10/22/07 Senate Ag Committee may mark up farm bill this week

Farm and Ranch October 22, 2007 Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin says he has reached a basic agreement with key members of the committee on elements of a new farm bill and could mark up the legislation sometime this week. Harkin says one of those elements is the commodity title. Harkin: "The commodities title will give producers an option for the first time, this will begin in the 2010 crop year, to choose between a state level revenue protection program or remain the traditional target price-loan rate type program. This new approach called the Average Crop Revenue is similar to the Durbin-Brown proposal and that of the Iowa and National Corn Growers." There would be no cut in direct payments because by having the revenue option Harkin says the Congressional Budget Office found savings of three to 3.5 billion dollars over five years. The chairman says there is also about four billion dollars in new budget authority for conservation. Harkin: "This will allow CSP, my program now renamed the Conservation Stewardship Program, to grow vigorously by over 13 million acres a year." The farm bill proposal will provide 1.3 billion dollars in investments into farm-based energy by supporting programs to help farmers begin to establish biomass crops and offering resources for grants and loan guarantees for cellulosic biorefineries. There is also a big section for specialty crops. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.