Posted by: Phillip Fraas
February 19, 2007

Last Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture MIke Johanns presented the USDA farm bill proposal to the House Committee on Agriculture. This follows a similar presentation he made to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry the week prior (and discussed in this blog's February 12 entry).

As was the case with the Senate event, last week's House hearing produced no real fireworks. There was some questioning of specific elements of the USDA proposal, but overall the committee members didn't signal that they were going to ignore it completely as they go forward in crafting the bill. One senses that the USDA proposal has survived its first test under fire.

To the extent, however, that the USDA proposal seeks new directions in farm policy, it still has yet to be fully tested. That won't happen until the committees begin drafting and marking up their own versions of the farm bill.Then, the "proof of the pudding" will be whether any of the USDA reform proposals actually make it into the farm bill pudding as an ingredient. At this point, it is too early to tell whether that will happen.

 Among specific parts of the USDA proposal that members of the House Agriculture Committee took issue with were: its payment limitation reforms, its revenue-based countercyclical payments proposal, and the MILC program changes it recommends. Not directily addressed in the USDA farm bill but also discussed at the hearing were the possible value of establishing a permanent disaster assistance program and the need to address the shock to the livestock sector that increased costs of feed are having and might have in the future as more feed grains go into ethanol production. To a large extent, the Senate Agriculture Committee raised similar concerns. [By the way, some of these matters are relatively arcane--e.g., revenue-based counter-cyclical payments, or the MILC program--so feel free to e-mail me if you have questions about the specifics.] 

 In passing, it should be noted that, at the House hearing, Secretary Johanns stated that cellulosic production of ethanol will be a reality within 5 years.  

House Committee Chairman Peterson engaged in a discussion with the Secretary about the USDA budget proposal, and much I read these days suggests that how the agriculture committees fare in the budget battles will have a lot to do with how the farm bill ultimately looks. I will explore this aspect of the farm bill process a little later, when we get closer to congressional action on the fiscal year 2008 budget.

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