go to a state like California that passed a ballot initiative on eggs where they had to be produced by chickens that were under certain animal welfare requirements t now you could have California saying to other states you can’t ship product into this state unless it meets our standards versus yours. When you go in and you have ballot initiatives that are different in different states we don’t think it’s fair that just because one state comes up with an animal welfare standard that they require that same standard be met elsewhere in order to be a product of that state. |
| Hooker: | Newsline is updated Mondays and Thursdays by 5pm Eastern time. Thank you for listening. |