Farm Bill To Conference & A Better Bat

Farm Bill To Conference & A Better Bat plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

A lot of people are asking the question now of what’s next with the farm bill since the House only passed the farm part of the bill whereas the Senate passed the farm and nutrition portions. Congressman Doc Hastings explains.

HASTINGS: The way it works now is it is the farm bill and the Senate has passed their farm bill. Admittedly they are different. Obviously our bill does not have the nutrition title but it has all the other titles. So in the process of going to conference to resolve the differences undoubtedly that issue will be part of what the negotiations are.

Well anyone who knows me knows I am a huge baseball fan. And there is nothing more satisfying to a baseball player than swattin’ a homer with a good wooden bat. With the All-Star game coming up tomorrow night, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the results of innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service, and funded by MLB, that will result in significantly fewer shattered baseball bats. Testing and analyzing thousands of shattered Major League bats, researchers developed changes in manufacturing that decreased the rate of shattered maple bats by more than 50 percent since 2008.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Numerous ag groups and anti-hunger groups expressed over and over that it would be a bad idea to split the farm bill into two bills. Apparently their protests fell on deaf ears because that’s exactly what did happen last Thursday. The massive farm bill narrowly passed after Republicans stripped out the food stamp program. Zero Democrats voted for it and twelve Republicans voted against it. More than 46 million receive federal nutrition assistance, with food stamp spending accounting for roughly eighty percent of the cost of the farm bill, growing from about $38 billion in fiscal 2008 to $78 billion in fiscal 2012. Now what? Well, the proverbial can gets kicked back to the Senate, or a so-called conference committee, to resolve the differences between the two chambers’ bills. President Obama said he would veto the House version. House Ag Chairman Frank Lucas said prior to the vote that he was opposed to splitting the bill, but changed his stance late Wednesday stating that, “Maybe the old dynamic of how we have done things since 1965 isn’t valid anymore. Maybe it’s time to try something different”. One thing remains the same; the House and Senate are once again headed towards a looming September 30th deadline.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.