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Last, Best Hope for Reform - Urge Senators to Support Dorgan-Grassley Amendment!  The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the Farm Bill the week of November 5, marking the farm bill debate's final stages and the last chance to institute real reform before the bill moves to the Conference Committee.

Like the widely denounced House bill payment limit provision, the Senate Committee bill maintains mega-payments to mega-farms, subsidizing farm consolidation and the slow demise of family-scale agriculture.  It also soaks up precious resources that then cannot be spent on key programs that are short-funded by the bill.

Real reform and support for unfunded sustainable agriculture priorities must now be made in the form of a Senate floor amendment introduced by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).  The Dorgan-Grassley amendment will put a hard cap of $250,000 on commodity payments, close loopholes, and shift the savings to rural development, beginning and minority farmer, conservation, nutrition, and anti-hunger programs (see below for more information on the details of the amendment).  It will be the major floor amendment on the Farm Bill, and the vote count is expected to be very, very close.  Every single vote will count.   Please click here for an Action Alert on this issue.  Calls are needed next week!

The Center for Rural Affairs is circulating a sign-on letter for organizations that would like to show their support for the Dorgan-Grassley amendment.  Letters will be delivered by SAC staff to every Senator's office next week.  If you would like to sign your organization onto the letter, please contact Traci Bruckner at tracib@cfra.org.

REGISTER FOR SAC WINTER MEETING

Register for SAC Winter Meeting by November 20^th and Win a NEW HYBRID CAR!!  We thought we would get your attention with a little false advertising.  Remember to make those reservations for the SAC Winter Meeting at the Asilomar Conference Center, January 21 and 22 in Pacific Grove, California.  The annual Ecological Farming Association's Eco Farm Conference runs from January 23-26 at Asilomar, right after the SAC event.

SPECIAL SENATE FARM BILL UPDATE

Dorgan-Grassley Payment Limit Amendment:  With the ink barely dry on the Senate farm bill as approved by the Agriculture Committee (more on that below), all attention now turns to Senate floor action, where there will be myriad amendments but, when it comes to farm programs, none as important or as close to success as the payment limit reform amendment to be offered by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). 

Since day one of the 2007 Farm Bill debate we have known that the payment reform issue would be an issue for Senate floor action.  A very similar amendment passed in 2002 by a two-thirds to one-third vote, but under an unusual situation in which some normal opponents voted in favor of the amendment.  The vote this time could be considerably closer and, as noted in the Urgent Action section above, we need everyone participating in creating the grassroots groundswell for this effort.  The amendment could come up early in the floor debate, which may start as early as November 5, so do not hesitate in your action strategies.

The amendment closes all of the many current payment limit loopholes and caps direct, counter-cyclical, and marketing loan payments at $40,000, $60,000, and $150,000, respectively, for a combined hard cap maximum of $250,000 a year.  We are still in discussion with Senate offices on the exact uses to which the savings produced by the payment limit reform will be used, but we are reasonably confident it will include key priorities for beginning and minority farmers, rural economic development, conservation, nutrition, and anti-hunger programs.  We will post updated summaries on our website as details become available next week.

More on other floor amendments we are supporting or opposing follow in the "SAC Priorities" story.

Senate Ag Committee Marks-Up Farm Bill:  On Wednesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee began   markup of the Senate farm bill, dubbed the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007.   By midday Thursday, all amendments were introduced and the bill was unanimously adopted.  The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition released a press statement on Friday morning, giving the Senate Committee bill mixed reviews and describing its "real gains but no real reform." 

The Chairman's Mark and amendments introduced in Committee are posted on the Committee website at http://agriculture.senate.gov/.  A video archive of the entire markup is also posted on the same website.

For a more complete review of wins and losses in the Senate bill, including the very solid victory of gaining $2 billion over the next 5 years for a new and improved Conservation Security Program, enough to bring enrollment to 80 million acres by 2013, please refer to last week's edition of the Weekly Update.

We'll begin the special update with a summary of one of the more hotly debated issues and then summarize the status of SAC's farm bill priorities.     

Corn Growers Pummeled by Wheat Interests:  Almost 5 hours of the Committee's debate focused on a proposal in Chairman Harkin's mark for a new, optional commodity support program, the Average Crop Revenue (ACR) Program, a program based on a bill introduced earlier this year by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) on behalf of the National Corn Growers Association.  Beginning in 2010 under the proposed ACR, farmers could choose each year to give up marketing loan, direct payment, and counter-cyclical payments in exchange for a $15 per acre fixed payment (regardless of crop) plus additional revenue (price and yield) payments whose availability would be depend on the average per-farm revenue within a farmer's state.  The original proposal assumed the revenue payment would have no payment limitation.  In addition, under the original proposal those who chose the ACR would also benefit from reduced crop insurance premiums.

