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The Senate Agriculture Committee will kick off congressional consideration of a new farm bill in February.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the agriculture committee, announced a series of hearings on the farm bill, beginning in mid-February continuing through late March.
“I would suspect that in April the (committee staff) writes her bill and they probably go to committee markup in May and June,” said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Washington, D.C.
The 2008 farm bill expires in September.
“I think it is totally possible (the new farm bill is finished this year),” he said. “We think it should happen, but I would not say it is a slam dunk by any means.”
The Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance is working with lawmakers on the industry’s priorities, said Kam Quarles, director of legislative affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based McDermott Will & Emery law firm.
Industry advocates hope to preserve gains won in the 2008 farm bill, which allocated $3 billion for programs devoted to fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops. The 2008 farm bill also budgeted $1 billion over 10 years to expand the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Snack Program.
Quarles said the House and Senate Agriculture Committees came up with a bipartisan plan last year for the budget supercommittee to shave $23 billion from the farm bill over the next decade. While that proposal was friendly to fruit and vegetable industry priorities, the process ended prematurely because the supercommittee failed to advance a comprehensive proposal to cut the deficit.
It will be challenging for lawmakers to pass legislation in an election year, Quarles said.
It isn’t clear what the House Agriculture Committee will do with the farm bill, Hoefner said. Lawmakers in the House will have to reconcile budget-cutting momentum and the pending budget resolution in the House with the fact that a farm bill cannot pass the House with the kind of cuts proposed by some conservative Republicans.
“There is no way that anything that would cut food stamps as much as they were proposing to cut it could possibly pass the House floor,” he said. “It just would not happen.”
Quarles said lawmakers will be wise to conclude work on the farm bill this year, before automatic cuts tied to the supercommittee failure begin in 2013.
“Every year as you walk out you are dealing with fewer dollars,” he said.
Stabenow said the first Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on Feb. 15 looks at energy policy and economic growth in rural America. The Feb. 29 hearing considers conservation provisions of the farm bill, and a March 14 hearing will review nutrition issues, including local food policy. The last hearing, March 21, will look at risk management and crop insurance issues, according to a news release from Stabenow’s office.
Details about witnesses and other hearing details will be released later at the committee website.
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