American Farm Bureau Federation Congressional Relations Director Mary Kay Thatcher gives 50-50 odds on getting a new farm bill done in 2012.

“It’s going to be a real uphill battle to get it done,” Thatcher said during a farm bill session at the AFBF annual meeting on Sunday. “It’s a goal that’s certainly worth working towards because there’s going to be less money in 2013 than we have this year so the longer we wait, the more difficult it’s going to be.”

Thatcher says the AFBF board came up with a proposal for farm policy that is a totally new approach to a farm safety net, called the Systemic Risk Reduction Program or SRRP. “Instead of offering some kind of a shallow loss program where you have farmers suffer a little bit of a loss and government steps in at 13% to 25%, we believe the government should be there for the really deep catastrophic revenue losses.”

The concept would be the opposite of the shallow loss mentality of having crop insurance at the bottom and federal government at the top. “We would have the federal government at the bottom and crop insurance top that off,” Thatcher says.

The SRRP idea is going by an acronym pronounced “syrup” and with AFBF voting delegates to consider it during the policy setting part of the annual meeting on Tuesday, it remains to be seen whether they will think it’s sweet or just a bit too sticky for them.

Listen to or download Mary Kay’s comments on farm bill and SRRP here: AFBF's Mary Kay Thatcher

AFBF 93rd Annual Meeting Photos