Next farm bill hearings expected later this month

Farm and Ranch April 14, 2010 House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson wants to begin work on the next farm bill and Tara Smith, a farm policy specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation says hearings may start later this month.

Smith: “ We’re likely to start this month with officials from USDA and academics testifying in front of the House Agriculture Committee and next month we believe the farm groups will be called in to testify and once we get into the May recess for Memorial Day Chairman Peterson has said he is going to take it to the country with field hearings.”

Given that the current farm bill does not expire until September of 2012 what is the rush? Well it took two years to complete the last farm bill and the budget deficit could push Congress to reshuffle funding priorities with a reconciliation bill, which could lead to a fight to hold onto the farm bill’s slice of the budget pie.

Smith: “The baseline numbers for the budget look very, very low compared to what we had last time around. And I think that‘s part of the reason that Chairman Peterson has started hearings so early. He‘s concerned that next year we could have to go through the budget reconciliation process and cut money from farm programs anyway and if we are going to have to do that, he wants to have people thinking about what those farm programs are, where money‘s going and what we want to see in the next farm bill.”

Smith says we are also dealing with a economic downturn which means programs like nutrition programs, the supplemental nutrition assistance program, and school programs are going to receive a lot of attention and folks are going to want to direct a lot of money that way.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.