ACR has been the babe-in-arms of the National Corn Growers Association and American Farmland Trust, but the bane of the National Association of Wheat Growers, American Farm Bureau Federation, crop insurance companies, and other farm bill players who fear that corn and corn-soybean farmers who choose ACR would have an incentive to lower their crop insurance coverage.  They contend the ACR would result in less overall crop insurance purchases by corn farmers resulting in less actuarial soundness across the entire program. 

That view prevailed when the Committee approved an amendment offered by Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) to modify the ACR by lowering the percentage of base acres eligible from 100 percent to 85 percent, removing a reduction in federal crop insurance premiums for farmers participating in the ACR, and capping the revenue payment at not greater than $60,000 a year.  The amendment would also require that farmers who participate in ACR must remain enrolled in the ACR until 2012.

The Corn Growers fought back, and on the last day of mark-up, a deal was reached that the additional savings generated by the Roberts amendment would be used to sweeten the deal for corn by moving the payment on 85 percent of base acres back up toward 100 percent.  The CBO score for the give-back is not available at press time, so we do not yet know whether it will reach 100 percent or something less. 

SAC Priorities in Mark-Up:  Below we review amendments offered in Committee that affect major priorities of SAC as well as the programs' status in the final bill.  We are working on amendments to be introduced on the Senate floor that will improve the language or increase funding for several SAC priority programs and indicate that by underlining where appropriate.  Readers should note that these proposed amendments are still very much "in the works" and subject to change up until floor action.  

1. Competition.  A highlight of the mark-up was the Livestock Title.  In addition to the inclusion of Senator Harkin's fair and open competition package in the mark -- which creates a USDA Special Counsel on Agricultural Competition, expands contract rights, prohibits mandatory arbitration provisions in contracts, and strengthens language for the Packers and Stockyards Act -- enough yes votes were found before the markup to include a ban on packer ownership of livestock in an En Bloc amendment approved for inclusion in the bill.  This entire package was a SAC priority for the Farm Bill, and none of the provisions were included in the House-passed bill, so this was do or die.

The only bad news was that one very important provision was knocked out of Chairman Harkin's package - a correction of misguided court decisions requiring individual farmers who have been harmed by unfair discriminatory and deceptive practices by meat packers to prove harm to competition within the entire industry.  This court-invented "competitive harm" doctrine is not found anywhere in the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA) and creates a burden of proof that makes it impossible for individual farmers to prevail, thus gutting the legal protections afforded by the PSA.  We anticipate an amendment by Harkin and other Senators to restore the clarification on competitive harm that had been in the original Harkin bill.  The amendment is supported by USDA but fiercely opposed by the meat industry. 

We also anticipate that the industry will gear up floor amendments to try to strike or weaken the ban on packer ownership of livestock and the ban on mandatory arbitration.  Having won in Committee, we now need to prepare to meet the meat industry and livestock trade association opposition head on.  As soon as we know who will be offering the amendments and what tactics they will be using, we will let our readers know. 

2. CAFOs.  If the Livestock Title was a highlight of markup, the amendment to the Conservation Title lifting payment limits for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program was the lights turned off.  The amendment brought by Senators Leahy (D-VT), Roberts (R-KS) and Crapo (R-ID) would raise the EQIP payment limit from the $240,000 proposed in the Chairman's mark to $450,000 - the current EQIP payment limit.  As Senator Conrad emphasized in opposing the amendment, only one-quarter of one percent of the EQIP payments under the 2002 Farm Bill exceeded $250,000. 

Senator Leahy defended the amendment by describing the $240,000 EQIP payment limit as a means test, a strange way to describe a payment limit that would allow any eligible program participant to receive up to $240,000 in EQIP payments, regardless of their income.  The current high $450,000 payment, on the other hand, is arguably a "means" test - those with the means to establish a large-scale, industrialized confinement operations that will pose big pollution problems would get payments almost 60x the EQIP median contract amount of about $8,000. 

Both Senators Harkin and Conrad (D-ND) pointed out that lowering the EQIP payment limitation would allow thousands more farmers to participate in EQIP.  Senator Harkin read into the record data compiled by SAC demonstrating the very small number of producers affected in each state by the lower limit, and the impact the high volume of payments to the small number of producers has on increasing the number of farmers who will not get EQIP contracts at all. 

