News Coverage
Des Moines Reg: The Farm Bureau bogeyman
Published January 27, 2012
When the farm bill fight gets rolling again in Congress, one question will be at the heart of the debate: Is it fair to ask farmers to take a few basic steps to protect soil and clean up waterways in return for the billions of dollars that taxpayers spend each year to provide them with cut-rate crop insurance?
Congress has long attached conservation requirements to farm subsidy programs, including to crop insurance in 1985. In 1996, however, lawmakers cut that string. The big fight now is whether to restore that modest obligation to a federal program that in its latest form actually insures farmers’ business income — not crop yield — at a cost of more than $8 billion a year.
The American Farm Bureau Federation’s answer is apparently a resounding no.
Fresh off his trip to sunny Honolulu for the federation’s annual conference, Craig Hill, the new head of the Farm Bureau’s Iowa chapter, made his position clear on Jan. 11 to The Des Moines Register.
“Because of torrential weather events like we’ve seen in recent years, we also know that linkage of conservation to crop insurance simply risks too much at a time when the stakes have never been higher for farmers,” Hill said. “There are already 15 farm programs that link to the conservation title in the farm bill, so to deny crop insurance to farmers because of weather events beyond their control could put a farmer out of business in a single year’s event.”
That statement just doesn’t stand up.
Read the entire piece here:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120127/OPINION01/301270019/Gu...