Kurt's Work

By Mitch Lies

A proposal prepared by House and Senate ag leaders for the failed budget super committee will serve as a template for the next farm bill, according to a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Committee leaders developed the bill to submit to the super committee charged with trimming $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next 10 years. It cut $23 billion from USDA programs over that period by eliminating direct commodity payments and reducing conservation and nutrition programs.

But as super committee members on Nov. 21 said they would fail to meet their mandate to approve comprehensive spending legislation by Thanksgiving, Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Salem, told the Capital Press that the ag proposal would serve as the template for the next five-year farm bill.

"A lot of work went into this. The ranking members and the chairs fought over this, and bled over this a little bit," he said. "I assume this will be like the chairman's mark.

"So instead of floundering around all of next year, deciding do we or do we not want to do something, this now is at least a benchmark that has become known in the community, and people can react for and against it or elements of it," Schrader said. "And hopefully it means we actually get a farm bill done in time, as opposed to putting it off like we usually do."

He outlined several provisions of the proposal.

Most prominently, the proposal eliminated direct payments as part of $13 billion in cuts to commodity programs, replacing those subsidies with risk management programs.

Conservation and nutrition assistance, commonly known as food stamps, were also cut.

Specialty crop funding, used extensively in West Coast agriculture, was increased by $1 billion in the plan, Schrader said.

Schrader said a significant portion of the $6 billion cuts in conservation programs would have come from efficiencies gained through reduced administrative costs.

The proposal also cut funding for the Conservation Reserve Program, a program that pays farmers for idling certain lands to benefit soil and water quality.

The proposal recommended Congress lower the program's acreage cap through a multi-year step down from its current 32 million acres to 25 million.

"Nationally, the trend has been such that people are not renewing contracts as acreage becomes due because agricultural prices are good, unless you're into nursery stock or grass seed," Schrader said.

The proposal cut $4 billion from food stamp programs.

The proposal adopted dairy program reforms replacing the Milk Income Loss Contract Program and the Dairy Product Price Support Program with a voluntary margin-based assistance program.

Farm bill recommendation

A pdf file of the farm bill recommendations of the ag committees' leadership is available at: http://assets.mediaspanonline.com/prod/7329544/farm-bill-recommendations.pdf

http://www.capitalpress.com/oregon/ml-farm-bill-schrader-112511-art