We regret to report that despite the solid arguments made by Harkin and Conrad, the amendment was adopted by the Committee with a roll call vote of 13Y to 8N.  We are heartened by the fact that the three "freshman" members of the Committee, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Robert Casey (D-PA), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), were among those who voted against the amendment.  Only one Republican Senator voted against the amendment, Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

3. Beginning Farmers.  Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) was successful in getting two beginning farmer amendments into the "en bloc" amendment to the bill.  One doubled the "authorization for appropriations" for the beginning farmer Individual Development Account pilot program from $5 million to $10 million a year.  The second set the authorization for appropriation for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program at $30 million a year.  Both discretionary amendments were in lieu of the real goal of Senator Klobuchar to provide mandatory funding for the programs.  Mandatory funding for both had been included in all the draft versions of Chairman Harkin's mark for the bill right up until the final version laid before the Committee for action.

Also included in the en bloc amendment by the Chairman was the SAC-endorsed language creating a priority within the Risk Management Education program for beginning, immigrant, minority, and transitioning farmers.

4. Rural Development.  An amendment to increase funding for the Rural Microenterprise Assistance Program (RMAP) in the Rural Development Title was introduced and withdrawn by Senator Nelson (D-NE).  While Chairman Harkin's Mark includes $40 million in mandatory funding over the life of the farm bill for RMAP, the rest of the Rural Development Title emerging from Committee remains an enormous disappointment.  A lack of baseline funding and competing fiscal pressures resulted in deep overall spending cuts to the Rural Development Title, which Harkin had planned to provide $2 billion for an ambitious rural development package. 

Only $400 million in mandatory funding for core initiatives is included in the Rural Development Title, for water and waste loans and grants, child day care facilities, rural hospital grants and loan guarantees, and RMAP.  Also slated to receive $135 million in mandatory funding is a new initiative called the Rural Collaboration Incentives Program (RCIP), intended to provide support for the creation of regional rural development "boards" which would compete for rural development grants through the program.

Most disappointingly, the Value-Added Producer Grant program, a major SAC Farm Bill priority, was reauthorized in the bill with several SAC-endorsed program improvements, but saw all of its mandatory funding eliminated as the funding for the title was ratcheted down from $600 million to $400 million in the waning days before mark-up.  Restoring mandatory funding for this important and extremely popular program will remain a primary part of the SAC agenda as we move to Senate floor action.  It will be included in the Dorgan-Grassley payment limit amendment as one of the major recipients of funding.

5. Planting Flexibility.  Included in the en bloc amendment was a provision promoted by Senator Lugar (R-IN) allowing the production of fruits and vegetables for the processing industry to be grown on commodity program base acres in the states of IL, IN, IA, MI, MN, OH, and WI.  This provision has been strongly opposed by western specialty crop interests, but with Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio Senators leading the charge for major specialty crop money in the bill, it was allowed to pass, but with a cap of 10,000 acres in each state.  The SAC-supported fresh, local produce exception to the fruit and vegetable prohibition, capped at 25 acres per farm, was unfortunately not included in the bill, but may possibly be the topic of a floor amendment.

Other SAC Priority Potential Amendments:  We will share more information on each of these depending on how and if they develop into full-fledged floor amendments, but currently we are hoping to be supporting amendments to:

1. Adopt full "sodsaver" reform.  The bill as reported by the Committee badly waters down the sodsaver protection for grasslands.  It would now prohibit only crop insurance payments (not commodity payments) on only native sod (not all grasslands without a cropping history) and would allow USDA to exempt up to 20 acres per field from any prohibition even as narrowly defined.  We expect an amendment to restore the full sodsaver provision, with the considerable savings it would generate dedicated in all likelihood to an increase in funding for the Grasslands Reserve Program.

2. Reform conservation program policy.  Many of the very positive policy changes included in Chairman Harkin's earlier draft conservation titles for EQIP, the Wetlands Reserve Program, Organic Transition payments, Partnerships and Cooperation projects, and other areas unfortunately fell by the wayside as the conservation title was finalized with input from all Agriculture Committee members.  We hope to support an amendment which would restore some of the key features that were lost.  This amendment would not change any funding decisions about the title, nor would it include the more controversial issues.  Nonetheless, it could set soil, water and wildlife conservation on a much better course over the next 5 years.

