New Farm Bill: Debate Begins
March 3, 2009 On January 31, in Washington, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced proposals for USDA’s 2007 Farm Bill. Then he hit the road to explain them.
His three-day tour began in Tunica, MS; then proceeded to Des Moines, IA; Modesto, CA, and Nashville, TN.
In Tunica, Johanns was met by an estimated crowd of 300 people, who gave him a standing ovation, prompting him to begin with a tale of a similar audience. “As I was making my way to the podium, everybody stands up and applauds,” he said. “I told them that it was very nice, but that I had not done anything yet. Somebody in back yelled out, ‘and when you do, we won’t be standing.’”
Well, in Tunica, they stood at the end, too. In between standing ovations, Johanns spent 90 minutes expanding on USDA’s proposals.
“I want to highlight this: We started making preparations for the 2007 Farm Bill as soon as I came to this job two years ago,” Johanns said. “We wanted to know who to talk to; whose advice did we want? Where is the input? Our best approach, we decided, was to just simply go across country and talk to farmers. And that’s exactly what we did.”
Yes they did, conducting 52 Farm Bill Forums in 48 of the 50 states. Mississippi and Louisiana were not visited at the time. “Not because they were not important,” Johanns said, “but right about the time we were doing them, the hurricanes hit. Obviously those two states had more to be concerned with, in a pressing sort of way, than trying to help us conduct Farm Bill forums. By being here today, we complete the loop.”
But in the states that were visited, USDA collected more than 4,000 comments and they were summarized into 41 theme papers. That was boiled down to five analysis papers, authored by USDA economist Keith Collins, who was in attendance in Tunica.
“What this Farm Bill will do is reauthorize many things — it reauthorizes our commodities program support; our conservation and forestry programs; renewable energy; trade; food stamps and other nutrition assistance, and rural development,” Johanns said.
Johanns pointed out that the current Farm Bill will expire this year and, “If we don’t get a new Farm Bill done, we revert back to the 1949 Farm Bill, which is not a good situation. Because of this consequence, there is a lot of pressure on us to get a new one done.”
USDA began the last several fiscal years with a budget of around $90 billion, with 54% going to food and nutrition assistance. Commodities programs account for only 26%. One of the most significant aspects of the new proposals is that the 2007 Bill calls for spending $10 billion less — in keeping with President Bush’s plan to eliminate the deficit in five years — but will provide $5 billion more than if the current Bill is extended, Johanns said.
The proposals are available at www.usda.gov/farmbill
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