Organizations

On Thursday, Senators Al Franken (D-MN) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced Senate Bill 2225 that reauthorizes and amends the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP).  REAP provides agricultural producers and rural businesses with grants and loans for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.  The Program also provides grant funding for energy audits and renewable energy development assistance.

The Franken-Harkin bill has new provisions for REAP that are supported by NSAC including:

• Simplifying the Application Process: The bill simplifies applications for small projects, creating a three-tiered application system with application simplicity reflecting the size of the project.
• Cutting Burdensome and Costly Regulation: The bill eliminates the USDA’s “two-meter rule,” which currently requires farmers to install a second meter for residential use that goes unread. This rule has levied heavy costs on farmers, and once removed by this bill will allow more farmers to benefit from REAP funding.
• Strengthening Environmental and Health Provisions: The bill requires the USDA to include stronger environmental and health aspects in its award considerations.
• Expanding Start-Up Support: The bill strengthens funding for feasibility studies so that rural farmers and businesses can start projects with sound planning

The new bill also proposes to increase the authorization for appropriation for REAP from $25 million to $100 million, and decrease the farm bill mandatory funding level for REAP from $70 million a year to $25 million.  In recent years, demand for REAP dollars has outstripped supply by a 3:1 margin.  USDA recently issued a progress report on REAP accomplishments.

Members and readers have been calling and writing asking for insight into what the House budget resolution — introduced on March 20, passed out of the House Budget Committee on March 21, and headed to a vote on the House floor next week — means for the new farm bill.  We will do our best to try to make sense of the complex and still unfolding situation in simple terms.

Budget-Driven Hurry Up Farm Bill…Ultimately Signifying What?

Most importantly, the House budget resolution calls on six authorizing committees, including the Agriculture Committee, to report a “budget reconciliation” bill by April 27.  In the case of the Agriculture Committee, their specific instructions are to cut spending from the farm bill baseline (projected spending) by $33.2 billion over the next 10 years, including a whopping and disproportional $8.2 billion in 2012 and 2013.

This figure compares to the draft farm bill agreed to by House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders last year that proposed to cut $25 billion (gross) from the farm bill 10-year baseline for a net savings of $23 billion.  Besides the obvious difference of the additional $10 billion in proposed cuts in the new House budget resolution, the draft deal from last fall also had the cuts somewhat back loaded into the second five years of the 10-year budget window, compared to the heavy front-loading in the new House proposal.

Under the special budget reconciliation process, the only germane provisions are those that either save money or cost money in portions of the farm bill with mandatory or direct spending.  Policy changes, however important they may be, that do not change mandatory funding under the Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction are not generally allowed.  This would include nearly all of the myriad farm bill provisions that establish policy and programs that are authorized by the farm bill, subject to appropriations in the annual (discretionary) agricultural appropriations bill.  It will also include directives to USDA about new priorities, regulatory issues, and program consolidation and streamlining initiatives, among other categories.

Hence, it would not be entirely accurate to call the bill that the House Agriculture Committee must deliver to the Budget Committee before the end of April the farm bill per se.  Strictly speaking it is not the farm bill, though with all the major farm bill funding decisions made, including presumably all of the specifics of new commodity subsidy programs widely assumed to be included in the new farm bill, it is also not at all clear when or how the Committee would return to take up all the other provisions that would normally go into a comprehensive farm bill.

More importantly, it is quite clear that the Senate will not be undertaking any similar budget reconciliation exercise.  So once the House committee reports its $33.2 billion in net cuts to the Budget Committee, and the Budget Committee wraps it together with the cuts from the other five Committees with reconciliation instructions and sends it to the floor for a vote on the whole package, that is likely the end of the story for this bill.  There will be no similar reconciliation bill from the Senate with which to go to conference, and it would logically then die at that point.  Should Congress decide late in the year to take some action to forestall some or all of the automatic spending cuts (see below), it is possible some of the ideas in the House budget reconciliation package could come back into play at that point in time.

However, having made some very big, tough, and fast decisions to come up with the $33 billion, those on the Committee voting in favor of the stripped down farm bill may hang onto some or all of the components of the budget reconciliation bill if, later in the process, there is actually a more normal farm bill debate and conference.  Hence there could be an ongoing impact even if the specific legislative vehicle dies.

The purpose of the budget reconciliation maneuver by the House majority leadership is to come up with a package of cuts that would delay for one year the automatic cuts (called sequestration) that are scheduled to take effect January 1, 2013 as a result of the failure of the Super Committee process last fall.  A substantial portion of the automatic cuts fall on the defense budget and the House majority leadership wants to prevent any of those defense budget cuts from happening.  The reconciliation bill, together with a proposed $19 billion cut to annual appropriations for FY 2013 below the levels agreed to between the House, Senate, and White House just last summer, would negate one year’s worth of the $1.2 trillion 10-year automatic cuts.

