08/23/06 Drought Relief

Drought Relief a Top Priority. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Despite welcome rainfall and cooler temperatures in some areas - severe drought remains a major concern for thousands of America's farmers and ranchers. National Cattlemen's Beef Association President Mike John of Huntsville, Missouri says the drought is causing serious hardship for many cattle producers. JOHN: It seems to be a lot more widespread than I had originally thought. There's some drought areas in the Midwest, the southwest, the west, the northern plains; it seems to be pretty widespread and pretty serious. In some of those areas it's been going on for enough years it's hard to hang on. It's pretty bad and I feel bad for producers that have to make decisions that they don't want to make based on the weather. John says scarce hay supplies are a serious concern. And that - he says - will only get worse as hay is being fed to cattle now that would normally be reserved for the winter months. JOHN: I've seen some reports that the government is predicting a small hay crop nationally anyway and then with having to start feeding hay even in my home state of Missouri there's folks feeding hay now that they would not normally feed until sometime in the winter. It's very concerning. I think producers are going to need help. I think we're going to have to help people survive the results of this drought and it's going to take a pretty concentrated effort to keep people in the business. NCBA is working for federal drought assistance from Congress. About four-billion dollars in disaster assistance is now in the Senate Ag Appropriations bill. But John says much hard work remains if this provision is going to survive into the final budget. JOHN: We're very concerned that there are enough appropriations in the Ag bill and Ag appropriations to cover the disaster relief that we need and there's pretty good support. There are several Senators urging for that to be included in the package. NCBA also supports the efforts of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and other key members of the Senate to convince the Treasury Secretary to grant an extension of the livestock replacement tax relief that was first passed in 2003. This measure allows livestock producers more time to replace breeding stock that was liquidated due to drought. John says it wouldn't make sense to force producers to replace these animals at a time when hay and grazing are in such short supply - just to avoid an income tax hit on the animals they originally sold. JOHN: We'd like to see some tax relief for some of these folks that have had multi-year drought where they can still hold off on being able to buy back cattle as a result of sell-offs in previous years and they just haven't had an opportunity to buy them back again. If the end of that grace period is reached and the producer is still in a drought and still doesn't have the hay and still doesn't have the forage to replace those cattle that they had to sell off for the drought doesn't make sense for them to have to do that in order to get that tax benefit. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.