Farm Bill Confidence

We have been here before...on the cusp of getting a new farm bill only to have it fail. National Farmer's Union President Roger Johnson says he is confident that the farm bill will get passed this year. But he admits that's what he thought last year - too. Johnson says that while the nutrition title is a major sticking point - there are several other differences between the House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill.

JOHNSON: The House has proposed a plan which provides more of a long term price protection safety net which we're very supportive of. The Senate opted to go more of the revenue approach and the shallow loss approach. Sort of doubling down on crop insurance. Both of them have strong crop insurance programs and we're strongly in support of crop insurance but I tell you, the problem with crop insurance is about to be manifested. When we see something like a return to $3 corn farmers are gonna suddenly discover that they can't get any decent crop insurance because most crop insurance programs are now based on revenue so when you've got 5 or 6 or $7 corn out there you can buy some really strong levels of crop insurance protection. But you get down to a price which is below cost of production and the suddenly your crop instance protection goes the same way. It goes very low.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.