The ten-year impact of sequestration on the farm bill baseline would be less than half of the $33 billion mandated by the House budget resolution, yet the House reconciliation package is geared to just delaying sequestration by one year.   That would suggest that if the House Republican budget leaders had their way, there would be a need for regular, repeat budget reconciliation packages each year, potentially with bigger proposed farm bill cuts yet to come, to continue to delay sequestration.  In other words, rather than being disproportional by a factor of two, the accumulated effect could be even greater disproportional cuts to food and agricultural spending relative to other government functions.

While the programmatic changes to reach $33 billion is totally up to the Agriculture Committee to decide, and while they could essentially start from scratch and decide how much to take from nutrition, crop insurance subsidies, commodity subsidies, and conservation programs — the four big pots of mandatory farm bill spending – it is generally assumed the starting point would likely be something very close to the $23 billion net savings deal reached by the Agriculture Committee leaders last fall, but with the additional $10 billion cut tacked on, including the big $8 billion immediate cut.

Unconfirmed rumors on Capitol Hill suggest that the working assumption about the extra cuts is that they would target nutrition programs for low-income Americans, primarily through cuts to  SNAP (food stamp) benefits.  Needless to say, that would be a highly controversial proposal.   If it is latched onto as a crusade, it could by itself quite easily doom chances for a farm bill this year.

One final thing to note about the stripped down farm bill on tap for April 27 — timing.  After the House floor vote on the budget resolution next week, there will be only seven working days on the House calendar for the Agriculture Committee to report the bill, in large part due to the schedule two week Easter recess which will shut down the House from March 30 to April 15.  So, absent a successful floor amendment next week to change the due date beyond the end of April, the House Agriculture Committee will have the herculean task of producing a bill in a week’s worth of legislative days.

Meanwhile, back over in the Senate, plans are still proceeding for a Senate Agriculture Committee mark-up of a more comprehensive farm bill under normal procedures sometime in April or May.  With two very different processes in the two chambers, it is anyone’s guess as to how this whole thing plays out.  It is like two trains heading down two different parallel, non-intersecting tracks.  Whether a train can jump the tracks and actually get us to a 2012 Farm Bill will take a great deal of legislative ingenuity.

The two primary options remain passing a comprehensive farm bill this year, on time and on schedule, or, in the alternative, passing a one-year extension of the current farm bill, either exactly as is, or with modifications.  Time will tell, but it would not be a bad bet at this point to think that sometime before summer a decision will need to be made about whether or not to start negotiating an extension of current law if it appears by then it will come to that.

What About All the Other Cuts We Have Been Hearing About?

The source of much of the confusion we have been hearing about from members and readers the last couple of days has to do with all the other farm bill numbers included in the political and explanatory document accompanying the House budget resolution and calculated into the big picture numbers in the resolution itself.  In the document, Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposes that farm bill spending be cut over the next ten years by over $180 billion, very similar to the budget he presented and the House approved on a party line vote last year.

Those bigger numbers include over $30 billion in cuts to commodity and crop insurance subsidies, $16 billion in cuts to conservation programs, and a whopping $134 billion cuts to nutrition assistance.  The bulk of the nutrition cut would come from turning the federal program into a state block grant at reduced funding and with tighter eligibility standards.

We will report a bit more on those proposals in a separate later posting.  For current purposes, we would just note two things.

First, these huge and highly disproportional farm bill cuts in the House Republican budget are very important to the various claims the Chair and the majority leadership are making about how much of a bigger impact their proposal would have on deficit reduction compared to the President’s proposal.  In other words, they are part of the additive mix to come up with the macro numbers used to sell the budget proposal.

Second, however, they are unrelated to the immediate mandate to cut $33 billion from the farm bill through legislation that must be passed before the end of April.  The latter is where the real action is, and the former are more like long-term suggestions (not to mention fodder for many upcoming campaign debates as we approach election day in November).  The House Agriculture Committee will use its own judgement on how to reach the $33 billion cut and does not have to pay any particular attention to assumptions made for purposes of putting together the budget resolution.

We hope this explanation is helpful to those trying to follow along on the path to the farm bill.  In a related post, we describe the impact of the new House budget resolution on the agricultural appropriations process.

 

NSAC Testimony

On Tuesday, March 20, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) delivered its fiscal year (FY) 2013 agriculture appropriations testimony to the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.  The testimony includes NSAC’s FY 2013 appropriations requests for critical conservation, rural development, marketing, research, credit, and beginning and minority farmer programs.  We will deliver matching funding requests to the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee next week.

