02/05/08 USDA may address some payment limit issues by regulation

Farm and Ranch February 5, 2008 A major goal of the Bush Administration in a new farm bill is to eliminate crop subsidy payments to anyone with an adjusted gross income over 200-thousand dollars. None of the farm bills passed by the House or Senate go as far as the administration wants on payment limits. However, the USDA is planning to take some action on the regulatory front in regard to restricting government farm program payments. During the unveiling of USDA's proposed fiscal year 2009 budget on Monday, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Connor says the department will move on a new definition of "actively engaged in farming." Connor: "This has a long history associated with it including the Payment Limit Commission, which advised us not to do anything even though technically we had the power to do something under our own authority. It said this should be done under the regular farm bill debate. We indicated in our book that we would go through rule making to provide a new definition of actively engaged in farming in order to qualify for those farm program payments. And I would expect that will continue to be the case going forward because there seems to be broad support in Congress for, if you will, a tighter definition of actively engaged in farming." The administration has proposed a total USDA budget for fiscal 2009 of about 95 billion dollars, about the same as the current fiscal year. The spending plan is based on the provisions of the 2002 farm bill and the administration's proposals for changes. The enactment of a new farm bill would affect some of the estimates. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.