The Congress is wrestling with the enactment of a new five year farm bill. Previously, farm bills were a real bipartisan effort and usually passed rather easily, without too much difficulty and hassle in the halls of Congress. Those days may be gone. The agriculture lobby may have less clout than in the past and the members of both the House and Senate who are actual farmers is dwindling.
Rather than passing a new five year farm bill, the Congress passed a two year extension of the current farm bill. Which expires September 30th? Now Congress is under the gun to do the people’s business and pass a five year farm bill. The time is now.
The farm bill receiving action in Congress has raised questions on the farm safety net programs which exist in current law. These direct payments are in the area of $ 5 billion dollars.
Should these direct payments not be included in any new farm bill, farmers can use the existing federally subsidized crop insurance. However, the Congress may add restrictions to the crop insurance program which may not be terribly acceptable to the farm community. The Senate farm bill, as passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee, may not be universally attractive to farmers across the country. The potential elimination of direct payments may cause consternation for the agricultural sector of our economy. New means tests and conservation provisions include caps on how much money an individual may receive and amounts received may be made public by the government. However data on crop insurance recipients must remain confidential by federal law.
These and other proposed changes may affect agriculture substantially. There are many other lobby groups calling for changes in any new farm bill, thus a major battle is forming regarding the farm bill this year. The battle lines are between small farmers and mega-farmers and the crop insurance companies. Some believe this battle is the further expansion of programs which benefit the wealthy and is financed in part by farmer premiums and taxes on smaller farmers as they work to make a living on smaller family farms. As with many other components of American life, farming is changing in this country. However the farmers of the United States feed the world and this continues to help our GDP and the world trade in which this nation remains such an integral player.
Kent County, where agriculture remains the largest segment of the economy certainly has an interest in any new farm bill. Since both of our United States Senators and a large portion of our delegation in the House of Representatives come from metropolitan areas it is incumbent that Kent County farmers and agricultural interests seriously follow the farm bill now heating up in Congress. Summer is rapidly approaching and legislative time in Congress will get shorter and the heat and humidity comes to Washington.
A new acceptable five year farm bill is long overdue, to allow certainty, for the farmers of America.
Stephan Sonn says
Excellent timely topic for this area. Fletcher.
What get out of ithis is the continuing trend to piecemeal limited government. Short term management is inherent in the present divided and hostile legislative process. Blame could be cast on a troubled economy that is still recovering from recession pit, but I see the problem as fiscal shortsightedness spilling over from other venues as as a pervasive philosophical negativism toward proactive governance.
Shrinking dynamics create another type of economics by default.
Joe Diamond says
Good topic, Fletcher………..more to follow, like what was nailed to the tail of this donkey
Senate passes farm bill with Vitter amendment to ban food stamps for murderers, sex offenders………………
Is it really a farm bill? Somehow Food Stamps is included. So the children of criminals get to know what hunger is like. But let us be sanctimonious and tell these sick and dangerous people that they brought their problems on themselves…Above all don’t steal anything to get a meal.
More to follow
The beat goes on,
Joe
Stephan Sonn says
Joe,
Would you deprive David Vitter
of the props he needs to contrast himself with
Vitters claim to glory is that he is not a murderer
just a lousy human being.
joe dioamond says
I just don’t understand how the world works……….we pay the farmer to grow crops…..buy the crop………..sometimes just buy crops overseas near where the food will be used? And the Senate debates an amount or proportion.
The Senate rejected the White House’s request the international food aid be bought locally overseas rather than being grown in the U.S. and then shipped elsewhere as a way to cut down on costs. The $1.4 billion food aid program did change the distribution of it’s spending with a raise to $60 million from $40 million designated to be spent on food grown outside of the United States.
Stay tuned…this could change,
Joe
FLETCHER R. Hall says
It is not far fetched rto believe that the farm bill will not make it throught the House of Representatives. Then rthe vblame game going into the 2014 congressional elections will start. And, the farmers of America, both large and small, will have to operate without a farm bill. We do not ned another two year extension of the current farm bill.
Perhaps that is not a bad thing. My bet is that the agriculture sector of our economy would grow and be even more productive.
joe diamond says
Fletcher,
Do you mean the markup period in the house? Is this where the small districts get to add to a farm bill. After all, Thomas Jefferson, that great proponent of agriculture lived in a world where ninety something persons lived or worked in agriculture. The rest lived in cities being clerks and such. WE………. you and I ….. now live in a country where that number is approximately reversed. The grinding overpopulation lives in cities. The few who have anything to do with agriculture are dispersed.
Bottom income = $ 750.00 / month as ag herder THAT IS A COWBOY ! …………….Beef prices are moving up because producers are having a hard time finding peopelewho will work for $750.00 / month.. Top number……..Ag executive of large farm group; I’ll get back to you….not $750.oo..month.
The other thing we may well examine is why the Farm Bill is called that? About eighty percent of the money changing hands has to do Food Stamps within this Farm Bill. The rest is not directly connected to agriculture. There are other views.
As the prisoners were led to the wall and the charges read, one peed his pants and pled for mercy. The rest just moved along and chanted what was being read to them. As the guns began, four men at the end of the line gave the finger to the firing squad and shouted bull shit!
We really have to stop listening to what has happed and stop relying on pious hopes for the future without some assurance that all aspects of the economy are being conducted by the same monitoring system that can discover where I used to stop to take a leak before returning to the seminary.
And loose the term Farm Bill
Joe
joe diamond says
It will be our secret that I was never in a seminary.; Vietnam in the sixties and seventies being what it was.
Joe