You can visit our annual appropriations webpage to download and read the testimony.

Senators have until March 30 to deliver food and agriculture funding request letters to Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Chairman of the Subcommittee.  The deadline for member letters in the House was March 20.

While there is no set timeline, both subcommittees are likely to mark up their respective agriculture appropriations bills in the next few months.

House and Senate Budget Committee Action on Discretionary Spending

On Wednesday, March 21, the House Budget Committee passed its FY 2013 budget resolution, which sets a top-line funding cap for discretionary spending in FY 2013.  The budget resolution caps discretionary spending at $1.028 trillion, which is $19 billion less than the top-line number that Congress agreed upon for FY 2013 in the Budget Control Act of 2011.  That Act set up a series of automatic cuts, known as “sequestration,” which would begin to take effect in January 2013.  The House budget resolution aims to replace the sequester for FY 2013 (but not for the following nine years) with an alternative set of cuts, including the extra $19 billion generated by further reducing the discretionary spending cap and much larger savings from mandatory programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and the farm bill.

If the House passes the budget resolution, which they are expected to do next week, the House Appropriations Committee will have to conform to this extremely limiting spending cap.  The next step for the House Appropriations Committee will be to use the top-line cap to set sub-allocations (also known as 302b allocations) for the various appropriations subcommittees, including the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.  The sub-allocation will determine how much money the Subcommittee has to work with when setting FY 2013 spending levels for discretionary farm bill programs.

The Senate will also be moving forward with its appropriations bills.  Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, filed a “deeming resolution” on Tuesday, which allows the Appropriations Committee to begin work on its FY 2013 bills.  Unlike the House, however, the Senate will use the spending cap agreed to by the House, Senate and White House in the Budget Control Act of 2011 to determine its sub-allocation to the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee.

The House budget action to renege on last summer’s budget deal, assuming passage when it reaches the House floor next week as seems likely, puts the two chambers at odds over the funding bills.   It thus quite possibly sets the stage for another showdown over a potential government shutdown at the end of September, this time just in advance of national elections.

House Hearings on Farm and Research Programs

Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee held two hearings this week, the first on USDA’s FY 2013 budget requests for the Farm and Foreign Agricultural Service mission area, and the second on the USDA’s requests for the Research, Education, and Economics mission area.

At the first hearing, the Subcommittee raised a number of questions about the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).  The President’s budget requests a CRP enrollment of 30 million acres in FY2013.  FSA Administrator Bruce Nelson testified that there are now 29.7 million acres in the CRP, down nearly 20 percent from FY2007.  About 18 percent of the acres are in the continuous CRP conservation buffer and special wildlife practices component.

Earlier in the year, USDA announced a new highly erodible land initiative and a new grasslands, wetlands and biodiversity initiative to target enrollment of land in the continuous CRP.  In addition, CRP contracts on about 6.5 million acres are scheduled to expire at the end of September 2012.  USDA has opened a new CRP general sign-up, which began on March 12 and will end on April 6.  The Administrator emphasized, in response to questions from Subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston (R-GA), that CRP not only conserves resources and increases water quality but also supports recreational businesses and jobs in rural areas.

Administrator Nelson also noted that USDA suspended the CRP Transition Incentives Program (TIP) in February because over $20 million of the $25 million provided in the 2008 Farm Bill has been expended.  The CRP-TIP offers two additional years of CRP payments to retiring landowners who agree to transition their expiring CRP acres to a new or socially disadvantaged farmer who enters the land into production using sustainable growing practices.  Referring to CRP-TIP as a success and “a great tool” in the conservation toolbox, the Administrator noted that FSA is now reviewing about $1 million in pending requests for contracts in addition to the 1,500 contracts already obligated.

Issues concerning beginning farmers and ranchers and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers (SDA) were also covered at the hearing.  In FY 2011, 63 percent of FSA direct lending, just over $1 billion, went to beginning farmers.  FSA also assisted beginning farmers with an additional $735 million in credit through loan guarantees in FY 2011.  Since FY 2006, FSA has increased its lending total to beginning farmers by 63 percent.

Representative Sanford Bishop (D-GA) emphasized the importance of FSA loans to socially disadvantaged farmers and requested a state-by-state breakdown of such loans.  He also questioned whether the funding provided to the USDA Office of Advocacy and Outreach is sufficient and urged that the Office do more outreach.

Following the Farm and Foreign Agricultural Service hearing, the Subcommittee examined the President’s FY 2013 request for the programs that fall within USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics mission area.

