RFA Ethanol Podcast

GROWMARK Perspective on 2012 Farm Bill

Cindy Zimmerman

2012 is likely to be a very interesting year for agricultural policy as we face the writing of a new Farm Bill during a presidential election year with a huge federal deficit.

growmarkSince the GROWMARK cooperative system represents the interests of farmers on the federal level, I talked with GROWMARK government affairs director Chuck Spencer to get his perspective on what might happen in 2012 as it relates to farm policy, after the “super committee” failed to reach an agreement which would have created an new farm bill. “The super committee did find that the agriculture community stepped up to the plate and were in agreement to a $23 billion reduction over a ten year period in farm program spending,” he said. “The discussion now is ‘where do you begin?’ Do you start over? Do you begin where everybody agreed and then move forward?”

Chuck believes the groundwork has been laid and he expects the agriculture committees in Congress to use that as a framework for discussion. “It’s important to note that while the farm bill will expire in 2012, it either needs to be extended or they’ll need to come to agreement and pass a new one or the 1949 Farm Bill goes into play which is dealing with parity prices, and that would certainly be a budget buster,” Chuck noted.

Chuck also pointed out what most of us in the agriculture business already know – that of the 15 titles in the farm bill, the commodity title is what gets most of the attention, even though it only makes up 2/10ths of a percent of the federal budget. “It’s provided as a safety net, a way to manage risk,” Chuck said. “You’ll notice that 90% of the groups offering proposals to the super committee asked for a revenue-based, risk management-based safety net.”

Listen to my conversation with Chuck Spencer here: Chuck Spencer Interview

Audio, Farm Bill, GROWMARK