House and Senate negotiators are considering whether to expand farm subsidies and make cousins, nieces and nephews of farmers eligible for up to $125,000 a year in crop supports, said a handful of budget hawks, environmentalists and small-farm advocates on Monday. House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway “has made this is biggest goal to achieve in the farm bill,” said Nan Swift of the National Taxpayers Union.
The “four corners” — the four lead Congressional negotiators — apparently have set aside a House proposal to remove payment limits on some types of corporate farms and have weakened or discarded a Senate provision to limit payments to farmers, their spouses and one “manager” per farm, said the activists during a teleconference. The Senate proposal, by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, would tighten subsidy rules while the others would loosen them. Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition cautioned that the group was working with limited information from the closed-door negotiations.
A spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts, who is in charge of the so-called House-Senate conference, said there were no developments to report. The “four corners” hope to reach agreement on a final version of the bill in time for enactment during the lame-duck session, which is scheduled to end in mid-December.
The activists said an expansion of eligibility for subsidies would be a step backward for farm policy reform. Swift said Southern growers would benefit the most from the change. Crops such as cotton and rice garner large payments but also have high production costs.