A number of questions were asked about the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program.  Representative Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) voiced her concern that only 30 percent of AFRI funding is going to the foundational program.  Currently, 70 percent of AFRI grants are administered through the “challenge area” component of the Initiative.  In line with Rep. Lummis’ comments, NSAC has advocated for a better balance between foundational grants and challenge area grants.  Similarly, Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) urged USDA to ensure that increased funding for AFRI does not come at the expense of funding for other grant programs that offer more opportunities for smaller projects to successfully compete for funding.

Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, noted with favor that the Administration has requested money for the federal-state matching grants component of the SARE program for FY 2013.  Rep. Farr asked the witnesses to explain how this component would enhance the keystone sustainable agriculture program at USDA.

The USDA witnesses at the hearing noted that the state matching grant component would allow the agency to integrate sustainable agriculture into the state experiment stations and extension service in order to serve and reach small and mid-sized farmers across the country.  USDA Undersecretary of Research, Education, and Economics, Catherine Woteki, explained that there has not been any meaningful increase in funding for sustainable agriculture research in a decade.  In fact, despite its $60 million farm bill authorization, the entire program was funded at just $19.2 million in FY 2012.

NSAC will continued monitor the appropriations process and will you apprised as events unfold.

This week, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack released a report entitled The Impact of the Rural Energy for America Program on Promoting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  The Report summarizes the energy efficiency and renewable energy projects funded by the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) over the last three years, 2009 through 2011.  It also includes a state-by-state summary of REAP renewable energy projects, with a profile of selected projects.

Overall, during the 3-year period covered by the report, REAP accomplished the following:

• Supported 5,733 renewable energy and energy efficiency projects nationwide;
• Generated or saved an estimated 6.5 million megawatt hours of power;
• Provided $192 million in grants and $165 million in loan guarantees to agricultural producers and rural small business owners for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements; and
• Fostered partnerships that have leveraged an estimated $800 million from other sources.

Since the Program was first established in the 2002 Farm Bill, it has provided resources for more than 13,000 rural small businesses and agricultural producers, saved enough energy to power nearly 600,000 American homes for a year, and funded more than 1,000 solar projects and more than 560 wind projects.

REAP provides grants, loan guarantees, and a combination of grants and loan guarantees to rural small businesses and agricultural producers.  USDA is taking applications for guaranteed loans for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency improvements through June 29, 2012.  Applications for REAP grants and loan/grant combinations are due no later than March 30th.

Additional information on applying for REAP funding is available in the Federal Register funding notice issued January 20. You can also contact your USDA Rural Development state office for more information.

Last week, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan released a new USDA report, Moving Food Along the Value Chain: Innovations in Regional Food Distribution, that highlights the work of eight food distributors across the country.  These food distributors, better known as food hubs, facilitate connections between producers and consumers at a local and regional level.  Last April, NSAC reported on a USDA nationwide analysis of food hubs that focused on the economic opportunities food hubs provide.

The March 16 press release notes that “the study details how these organizations help local and regional producers overcome bottlenecks in the food marketing system through collaborative and transparent planning and adherence to a shared set of operating principles.  By sharing lessons learned and best practices, the new study serves as a resource for producers, food processors, and marketers organizing to supply local and regional food products to commercial customers.”

The three-year study, completed by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), highlights eight distributors:  La Montanita (Albuquerque, NM), The Wedge Coop (Minneapolis, MN), Oklahoma Food Co-op (Oklahoma City, OK), New North Florida Cooperative (Marianna, FL), Community Alliance with Family Farmers (Davis, CA), Red Tomato (Boston, MA), Minnesota Food Association (Marine on St Croix, MN), and Appalachian Sustainable Development (Abingdon, VA).  For each of these food hubs, AMS addressed network organization, product branding and labeling, infrastructure management, and price negotiation in its study.  According to AMS, the following criteria influenced performance across all eight examples:

• The amount and timing of investments made in infrastructure are vital to the success and survival of food value chains;
• Preserving the identity of growers on product labels is critical for connecting with consumers, distinguishing the product from the competition and providing traceability;
• Informal farmer networks can offer additional flexibility for suppliers and buyers and allow food value chains to be highly responsive to the shifting demands of specialty food markets; and
• For-profit businesses, nonprofits, and cooperatives all have unique strengths.  By partnering with each other within food value chains they can leverage organizational competencies and reduce the risk of failure.

Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), an NSAC member group, is one of the food hubs featured in the study.  CAFF operates Growers Collaborative, a food hub that follows a nonprofit model to connect farmers to consumers.  CAFF is currently establishing a set of Growers Collaborative regional aggregators across California that purchase produce from farmers and market it to larger food distributors with the label “Buy Fresh, Buy Local,” a branding that CAFF licenses from Food Routes.  CAFF is currently the only entity in California authorized to use this label.  Farmers receive the farm gate value for their product, and institutions that want to source locally can select produce from distributors that is verified local.

