08/10/07 Johanns on Farm Bill Part 2

Johanns on Farm Bill Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Ag Secretary Mike Johanns believes there will be a Farm Bill signed this year. The House already has their version and the Senate is set to begin work on theirs in September. But Johanns says that the business of farming has changed and so must the Farm Bill. JOHANNS: Things have changed dramatically. You know of you think about it the first energy title in a farm bill was in the '02 bill. Think about how much ethanol has grown since 2002. What does that mean? We need to be ready to take another step. We need to be ready to take another step into cellulosic ethanol. We should be putting our hands on additional research in that area. We've got a proposal in the administration plan that would provide loan guarantees to construct cellulosic ethanol plants so again you kind of look at what you had in '02 and you say to yourself, that was fine for '02 but times do change and they have changed very dramatically. Corn based ethanol is getting the most attention these days and also the blame for high costs of many commodities. Johanns says there is a need to continue development of ethanol products. JOHANNS: We feel very strongly that there needs to be room in future farm policy and in the 2007 Farm Bill for continued development in the ethanol area. Corn-based ethanol is doing well. It's had a nice run here, we're very excited about that but we need to make sure we are positioning farmers for the next step which we see as cellulosic ethanol. We think there are some great opportunities here and maybe its switchgrass, maybe its woody biomass. It can be a variety of products and in time the marketplace will tell us which product is the most cost efficient to convert into ethanol but we feel that we need to start working in that direction and put some money into research and that sort of thing that we'd like to see happen in this '07 bill. Johanns mentioned research dollars for biofuels but what about ag producers? JOHANNS: We heard from our producers of fruits and vegetables, they said exactly what your question is implying. We need more funding for research and market promotion and sanitary  phyto-sanitary issues so in our Farm Bill proposal we actually had the largest specialty crop proposal in the history of Farm Bills and the House has come pretty close to matching us. I mean they're right there and I think the specialty crop industry has been pretty well satisfied with not only the effort of the administration but what they think they are going to be getting out of this Farm Bill. On Monday, Johanns talks about what he see's as the major hurdles to passing the 2007 Farm Bill. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.