Agricultural News
Coburn Proposes Amendments, Holds Out Little Hope for Senate Farm Bill
Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:52:11 CDT
The Senate Agriculture Committee's version of the 2012 farm bill is now up for consideration on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Oklahoma's junior Senator, Dr. Tom Coburn, has offered several amendments to the bill, but says the Senate bill is almost a hopeless cause. The bill's price tag of 984 billion dollars over ten years increases costs by 60 percent over the last farm bill. The majority of the increases were mandated to nutrition programs by the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and are off the table.
Beyond those cost factors, Coburn says, the bill's direction is all wrong.
"What the farm bill ought to be is to create a stable environment where farmers who know how to farm can actually leverage their risks and have a backdrop in case they either have a bad crop or bad prices, because we want them to stay there.
"So what we ought to have is a system that says 'Here's something that if we're caught in a severely down price, we're going to protect our production agriculture.' But what this program does, with the ARC and the flood (sic) insurance program, it guarantees everybody 90 percent of their revenues even if prices decline and the federal government picks up the tab."
Coburn says the Senate's bill does not adequately address the financial realities facing the country at this time.
"We're going to be changing a lot of things in this country in the next two to four years or the world financial market is going to be changing it for us."
Coburn says farm incomes over the last four years have been rising and instead of the farm bill being a backstop or safety net, it will become an income guarantee program that the country will not be able to afford. In addition, he is afraid it will discourage farmers from hedging or forward contracting as a risk management tool.
Coburn says he does believe farmers need crop insurance, but he's not sold on the way crop insurance is handled in the Senate's farm bill. He says the unintended consequences will adversely affect new farmers and conservation programs. If the Senate's version of the farm bill prevails as an income-guarantee program, it would push high land prices even higher making it almost impossible for young farmers to afford. Artificially high returns from cropland would encourage farmers to break out land which would otherwise be set aside for conservation purposes. That, in turn, would force conservation programs to increase their payment incentives to prevent farming marginal ground.
Given that trimming the bill's highest cost provisions in the nutrition programs are off the table due to their protection by the stimulus legislation, Coburn offered an amendment with Dick Durbin to reduce premium subsidies to the largest producers. He said he is not optimistic it will be heard. He said there are very few amendments that the Senate leadership will allow to be considered.
Coburn said he puts far more stock in the House version of the farm bill and is confident Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas will turn out a better product. He said he is far more likely to endorse the House bill than support what ultimately comes out of the Senate.
Coburn said he doubts Senator Harry Reed's desire to actually get a farm bill passed. If it does get passed and if the House gets its version passed, Coburn said he doesn't believe the bills could be reconciled in conference committee by the September 30th deadline due to their vast differences. He said it is far more likely that we will see an extension of the 2008 farm bill.
Press on the LISTEN BAR below to hear more of Dr. Coburn's comments on the Senate version of the 2012 Farm Bill.
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