2014 farm law

The fiscal 2016 budget resolution proposed by Senate Budget chairman Mike Enzi calls for large cuts in discretionary spending outside of the military, which could include food stamps, but does not specifically ask for cuts in the farm program. During committee debate, Democrat Debbie Stabenow said 400 farm, conservation, anti-hunger and rural-development groups were on record against any cuts beyond the $23 billion required by the 2014 farm law.

The nation's second-largest farm group, the National Farmers Union, adopted a policy statement that opposes the STAX program for cotton. STAX, a combination of a floor price and revenue insurance, was created in the 2014 farm law to resolve a World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. cotton subsidies. "While this program is subsidized at 80 percent, this is a shallow-loss program that, according to many economists, is unaffordable," says NFU.

The government will pay $6.5 billion in crop subsidies for this year's grain and soybean crops because of falling commodity prices, according to an estimate by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, a think tank at the University of Missouri. The outlays would be the largest in seven years, said FAPRI, and would be well above its forecast average annual cost of $5 billion. "Payments under 2014 farm bill programs increase when crop prices fall," said FAPRI.

Farmers have an additional month, until March 31, to tell the USDA if they want to update their yield and acreage "bases" for crop subsidies. Operators also face a March 31 deadline to select a crop subsidy program - either the shallow-loss Agriculture Risk Coverage or the traditionally structured Price Loss Coverage - for the life of the 2014 farm law. The department announced "a one-time extension" on Friday, the previous yield-and-base deadline; the decision period opened on Sept. 29, 2014.

The House Agriculture Committee pointed to spending cuts enacted as part of the 2014 farm law, and asked the Budget Committee to look to the other 98 percent of the federal budget for savings. "From our perspective, we believe the Committee on Agriculture has done its part for now with respect to deficit reduction," says a letter approved on a voice vote by committee members. The farm law called for $23 billion in savings and the committee says the savings "remain intact."

The Senate proposal to place a $50,000 cap on premium subsidies for farmers buying crop insurance "could potentially impact participation" in the program, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The government pays an average of 62 cents of each $1 of premium, although the subsidy rate is as high as 80 percent on some policies. During a tele-conference, Vilsack said, "We don't want to go back to the days of ad hoc (disaster relief) legislation. That could potentially be much more expensive."

Nitrogen runoff could be reduced by 45 percent in the Mississippi River basin - the heart of U.S. grain farming - with adoption of practices that reduce fertilizer waste and conversion of as little as 3.1 million acres of farmland to filter and hold nutrients that now flow downstream, says a research paper. Nitrogen runoff from farms and other sources is blamed for the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

Chairman Pat Roberts says the big issue confronting the Senate Agriculture Committee is "regulatory overkill we are experiencing with every agency" and particularly with the EPA. Roberts mentioned regulatory reform twice while listing committee priorities for this session. "We've got a lot of priorities," he said, citing reauthorization of the CFTC, the mandatory livestock price reporting law, and child nutrition programs - "big time." Regulatory reform, he said, "seems to be the big thing" in farm country.

For many people, food stamps, the premiere U.S. anti-hunger program, provides assistance during a fairly brief stretch of hard times, such as unemployment. For millions of others - foremost, the elderly and disabled - the program is a long-term support, says a new Agriculture Department report, Dynamics and Determinants of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation from 2008 to 2012. Food stamps were renamed SNAP in 2008 but the original name remains in use.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says if the United States loses its WTO appeal over country-of-origin labels (COOL) on meat sold in grocery stores, the only choice left will be repeal of the law or extensive changes in it. "That's the deal," Vilsack said during a news conference in San Diego. Lawmakers instructed USDA last month to report by May 1 on how to bring the COOL into compliance with world trade rulings.