1/15/08 Farm Bureau Talks Issues

Farm Bureau Talks Issues. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The American Farm Bureau Federation has kicked off their annual meeting by talking about the issues in front of all farmers. Immigration, food safety, prices and of course the Farm Bill. AFBF President Bob Stallman got things started by jumping right into the fray and talked about farmer's frustration. STALLMAN: I think frustration is growing in the countryside amongst farmers wanting to know when a farm bill is going to get finished and when is it going to get implemented. The ideal situation is not to have to deal with a veto, but I do believe the administration is serious about vetoing it if it doesn't meet all of the parameters that they've laid out. So what does that mean? We'll find out here in a probably a few weeks. He talked about what compromises are necessary to pass the Farm Bill. STALLMAN: The bottom line is it will take a compromise from all parties to get it done. We feel like we've compromised a great deal from what our original proposal had in it, but at the end of the day we think it's very important to move as expeditiously as possible, get a bill done, so our farmers know what the rules are going to be for 2008. Stallman says commodity and crop insurance funding has been cut enough. STALLMAN: The commodity title and crop insurance are the only two segments of the farm bill that actually have taken hits in terms of funding. Only two. And so we want to maintain the direct payment funding that remains in there and to keep other people from coming going to try to capture funds out of it to use for something else. Of course another hot issue being talked about is immigration and what needs to be done. Farm Bureau Economist Pat O'Brien says it's doubtful that immigration reform will be implemented soon. O'BRIEN: its clear congress doesn't have a lot of time and energy to put into much more than the top few issues and we have to make sure that we get immigration reform and specifically putting a guest worker program in place for agriculture to the top of that priority list. Eventually we will see some sort of immigration reform according to O'Brien. O'BRIEN: In a perverse kind of way, the fact that the situation is likely to get worse the tighter the government moves to enforce migrant labor restrictions, may ultimately be a good sign because it will force the issue and it will make it very clear to Americans that the agricultural sector as we know it now needs 500,000 to 750,000 migrant workers year. The annual convention wraps up tomorrow in New Orleans. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.