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| Johanns touts payment limits in ’07 farm bill |
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| By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent
DECATUR, Ill. — A recent graduate from the University of Illinois who’s now taking the plunge into agriculture, young Adam Brown of Decatur has one thing on his mind: How to cope with the massive costs of starting a farm operation.
“If you weren’t born into a farm operation, there’s no way you can get started. Land costs are already $5,000 per acre,” he said.
Brown was hoping USDA Secretary Mike Johanns would address some of his concerns during a discussion about the 2007 farm bill at the 54th annual Farm Progress Show in Decatur last week. The 2002 farm bill expires in September and as farmers are starting to make planting decisions for next year, legislators are battling over language in the new bill.
The Bush Administration released its farm bill proposal in January and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a different version of the bill in July. When Congress reconvenes after its August recess, the issue will be up for debate in the Senate.
“Some parts about the House bill, I liked,” Johanns told the crowd. “Other parts I would describe as poison pills.”
Johanns was disappointed the House used the farm bill to pass a tax increase, while eliminating several provisions of the Bush proposal, such as gap coverage for crop insurance and a loan program to rehabilitate small hospitals in rural areas.
Johanns also said he supports the idea of replacing counter-cyclical price-support payments with a system that protects farmers from revenue loss, an idea championed by corn producers and now promoted by several senators.
The issue of paying subsidies to what critics call “millionaire farmers” has kept resurfacing in the media during the farm bill debate, and Johanns took issue with the way the House bill deals with investors who technically qualify for payments but “haven’t seen a farm in generations.”
To illustrate the problem, he showed the crowd a map full of red dots, each representing a person receiving farm subsidies. But the map wasn’t of farm country in Iowa or Indiana – it was of Park Avenue in Manhattan.
“We need a stronger payment limit to deal with this situation. I was disappointed (with the limits) in the House version,” Johanns said. “It virtually impacts no one.”
The House version limits payments to farmers with an adjusted gross income of more than $1 million per year. For a married couple, the limit adds up to $2 million.
“Now that’s an awful lot of income in a year, and you’re not going to see that in farm country,” Johanns contended.
Getting a farm bill on the president’s desk before the end of the year could be a challenge, but Johanns thinks it can be done. If negotiations collapse completely, a provision in the farm policy calls for a return to the 1949 farm bill, but that’s unlikely to happen. A more viable option would be to extend the 2002 farm bill, though Johanns doesn’t favor that.
“If we extend the (current) farm bill, I don’t think we’ll be writing a (new) farm bill next year. There’s too much going on, and we have a presidential election,” he said, adding, “I hope we can get it done before the year-end.”
Young corn and soybean farmer Brown said he was impressed with Johanns’ appearance at the show.
“He came out here to Decatur to listen to what people had to say. He got a lot of tough questions, but I think he did a good job of answering them,” the fifth-generation farmer said.
Although worried about start-up costs and the future of the family farm, Brown said he’s fairly content with the current version of the farm bill. “I think we got a lot of what we asked for,” he said. “Everybody can’t get everything they want, and somebody will always get hurt.”
This farm news was published in the Sept. 5, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/5/2007 |
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