The new bill, still to be signed, extends food stamps and keeps crop subsidies.
Pueblo Chieftain, Peter Roper
Published April 29, 2008
In past years, the act of Congress wrapping up a new Farm Bill might only attract the interest of the farm and ranch industries.
But with a growing international food shortage and climbing fuel prices, the new 2008 Farm Bill is getting intense scrutiny from consumer groups, food-aid organizations and budget cutters.
House and Senate negotiators said they reached a tentative deal Monday on a five-year, $300-billion farm package that covers crop subsidy payments, conservation programs, disaster assistance, renewable energy incentives and even the federal food-stamp program.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, called the legislation a needed boost to the rural economy in Colorado and elsewhere.
"This final Farm Bill will positively impact all Americans and make important investments to revitalize rural America," the senator said in a statement.
His brother, Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., serves on the House agriculture panel. He said the bill was "a real chance to set our nation's farm policy on a strong path for years to come."
According to news reports by agriculture publications, the House-Senate compromise would include: $3.8 billion for a permanent disaster relief program (a high priority for the Salazars after the cattle-killing blizzards of 2007), an extra $1 billion a year for the federal food stamp program and $5 billion for farmland conservation programs.
Farm-state lawmakers are pleased the legislation will provide more incentives for growing biofuels. But that program also has been questioned in recent months as more cropland has become devoted to corn that will be sold for ethanol instead of food or animal feed.
President Bush made no comment on the farm package Monday, although he had threatened to veto the separate versions of the legislation approved by the House and Senate earlier this year, saying they overspent on agriculture programs.
In particular, the White House had targeted the longtime crop subsidy program, which provides payments to some of the largest agri-businesses in the nation. The veto threat was ironic, given that the White House endorsed the same subsidy program five years ago when the Republican-controlled Congress passed the 2002 Farm Bill.
With rice shortages reported in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world, the U.S. crop subsidy program that pays growers not to grow rice and other commodities has come under growing criticism. The Environmental Working Group, a public-interest group that tracks farm payments, noted that Riceland Foods, a major national rice supplier, received $7.7 million in federal subsidy payments in 2006.
"So if Congress and the president finalize the deal that was negotiated today, it will be half a victory," said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, an international Christian food-aid organization.
Beckmann said his organization and others were pleased that Congress wants to spend an additional $1 billion more per year on the U.S. food stamp program, but said they were also disappointed lawmakers made no fundamental reforms in the crop subsidy program.
