Immigration Needs & Where's the Farm Bill

Immigration Needs & Where's the Farm Bill plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Once again there is a wrinkle in the Farm Bill journey. There had been some hope that with the passage of the House's nutrition bill we would see a conference on the farm bill but now we learn that this nutrition bill does not include a measure to merge it with the farm-only bill the House passed in July. In order to get to conference on a comprehensive farm bill - the House would have to vote on another rule to merge the two bills together - and then ask the Senate for a conference. It's doubtful that would happen until October...after the current extension has expired.

Comprehensive immigration reform surfaced once again during Ag Secretary's keynote remarks at a naturalization ceremony.Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke of the need for immigration reform.

VILSACK: We really have a broken immigration system that really needs to provide an opportunity for earned citizenship. The ability of folks to pay a fine, learn the language, go through the same citizen test and responsibilities that these folks went through and they will obviously require a great deal longer period of time to get citizenship but we do really need to bring them out of the shadows. For agriculture it's about providing a stable and secure workforce that can be complimented with a workable guest worker system, it would help reduce the deficit, it would shore up social security and of course it would provide for a historic investment in border security.

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

Hopes were high in the ag community that the passage last week of a nutrition bill in the House of Representatives meant that the stalled farm bill process would now get back on track. But there are still several administrative hoops to jump through before a House and Senate farm bill conference can take place, not the least being that House Speaker Boehner has yet to appoint farm bill conferees. Then, assuming a farm bill conference actually does take place, agreement by the House and Senate conferees on cuts to the food stamp program will have to take place, which seems to be a giant hurdle in and of itself since the nutrition bill contains several new qualification provisions and the $39 billion in food stamp savings approved by the House by a slim 217-210 vote is almost ten times what the Senate recommended over the next ten years. National Farmers Union president Roger Johnson expressed concern that the nutrition bill passed by the House will only make the farm bill conference process that much more difficult. American Soybean Association president Danny Murphy has said that "this process has gone on for more than three years now, and we still have no long-term legislation in place. That is entirely too long." Hear, hear gentlemen - hear, hear!

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