The March 7 Senate Agriculture Committee’s 2012 Farm Bill hearing on Healthy Food Initiatives, Local Production, and Nutrition also included discussion of food hubs.  Senator Debbie Stabenow, Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, referenced food hubs as a means of connecting communities with local, healthy food.  In addition, Mr. Dan Carmody, president of Eastern Market Corporation in Detroit, MI, testified as a witness about Eastern Market’s food hub model, citing increases in producer income and improved access to healthy foods for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The eight food hubs profiled in the report emphasize many of the local and regional food systems initiatives detailed in USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food (KYF2) Compass.  NSAC reported on the KYF2 Compass earlier this month.

Today, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Rural Development, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture held a hearing to identify duplicative federal rural development programs.  The hearing focused on reducing duplication, fragmentation, and overlap in rural development programs for a 2012 Farm Bill.  USDA Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager and Government Accountability Office (GAO) Director of Financial Markets and Community Investment, William Shear testified as witnesses.

Opening Remarks

Chairman Tim Johnson (R-IL) opened the hearing by stressing the need to streamline programs given “scarce resources.”  Ranking member Jim Costa (D-CA) followed; he noted that “because of population disparities, often rural areas are overlooked.”

Rep. Costa emphasized that program consolidation should occur with serious consideration to whether or not a program is duplicative.  He referred to the President’s  Consolidation Authority Act, which would combine six agencies, including the Department of Commerce and Small Business Association (SBA), as “better bang for the buck,” but cautioned against blind consolidation.  Rep. Costa cited from personal experience the Value-Added Producer Grant (VAPG) as an example of a program that has come under fire, but one that he believes provides an essential service.

“These grants help agricultural producers and cooperatives who are not always on a level playing field,” he stated.  Costa explained how VAPG helped the Rosa Brothers, based in his district, grow their family-owned dairy business.

Finally, Costa urged USDA to submit the promised report defining “rural.”  He proposed his own definition, one where “rural” was flexible enough to meet the demands of the community and included regions with urban centers in otherwise very rural communities.

First Witness: Dallas Tonsager

USDA Under Secretary Dallas Tonsager stated that revitalization and development of rural areas was one of USDA’s priorities.  Tonsager noted that USDA programs and investment strive to promote job growth, but administering these programs in rural areas “is a continual challenge.”

“The presence of USDA field offices in every state helps us serve the specific needs of local rural communities.  Our direct personal contact with these communities creates efficiencies in program delivery,” Tonsager stated in his testimony.

Representatives Johnson, Scott (R-GA), McIntyre (D-NC), and Hartzler (R-MO) questioned Tonsager about program duplication with possibilities for coordination.  In response, Tonsager asserted that USDA does not want to diminish access through coordination, but instead add flexibility.  He offered the example of four revolving loan programs that USDA could combine, while still serving a broad audience.

Rep. Costa pressed Tonsager to complete the USDA report defining “rural,” and questioned why federal investment in rural areas was lagging.  Tonsager admitted that rural areas draw fewer resources per capita and stated USDA’s commitment to draw more money to rural areas.

Second Witness: William Shear

GAO Director of Financial Markets and Community Investment William Shear introduced GAO report “Efficiency and Effectiveness of Fragmented Programs Are Unclear” as his testimony.  In the report, GAO investigated 53 of the 80 economic development programs funding entrepreneurial assistance that appeared to overlap, identifying the extent of overlap and availability of performance data.  Of the 53 programs (including 14 at USDA), 45 were found to have reasonable annual performance measures and tend to meet their goals.

Under Rep. Scott and Costa’s questioning, Shear spoke to the frustration of obtaining timely and meaningful data from agencies.  He mentioned that despite variation in data quality, GAO expects to release a recommendation report in July to inform decisions on how agencies and Congress can improve service delivery.  GAO found that there is currently more overlap than duplication; in the streamlining process there is “opportunity to reduce fragmentation.”

NSAC Farm Bill Rural Development Priorities

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act include provisions to renew funding and expand job access in rural America.  Both bills are aimed at inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill and have the support of hundreds of farm, food, and rural organizations nationwide.  Their inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill is pivotal to addressing the concerns raised at today’s hearing.

NSAC supports farm bill funding for the Value-Added Producer Grant program and for the Rural Microentrepreneurial Assistance Program, both major job creators.  In addition, NSAC has proposed a Rural Community Prosperity Fund for the farm bill that would not be a new program, but rather a mechanism from which to make targeted investments in a coordinated manner, using whatever existing program makes sense to improve rural economies.

