Farm Bill Conference Committee Show-down
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WHO'S YOUR CANDIDATE?
Which presidential candidate do you feel has the best stance on farm and
food policy?
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The farm bill is
ready to go into conference committee for the House and Senate to reconcile
differences in their respective versions. The conference committee, to be
chaired by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) with conferees from both parties and
chambers yet to be assigned, will continue until consensus is
reached—and could take four weeks or more for a final version. While
both chambers maneuver, a third player, the White House, will also be
involved in shaping the final farm bill. Since the Senate’s vote in late December, the Bush
administration has been very vocal about what they would like in the final
package. Once a common farm bill is developed, it goes back to each chamber
for a final vote before going to the President to sign.
"While AFT and
our supporters have come very far in shaping a new farm bill, there is much legislative work
left to be done before the farm bill will be complete.
The challenge is getting a bill out of conference that the President will
sign, with the best from each chamber to reform subsidies and strengthen
conservation, farmland protection and local foods programs," says Dennis
Nuxoll, AFT’s Director for Government
Relations.
The Farm Bill: Will It Be a New Direction?
A new calendar
year is here and still we have no new farm bill. We’re getting close,
although the administration’s veto threat is making a two-year
straight extension a real possibility. The House and Senate bills each include good new programs
and more funding for many of AFT’s priorities. Get ready for action
alerts in the coming weeks on how you can help get the best from the farm
bill.
- Conservation
Over half the land in America
is working agricultural land having an
enormous impact on our environment. Currently two out of three
farmers who apply for conservation funding are turned away. The
House and Senate bills offer a more optimistic outlook, but the final
bill must have increased funding for all working lands programs,
including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the
Comprehensive Stewardship Program (CSP) along with new conservation
loan guarantee and cooperation conservation programs.
 Farmland Protection
"No Farms,
No Food"—sound
familiar? Sixty-three percent of our dairy products and 86 percent of
fruits and vegetables come from farms closest to our cities: farms
facing the greatest amount of development pressure. The final bill
needs to expand funding for the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection
Program (FRPP) along with a host of planning tools to protect working
farms and ranches. While the House
bill includes funding increases for FRPP, the Senate bill merely
maintains the baseline funding.- Subsidy Reform
Perhaps the
hottest debate in the farm bill is over commodity subsidies.
Unfortunately the House and Senate bills made few changes to commodity
programs, but fundamental improvements are still possible with the Average Crop Revenue (ACR) program, a
revenue-based safety net that is part of the Senate bill, and by
securing increased limits on commodity payments in conference.
 Local and Healthy Foods
The federal
government spends billions of dollars to subsidize grains and
other crops while providing almost no support for fruits and
vegetables. In light of skyrocketing national healthcare costs, we
need to promote healthier diets by supporting fresh, local, healthy
foods. Fresh fruit and vegetable programs, nutrition spending, and farmers’
market promotion programs all stand to be big winners in the farm
bill, but only if Congress works to pass the bill instead of opting
for extension.
Could the Energy Bill Have a
Bigger Impact on Agriculture?
The energy bill that passed last month has significant
implications for agriculture and increased incentives for both conventional
(e.g. corn ethanol) and advanced biofuels (e.g. cellulosic ethanol from
switchgrass). The new Renewable Fuels Standard calls for 15 billion gallons
of conventional biofuels by 2015—tripling current production—and
36 billion gallons of total ethanol by 2022, of which over-half must be advanced
biofuels that reduce emissions by 50 percent above gasoline or diesel.
Current corn ethanol technology attains approximately a 10 to 15 percent
reduction.
AFT applauds the energy bill, but warns it must include more environmental
safeguards. While there are requirements that conventional biofuels
must achieve a lifecycle greenhouse-gas reduction of at least 20
percent and cultivation is restricted to land that is already in
production, there are no requirements for avoiding other environmental
impacts such as increased water pollution or soil erosion. Additional funding for
conservation programs in the farm bill is critical to ensuring that
renewable fuel production is a net positive for agriculture,
the economy, and the environment.
Pursuing Renewables, but this Farmer Won't
Compromise Soil Quality
 For years, Glen Riekhof, a farmer from Concordia,
Missouri, contributed countless hours
of research and meetings to make Missouri’s
first ethanol plant a reality. Still, Riekhof doesn’t see
ethanol transforming the way he manages his land or produces his
crops—he’s maintaining his strict conservation practices amidst
high demand for corn. "I feel like ethanol is a good hedge for me, but
I haven’t changed my cropping patterns much and I don’t plan
to," says Riekhof. "On my ground, planting corn after corn
is not the best idea."
Media Update
Farm Bill Veto: A
Possibility?
President
Bush’s senior advisors are recommending
that he veto the farm bill unless significant changes are made to the
current proposals during the conference committee process. Other members of
Congress, such as Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Robert Casey (D-PA), like the current Senate bill,
while Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says a compromise is possible in
the conference committee and vows he’s not done fighting for subsidy
payment limitations. The Modesto
Bee wants
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) to serve on the conference committee.
Local Food and the
Urban Farmers’ Market
AFT’s Jennifer
Small and her husband Michael Yezzi, who operate Flying Pigs Farm, are interviewed in this New York Times
article on siting a new farmers' market in New
York City.
Ready, Subsidy,
Fire!
Scientists at the Smithsonian’s
Tropical Research Institute are suggesting a link between fires and
deforestation of the Amazon, and U.S.
farm subsidies paid for the production of corn that eventually is processed
into ethanol. Their new study, published in the British journal Science, calculates
the relative merits of 26 different biofuels, looking at the reduction of
greenhouse-gasses and an environmental impact index for each.
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