12/02/08 Looking Ahead at Potatoes

Looking Ahead At Potatoes. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The implementation of the new Farm Bill has been slowly taking shape and a lot of excitement has been heard over some of the programs for specialty crops like potatoes and National Potato Council's Executive Vice President, John Keeling says it's good that specialty crops were finally recognized. KEELING: I think it's great news. I think we were very successful in getting to the table in a very meaningful way. I mean we are still small players from the point of view of when you analyze the way the money got spent we are a very small player but I think that the Congress recognized that if specialty crop agriculture is 45% of the farm gate value in the U.S. that to have a kind of a comprehensive ag policy you have to have specialty crops at the table and that happened. He says there are really two questions that the council is trying to address. KEELING: So the question really becomes two-fold at this point; how do we maintain the spending that we received in the face of the difficult budget times and then how do we start to prepare for the next Farm Bill and do better in some of the key areas we supported this time. According to Keeling they are not waiting for any moss to grow under the current Farm Bill. KEELING: We didn't go after direct payment to farmers, we went after programs that in essence can improve the competitiveness of specialty crop growers and so to continue to evaluate those programs and continue to sell those programs to the Congress as being valuable and look at other programs, you've got to start the planning process now and then you've got to put a lot of time into making sure that in the budget reconciliations that are surely coming that you don't get an inordinately large part of the cuts. So basically the done deal is not quite chiseled in stone yet and that is part of the process that has not been talked about. KEELING: We've already seen the appropriations committees come back and try to take money that we got in the farm bill so it's a little frustrating. There you are the new kid on the block, you just succeeded in getting less than 2% of the farm bill spending by a long shot and then the first time out of the blocks the appropriators want to come back and cut some of your key programs. More tomorrow with National Potato Council's John Keeling. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.