02/26/07 New Potato Board & the Challenges

New Potato Board & Upcoming Challenges. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns today appointed 27 producer members and two importer members to serve on the National Potato Promotion Board. The board members work on the marketing side of the potato industry. John Keeling is the Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Potato Council says there is also a new group of directors that will be working the issues. KEELING: We're starting out with a new group also bringing them to town to do some lobbying on the hill both on the farm bill, we're going to hit on the farm bill, we're going to hit on immigration and we're going to hit on budget issues. Keeling is excited about the new farm bill and says there has been a lot of talk about specialty crops like potatoes. KEELING: I think if you  anybody who keeps abreast of these issues at all will know that a lot of the key people, the Secretary of Agriculture, the various chairman's of the two House and Senate Ag committees have been saying some very positive things about the need and the opportunity to have specialty crop growers at the table when this farm bill is put together so that's very, very encouraging. The Department of Agriculture and their Farm Bill proposal that they put forward what now 10 days ago, or two weeks ago, they had some very strong improvements for programs that are important to specialty crop growers and creation of new programs, enhancement of existing programs. The Secretary in his roll out of that mentioned specialty crops a number of times so I think the whole environment around having specialty crops and potato growers at the table during the Farm Bill has changed dramatically in a very positive way. But Keeling says there are challenges with parts of the farm bill. KEELING: I think the biggest challenge for us is going to be - and this is an area where we did disagree with USDA and that's maintaining the planting flexibility restrictions. Those restrictions require  or prevent a grower that receives subsidies on a particular acre of ground from producing specialty crops  fruits and vegetables on that same ground. We think that's a fundamental matter of equity that you can't allow folks that receive payments on acres to be able to use those same acres to produce a commodity that competes with a grower that isn't subsidized. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.