Posted by: Phillip Fraas
January 29, 2007

I received a reliable report today that USDA will release its 2007 farm bill proposals on Wednesday, January 31. This is much earlier than Secretary Johanns had hinted in earlier statements, when he had suggested it would be mid to late February at the earliest.

It might not be coincidental that, over the last weekend, the Doha Round negotiators announced the resumption of negotiations in a last-ditch effort to break the stalemate in those trade talks and that (in connection with that development) President Bush is expected this week to ask Congress to extend his "fast track" trade negotiating authority, set to expire on June 30. The fast track extension is believed critical to allow the Doha Round negotiations to proceed beyond March.

Indications all along have been that USDA's farm bill proposal might be tied to the Administration's Doha Round efforts. Thus, the tricky part of this new scenario is what USDA might propose on Wednesday with respect to countercyclical and direct payments, and other "amber box" subsidy programs, under the current farm bill. One current bone of contention holding up progress at Doha is how much the United States is prepared to cut back these programs to get a deal.

It is hard to conceive USDA putting a farm bill proposal on the table that makes substantial reductions in these programs without first having gotten market access commitments from the E.U. and the developing countries in return; and so far no one is reporting any breakthrough in that regard. Does that mean the Administration is abandoning a farm bill-Doha linkage? Stay tuned.

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USDA Set to Release Farm Bill Proposal on Wednesday

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