NSAC is neither for or against rural development program consolidation per se, but believes that any consolidation proposal should meet several tests, including:

• Does it provide for more effective program delivery?
• Does it promote or impede innovation?
• Will it improve the rural development funding situation, which sadly has seen a rapid erosion in federal support for rural business and community development over the past decade, or will it make a bad situation even worse?
• Can new regulations for combined programs be written in a timely fashion and in a way that improves program responsiveness to rural community needs, or will mega-regulations just make things more difficult than they already are?
• And finally, will there be a transition rule that allows existing programs to continue to function for a period of years while new regulations and program implementation procedures are being developed?

For Immediate Release

March 21, 2012
Contact: Ferd Hoefner or Juli Obudzinski
202-547-5754

Senate Bill Will Restore Common Sense Rules to Farm Subsidies

Washington, DC March 21, 2012 – On Wednesday, March 21, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Tim Johnson (D-SD) introduced a bipartisan bill that would place a hard cap on farm payments and close current loopholes to ensure payments flow to working farmers.

The Rural America Preservation Act of 2012 will restore integrity and fiscal responsibility to federal farm policy during this time of budgetary constraints, and NSAC will be advocating for its inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill.

The Rural America Preservation Act (RAPA) was previously introduced in June 2011, but key revisions have been made to ensure that the bill is relevant to likely farm bill changes in commodity programs, which will almost certainly include an end to direct payments and enactment of new types of payments to take their place.

The bill is also sponsored by Senators Brown (D-OH), Gillibrand (D-NY), Enzi (R-WY), Harkin (D-IA), and Nelson (D-NE).

“This bill is absolutely critical to targeting the expected $5 billion a year in 2012 Farm Bill farm payments to individuals actively involved in farming, with reasonable caps,” said Juli Obudzinski, Policy Associate at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.  “The current distribution of farm payments, with mega payments to mega farms and absentee passive investors, contributes to farm consolidation and the demise of family farms.  The 2012 Farm Bill should put an end to this abuse.”

RAPA is a cost-saving proposal that restores common-sense rules to farm programs.  The bill has two major provisions that, if enacted, will lower the per farm cap on farm commodity program payments and ensure that federal farm payments flow to working farmers.

The first provision would place a hard cap on commodity payments so that no farm couple can receive more than $250,000 per year in farm subsidies, capping payments at $100,000 and loan benefits at $150,000 a year.  Currently, there are much higher statutory limits on payments, and none at all on loan benefits.  This provision is written so that it will apply regardless of any types of new payments Congress may agree to in the new farm bill.

The second provision of this bill will close existing loopholes that allow mega farms to collect far higher payments than current law would otherwise seem to allow.  Current law contains a vague and unenforceable regulatory standard for “actively managing” farm operations that has foiled all attempts to target payments to working farmers.  The bill addresses this by strictly limiting the circumstances under which individuals providing only management and no farm labor can benefit.

Closing the current management loophole is widely viewed by commodity program and legal experts as the linchpin to any attempt to stop current abusive practices that allow absentee and largely passive investors to receive millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.

“A farm safety net aimed at the farmers it was originally intended to help is crucial to ensuring a safe and stable food supply.  We simply cannot continue to see 10 percent of the biggest farmers get 70 percent of the farm payments.  If we continue along this path, we’re going to see support slide for a farm and nutrition bill, when it’s just as critical as ever,” said Senator Grassley.

“The farm safety net was designed to help family farmers but it has increasingly led to a windfall for owners of our nation’s largest farms. Congress should act to close the loopholes and better target payments to our small and mid-sized family farmers. This legislation represents our best chance to move forward with reforms as consideration of the farm bill continues,” said Senator Johnson.

“NSAC commends Senators Grassley and Johnson for introducing this fiscally-responsible and common-sense piece of legislation,” said Obudzinski. “This bill will ensure that taxpayer dollars are well spent by targeting farm payments to family farmers.  The bill will save money and also allow for targeted reinvestment in rural economies, beginning farmers, and agricultural research.”

The Rural America Preservation Act is very similar to previous versions of the same bill offered by Senator Grassley during several previous farm bill debates, including one co-sponsored by former Senator Bryon Dorgan (D-ND) which won strong majority bipartisan support on the Senate floor in each of the past two farm bill debates.

For over 20 years, the ATTRA program (Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas) has served as a reliable source of research-based information about sustainable agriculture, offering an expansive selection of publications, webinars, and listings of farming internships.  In 2010, its staff answered over 60,000 requests on its 1-800 call line and brought over 5.8 million unique visitors to its website, from which users downloaded over 4.3 million publications. ATTRA’s workshops and other in-person presentations reached 177,000 attendees from 45 states.

Last year, ATTRA fans nationwide were shocked when the program, also known as the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, had its Fiscal Year 2011 funding completely eliminated.  Thankfully, and in part due to the vocal objections of so many users of its services, Congress reinstated the program’s funding in FY 2012, though at the lower level of $2.25 million as opposed to $2.8 million in 2010.

