01/02/07 Farm Bill 2007

One of the goals of this year's congressional session is passage of a farm bill. There are some who wanted to simply extend the 2002 Farm Bill, but others who want to see in rewritten may eventually have their way. The Idaho Dairymen's Association is one group that wants to see changes in the new Farm Bill. Bob Naerebout is the dairymen's executive director. NEAREBOUT "The farm laws pertaining to the dairy industry from federal milk marketing orders down to the support price down to quirky little programs like MILC have long served their purpose and its time to retire them and allow the free market to work." That position puts Idaho dairymen in direct opposition to most of their counterparts across much of the nation. Nearebout says it's a simple matter, just look at the facts. NEAREBOUT "If you go back to 1980 there were 225 thousand commercial dairy farms in the United States. Today we're under 64 thousand. So if the purpose of the programs were to keep dairy producers on dairies they're not working. If you go back to that same time period and look at what producers were being paid they're being paid less today than they were in 1980 on a per hundredweight basis." They will have an uphill fight in Congress to get those changes. Other commodity groups have their Farm Bill wish list. More on that tomorrow. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott