09/11/06 Field Hearings Conclude

The Senate Agriculture Committee held its eighth and final Farm Bill field hearing in Lubbock, Texas on Friday. Chairman Saxby Chambliss opened the hearing with a quote from an editorial published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. CHABLISS: I've never seen an editorial in any paper in any part of the United States that summed it up better than the way your editor summed it up this morning. He says in part, "Farm subsidy payments could better be described as consumer subsidy payments. Keeping our farmers and ranchers in business means keeping the U.S. cornucopia overflowing. Our farm policy accounts for a little more than one half of one percent of the U.S. budget but allows American shoppers to spend only 11% of their income for food, far less than consumers in any other country." Now that is what farm bills are all about and I am very pleased with the way the current farm bill is working to do exactly what he describes in the editorial. As Ag Secretary Mike Johanns learned last October during his own Farm Bill Listening Tour - the majority of producers in the southwest support an extension of the existing 2002 Farm Bill. Jimmy Wedel, a corn producer from Muleshoe, Texas summed it up best. WEDEL: I thank you again for coming and thank you for listening to us. I think we pretty much have a consensus among this group. I think you've heard that. I think you've heard that through all the hearings that have gone through the House side and the Senate side. Most farmers are pretty much happy with the current farm bill the way it is administered. The way it runs it does provide us with a safety net at a very minimal cost to the taxpayer and I'd like to hammer that message. Tommy Womack, a wheat producer from Tulia, Texas and former President of the National Association of Wheat Growers, told members of the Senate Ag Committee a major problem that exists today is in the current insurance program. WOMACK: A good insurance program where we can sit down with our banker and discuss, can I afford to lose 15% if I have a tremendous disaster this year? Could afford to lose 10? And be able to pick and choose because the federal government has kind of homed in on us buying 65% coverage because of the premium. And then with the diminimus yield involved, if I go out there and I have a hundred pounds of cotton left then that comes off even though it's not feasible for me to harvest that, so that's kind of a double loss. And I would kind of explain that this way, if I went out and bought a new car and I insured it at a $1000 loss, I had a wreck in it, the insurance company wouldn't come back and say this right front tire is still real good so I've got to deduct that, and that's what happens with crop insurance. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.