WASHINGTON --- The Senate today passed legislation that would suspendfor a year a provision included the 2008 farm bill that the Department of Agriculture is implementing to cut payments off to all farms with base acres of 10 acres or less without allowing the consolidation of small farms as Congress intended. A similar bill was introduced last week by a number of senators,including Senators Chuck Grassley Tom Harkin of Iowa and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.
The Senators continued to express their belief that the farm bill explicitly lays out congressional intent, but said that they were pushing for this short-term relief so small farmers are not caught in the cross-fire.
The Department’s interpretation would eliminate producers from receiving direct or counter cyclical if the base acres on the farm are 10 acres or less. The manager’s report of the farm bill specifically included language to ensure that small farm acreages could be aggregated to allow for farm program payments if the sum of the base acres is over 10.
The bill that passed the Senate today differs from the original Grassley/Harkin/Chambliss legislation by simply putting in place a one-year instead of two-year fix. Also included in the legislation were technical corrections to the permanent disaster assistance program of the farm bill.
“The farm bill clearly states our intent when we wrote the law to aggregate land of less than 10 acres and the Department of Agriculture has obviously decided to ignore Congressional intent,” Grassley said. “We’ll need to address this again next year, but at least for this crop year small farmers will have some certainty regarding their eligibility for a safety net.”
“This is a common-sense, short-term fix that will protect small farms in Iowa and around the country,” said Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “USDA seems intent in implementing that farm bill despite the clear legislative directive to consider the sum of all base acres on the farm and the further instruction in the statement of managers. This
action is needed to prevent payments from being eliminated.”
“I am pleased the Senate has approved this measure and took action to protect the interests of our producers, particularly our smaller producers,” said Sen. Chambliss, Ranking Republican Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “Unfortunately a misinterpretation by USDA has made this fix necessary. Thankfully this bill will allow us to continue to work on a permanent solution to this problem while maintaining the eligibility of thousands of active farmers who may need to reconstitute or aggregate their farms.”
Specifically, the legislation suspends for crop year 2008 the provision of the farm bill that prohibits direct and counter cyclical payments on commodities and peanuts if the sum of the base acres on the farm is 10 acres or less.
The legislation also extends the 2008 crop year signup until the later of November 14, 2008 or 45 days after enactment for direct and counter cyclical payments. The bill ensures that no penalty to benefits can be assessed by the Department of Agriculture against producers who fell into this 10 acre prohibition for failure to submit reports or timely comply with other program requirements if using the extended sign up period.
The bill also contains clarifications on various aspects of the new standing disaster assistance program, mostly having to do with how minor acreages and grazing land are supposed to be treated under the program. There is also a newly established minimum loss threshold under the program, requiring that there be a physical loss of at least 10 percent of one crop on the farm to qualify for payments, to avoid having farmers qualify for payments only due to a reduction in prices.
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