3. Restore conservation and sustainability to new energy program.  The Bioenergy Crop Transition Assistance Program, a new program in the Energy title that arose out of two separate bills by Sens. Klobuchar (D-MN) and Thune (R-SD), has unfortunately been largely gutted in the final product reported by the Committee.  We are working with those two offices to see if they might be offering an amendment to restore key conservation and sustainability parameters to the program which have been lost in lieu of making the program, in essence, a new commodity program for switchgrass and other biomass crops.

4. Improve USDA's small and beginning farmer office and policy.  We expect Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to introduce an amendment to give greater prominence and stronger mission to USDA's Small and Beginning Farmer Office and Council.

5. Give organic farming a fair share of research dollars.  We also expect Sen. Feingold to introduce an amendment requiring the federal Agriculture Research Service to increase its commitment to organic farming systems research.

THIS WEEK

Appropriations Endgame in Sight?  With Senate passage of the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill earlier this past week, the Congressional Democratic leadership is busy weighing options for sending bills to the President for expected vetoes.  A potential strategy receiving discussion this week is packaging the Labor-HHS bill with the Defense and Military Construction funding bills and sending them as a single measure to the White House, challenging the President to delay military spending finality for the sake of vetoing domestic social spending. 

Regardless of the outcome of that scenario, it now seems certain the Senate will not take up the Agriculture spending bill (or Interior-Environment, Energy-Water, Financial Services, or Legislative Branch), probably guaranteeing agriculture's inclusion in a year-end omnibus appropriations measure that may not come until well into December.  If so, another continuing resolution will be needed when the current one runs out in November.  We are still quite hopeful the final bill, in whatever shape it takes, will include a major increase to $20 million for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program in this the program's (and SAC's) upcoming 20th anniversary year.

NEXT WEEK

Comments on Proposed Rules for Poultry Contracts Due Tuesday:  In August, the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) issued proposed changes for its rule on poultry contract requirements.  For the most part, these rules improve protections for poultry growers in their contracts with vertically integrated chicken processors.  Comments on the proposed rules are due next Tuesday, October 30, 2007.  The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA) has prepared an action alert with talking points and information on submitting comments which is posted on the web at www.unitedpoultrygrowers.com/pdf_docs/Growers_GIPSA.pdf

NAREEAB Meeting:  The National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board will be holding a meeting in Washington, DC from October 29 - October 31.  The meeting will focus on two main areas: organic agriculture and rural economic and community development priorities for cooperative extension.  SAC member organizations have been invited to the meeting to address the NAREEAB Board on these priorities, as the sole representatives of stakeholder interests outside of the USDA.   Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director of Center for Rural Affairs and Ferd Hoefner, SAC Policy Director, will address the Board on rural economic and community development priorities for cooperative extension.  Mark Lipson, Policy Program Director for Organic Farming Research Foundation, will address the Board on organic agriculture research, extension, education, and economics priorities. 

SARE Committee Meeting:  The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program operations committee meeting will take place on October 30-31 of next week in Washington DC.  The purpose of this meeting is to coordinate across regions and with national partners as well as to discuss budget issues and strategic directions.  The meeting is intended to foster sharing of knowledge about regional SARE initiatives, issues, and, accomplishments and raise awareness of national issues and partners important to SARE.  SAC Intern Katie Theoharides will attend both days and send notes to anyone who is interested.

DULY NOTED

The Cost of Biofuels:  On Tuesday, the Global Subsidies Initiative released a report, prepared by Dr. Doug Koplow of Earth Track, on government support of fuel-grade ethanol and biodiesel.  The report details U.S. government expenditures for biodiesel and ethanol which reached $6.3-7.7 billion in 2006 and are projected to increase to $16 billion by 2014.  The report notes that while the biofuel industry has grown tremendously in recent years, this growth has been faster than demand for the biofuels and the subsidies are an expensive strategy to promote policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions and dependency on foreign oil. 

The report recommends that U.S. lawmakers should carefully consider whether mandating and subsidizing biofuels is the best way to achieve these goals.  It also suggests that governments should resist increasing mandatory consumption of ethanol, improve the transparency of information available on biofuel subsidies, and open competition to all alternative energy solutions that can displace carbon emissions and imported oils.

Turfgrass a Specialty Crop?  Now it is:  During the second day of the farm bill mark-up Senator Chambliss (R-GA) asked that turfgrass be adopted into the definition of specialty crops which includes fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruit, nursery crops, floriculture and horticulture.  The amendment makes turfgrass eligible for block grant funding.  Unbeknownst to SAC staff (until our faithful intern did some research), Turfgrass is actually the largest U.S. "crop" covering some 16,380,000 hectares of residential, commercial and agricultural land (three times the area covered by corn).