Even after Congress committed the funds, it took months for the funds to actually be released. In early March the check finally arrived so the program can return to full functioning.  The ATTRA staff want you to know that their doors are open again and encourage you to be in touch with them once again for your sustainable farming information needs.

Among many audiences who benefit, ATTRA’s resources are of particular assistance to beginning farmers.  One such farmer, Dana Jokela, who works at Featherstone Farm in Rushford, Minnesota, says that “ATTRA has been invaluable in helping me as a beginning farmer.  It has articles written by knowledgeable researchers and farmers in many areas of production and marketing.” Similarly, Alissa Moore, farm manager at Well Spring CSA in West Bend, Wisconsin, did four consecutive internships that she found using ATTRA’s directory of sustainable farming internships and apprenticeships before coming to manage Well Spring CSA.

Please visit ATTRA’s website to take advantage of these valuable resources, now that their doors are open once again.

Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) released its 2012 Farm Bill policy platform, Farming for the Future: A Sustainable Agriculture Agenda for the 2012 Food & Farm Bill.  The platform is the culmination of two years of policy work with a broad, diverse coalition of over 90 grassroots organizations from across the country.  It reflects the real, urgent needs of farmers, ranchers, and food entrepreneurs.

With a round of Senate Agriculture Committee hearings complete and House Agriculture Committee field hearings underway, Congress is currently working to write a new farm bill before the current one expires September 30, 2012.  The economic, environmental, and public health crises of our time demand decisive farm policy reform that will ensure a more sustainable future for American agriculture.  Adoption of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s 2012 Farm Bill platform will expand opportunities to produce good food, sustain the environment, and contribute to vibrant communities.

“Slow job recovery, a rapidly aging farm population, accelerating erosion and nutrient pollution, and atrophied regional food infrastructure can be viewed as a crisis or an opportunity,” said Susan Prolman, NSAC Executive Director.  “Done right, a new farm bill can be part of the solution, putting in place building blocks for a more sustainable future of thriving farms, healthy food, and strong communities.”

Farming for the Future spans nearly every title in the farm bill and reflects a comprehensive approach to farm policy reform that will –

• Create jobs and spur economic growth through food and farms.  Local and regional agriculture creates economic opportunities.  NSAC supports policy that will improve processing and distribution infrastructure for such agriculture and expand access to healthy food for consumers, including underserved communities.  A sustainable 2012 Farm Bill will also enable small business development and revitalize rural areas through investments in training, technical assistance, and microcredit for rural entrepreneurs.

• Invest in the future of American agriculture.  NSAC’s platform recognizes that agriculture is a growing sector of our nation’s economy, yet barriers make farming and ranching one of the hardest careers to pursue.  The 2012 Farm Bill should include policies that enable beginning and socially disadvantaged producers to access land, credit, and crop insurance; to launch and strengthen new farm businesses; and to receive appropriate training and mentoring will ensure that more people can start to farm and that the nation’s food supply remains viable.

• Enhance our natural resources and improve agricultural productivity.  As stewards of 40 percent of the landmass in the United States, American farmers and ranchers are important managers of our natural resources.  Farming for the Future supports funding and strengthening working lands conservation programs to help producers protect and rebuild soil, improve water and air quality, and reverse habitat loss while maintaining productive farms and ranches.  Nascent policy should modernize the farm safety net and protect the productivity of agricultural lands by ensuring that producers avoid environmentally harmful practices when they receive crop insurance subsidies.

• Drive innovation for tomorrow’s farmers and food entrepreneurs.  Investment in agriculture research is vital to continued productivity and innovation in diverse and expanding sectors of American agriculture.  A research policy that funds and strengthens successful programs for sustainable agriculture, organic farming systems, and specialty crops; addresses new research and data collection needs; and improves coordination on essential public plant and animal breeding efforts will foster the innovations that farmers and food businesses need to be successful.

NSAC supports renewal and reform of the farm bill in 2012, on schedule.  Congress will have to make tough choices to pass a farm bill that is forward-looking and fiscally responsible.  Our measure of success will be whether Congress invests in the future of farming – and adoption of the policies in the platform can help lead the way.

“Congress should not delay the adoption of a new farm and food bill.  It needs to do its job, this year, on time,” according to Prolman.  “The new bill, though, should be comprehensive and forward-looking, not a rush job that ignores the big issues in favor of short-term expediency.”

The full platform is available online.

Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition released its comprehensive 2012 Farm Bill policy platform, Farming for the Future: A Sustainable Agriculture Agenda for the 2012 Food & Farm Bill.

