Farm and Nutrition Bill Clears Committee, Grassley Provisions Included

Press Release

Senator Chuck Grassley today said that the farm bill that passed the Senate Agriculture Committee was a step in the right direction, but he hoped that further reforms would be included when the bill is debated on the Senate floor.

"The farm and nutrition bill provides some needed reforms, and moving this bill out of committee gets us one step closer to providing our farmers and rural communities the certainty so many of them desire. Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Cochran incorporated reforms that make the farm program more defensible and effective. By including my payment limits reform they showed a real effort to put together responsible programs that ensure a safe and stable food supply for the American people while giving certainty to farmers and rural communities," Grassley said. "Now that the bill is moving forward, we can look at additional reforms and continue to improve the bill."

Grassley has long sought reform of the farm payment system. His provisions that were included in the bill are nearly identical to legislation he introduced earlier this year that would place a hard cap on the farm payments an individual farmer can receive in a year and close long-abused and well-documented loopholes in the farm payment program. The legislation would establish a per farm cap of $50,000 on all commodity program benefits, except those associated with the marketing loan program (loan deficiency payments and marketing loan gains), which would be capped at $75,000. Thus the combined limit would be $125,000, or, for married couples, $250,000. The $50,000 cap would apply to whatever type of program is developed as part of the new Farm Bill. The bill also closes loopholes that currently allow non-farmers to qualify for federal farm payments and would allow one off-farm manager, but only one.

In addition, an amendment sponsored by Grassley along with Senators Mike Johanns, John Thune and Pat Roberts was approved during today's Agriculture Committee action on a new farm bill.

Grassley said the measure is intended to make the farm bill more market-oriented in the way target prices are set. Grassley would have preferred that a target price program not be included in the bill, but since the target price program was included he wanted to push for ways to make it more market-oriented. For commodities except rice and peanuts, the measure set the target price by averaging the prices from the five previous years, while dropping the low and high price for that average, and multiplying it by a factor of 55 percent.

"Target prices distort planting decisions, and I hear opposition to target prices from farmers in Iowa, so this is an effort to move toward a market orientation as much as possible," Grassley said. "That way, if peanut and rice farmers want to protect a high price set by congress, they can fight that battle, but other farmers won't have to defend high target prices."

Grassley did not have the opportunity to offer his amendment that would restrict the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to release personal information to environmental activists. Grassley's amendment follows the EPA's release of information to activists on 80,000 farmers nationwide. Grassley said that he is preparing the amendment for floor consideration.

Source