Working On The 2012 Farm Bill

Working On The 2012 Farm Bill. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. We are still a year and a half away from 2012 but work has begun in earnest on the next version of the Farm Bill. For House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, the 2012 Farm Bill debate is about: PETERSON: How do we provide a risk management safety net tool for people to be able to manage the price risk, the production risk, the cost of production risk, that's what people need. Instead of direct payments, according to the Minnesota Democrat, who didn't hide his displeasure with the National Association of Wheat Growers. PETERSON: The wheat people are very much in Kansas and some other places very much fixated on the direct payments because they claim that's all they get and it's this mentality that we've got to get something. Well the way I see it, if you are making money out of the marketplace, you don't need to get something. It's not an entitlement, in other words the government is going to give you money just because you grow wheat. Ranking Member Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, a proponent of direct payments, saw it somewhat differently, but reserved his sharpest criticism for the policy views espoused by the Obama USDA. LUCAS: Rural development and all these other things are great but you can't forget about production ag. That's still the economic base of rural America, farming and ranching. My folks back home and in these 4 hearings we have had this weekend are not telling me that the farm program is dramatically broken. Kansas Republican Jerry Moran called for an oversight hearing on the Risk Management Agency's negotiations with private crop insurers on a new standard reinsurance agreement. MORAN: There is great concern that negotiations result in a reduction of $6-billion dollars in the crop insurance program and that $6-billion dollars comes out of the baseline that the house agriculture committee would then have to work with in regards to the next farm bill. Bush-era USDA Secretary Mike Johanns, now a Nebraska Senator, said a strong rural community is impossible without strong agriculture JOHANNS: We'll do everything we can to try to get the irritation level down maybe and try to get the department to focus on the importance of traditional agriculture. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.