With a round of Senate Agriculture Committee hearings complete and House Agriculture Committee field hearings underway, Congress is hard at work writing a new farm bill.  Meanwhile, the perfect storm of economic, environmental, and health crises currently gripping our nation demands decisive farm policy reform that will ensure a sustainable future for American agriculture.  Adoption of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s 2012 Farm Bill platform will expand opportunities for family farmers to produce good food, sustain the environment, and contribute to vibrant communities.

“Congress should not delay the adoption of a new farm and food bill.  It needs to do its job, this year, on time,” according to Susan Prolman, NSAC Executive Director.  “The new bill, though, should be comprehensive and forward-looking, not a rush job that ignores the big issues in favor of short-term expediency.”

Farming for the Future spans nearly every title in the farm bill and reflects a comprehensive approach to farm policy reform that will –

• Create jobs and spur economic growth through food and farms.
• Invest in the future of American agriculture.
• Enhance our natural resources and improve agricultural productivity.
• Drive innovation for tomorrow’s farmers and food entrepreneurs.
• Make healthy food widely available today and for generations to come.

This platform is the culmination of two years of policy work with a broad, diverse coalition of over 90 grassroots organizations from across the country.  It reflects the real, urgent needs of farmers, ranchers, and food entrepreneurs across the country.

“Slow job recovery, a rapidly aging farm population, accelerating erosion and nutrient pollution, and atrophied regional food infrastructure can be viewed as a crisis or an opportunity,” said Prolman.  “Done right, a new farm bill can be part of the solution, putting in place building blocks for a more sustainable future of thriving farms, healthy food, and strong communities.”

The platform can be viewed online at http://bit.ly/2012fbplatform

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities.

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USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has announced this year’s request for Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (FSMIP) proposals.  FSMIP promotes research projects that advance the marketing, distribution, and transportation of U.S. agricultural products both domestically and internationally.  Under this program, USDA matches grant funds for qualified state agencies such as state departments of agriculture and  state agricultural Read the Rest...

In its “Path to the 2012 Farm Bill” series, NSAC gets into the details of the 2012 Farm Bill debate.  This first post in the series discusses the major factors influencing the 2012 Farm Bill timing and process. With the failure of the Super Committee process last fall, Agriculture Committee leaders now resume work on Read the Rest...

For Immediate Release February 3, 2012 Contact: Helen Dombalis 202-547-5754 Farmers Speak to the Value of Their Value-Added Producer Grants – USDA Announces Awards Today — Washington, DC February 3, 2012 – Today USDA announced the recipients of the most recent rounds of Value-Added Producer Grants.  The awards, which cover two funding cycles, span 298 Read the Rest...

Financing team offers training as part of healthy food initiative By Patty Cantrell Nic Welty employs himself full time year-round raising lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens in three low-cost passive solar greenhouses, which together cover less than one acre of land. His Nine Bean Rows farm near Traverse City, MI, is one of many Read the Rest...

U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down California Law on Downed Animals Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in the case National Meat Association v. Harris that strikes down a California law with requirements for how slaughterhouses handle pigs that cannot walk, referred to in the law as “nonambulatory.”  The California law requires slaughterhouses Read the Rest...

SPECIAL UPDATE: The Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on conservation, Strengthening Conservation through the 2012 Farm Bill, which was originally scheduled for February 29, has been rescheduled for Tuesday, February 28. Today, Chairwoman Stabenow announced four Senate Agriculture Committee hearings on the 2012 Farm Bill in February and March.  The hearings will focus on the following Read the Rest...

The EPA has just released the Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loading Tool, an online database system that allows users to track polluters included in the database.  Under the Clean Water Act, facilities with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits report discharge data to the EPA.  The EPA has pooled and classified some of this Read the Rest...

UPDATED February 1, 2012 Since our blog post on January 31, USDA announced that the FY 2012 Conservation Reserve Program general sign up period will be March 12-April 6.  According to today’s press release, “contracts on an estimated 6.5 million acres will expire on Sept. 30, 2012″ and this sign up will attempt to fill Read the Rest...

A movement-building haiku from NSAC’s grassroots planning session Earlier this week, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) held its semi-annual member meeting near Reisterstown, Maryland.  Every winter, NSAC members discuss, debate, and vote on the coalition’s priorities for the year.  In the coming year, NSAC will work with Congress and the Administration to: Create jobs Read the Rest...

This week, USDA’s Office of Advocacy and Outreach launched their website located at www.outreach.usda.gov. The Office of Advocacy and Outreach (OAO) was established in the 2008 Farm Bill in order to increase access to USDA programs and to improve the viability and profitability of small farms and ranches, beginning farmers and ranchers, and socially disadvantaged farmers Read the Rest...