08/09/07 A Chat With Johanns Pt 1

A Chat with Johanns. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. I spent a few minutes on the phone with Ag Secretary Mike Johanns yesterday. Two Midwest boys talking about the weather and of course the topic of the Farm Bill came up. And my first question was borne of political frustration. Will there be a 2007 Farm Bill? JOHANNS: I do believe we will get a Farm Bill this year. I know one thing for sure, the President wants a farm bill this year he can sign and he wants it on his desk before the end of the year so we're very committed to it at the administration level and you know you've got a House version now and I think after the August recess you'll see the Senate come back and you'll see the Senate version. So I think it's moving along about like the normal process of a Farm Bill; agreements, disagreements and that sort of thing but I continue to be optimistic that we can wrap up a Farm Bill by the end of the year  if not sooner. There have been a lot of people who think we should just extend the '02 Farm Bill. Is that really feasible 5 years later? JOHANNS: A couple of years ago there was discussion here and maybe across the country about extending the '02 bill, that has gained less and less favor over time. It really depends on the commodity group in terms of who might advocate for that. I don't see a lot of support for it at the moment and there's some reasons for that. You know there are certain commodities that would say the '02 bill really wasn't very good for us and so they're not excited about extension. Johanns says there are some things that didn't get done on '02 that people would have liked to have seen. JOHANNS: We have a proposal on GAP coverage that would allow a producer a much stronger safety net. They could literally insure up to 100% of their loss and so we think that really needs to happen. We've had a lot of drought over the last few years  you would not get that if you just had an extension of the '02 bill. And I could go on  item by item by item as the thing that I really feel improve on the '02 bill that I'd like to see done that you simply wouldn't get if you just said, well let's extend what we had in '02. And of course Johanns says there have been quite a few changes in the farming industry in the last 5 years. Tomorrow Johanns talks about ethanol and alternative fuels. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.