WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate passed the House-approved Agriculture Act of 2014, also known as the Farm Bill, Tuesday. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it Friday.
It is a gigantic bill that will shape programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the U.S. Forest Service, for the next five years. The text spans 959 pages and authorizes nearly $100 billion in spending per year.
With its broad scope and size, it is difficult to sum up what changes are going to occur in Southwest Colorado. In fact, many state agencies and farmers do not yet know what will happen, as the bill’s passage has been delayed, and it will not go into effect immediately.
“There are some rather sweeping changes, but we’re not sure quite yet what will happen,” said Ronnie Posey, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Services Agency in Durango. “We’ll know much more in the coming days.”
The Farm Bill is the main agriculture and food-policy tool of the federal government. The last bill expired in 2012, and it took until now to pass a new bill. Provisions range from cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, expedited treatments for forest with disease and insect issues and loans for rural development.
One of the largest changes is an end to direct payments, a subsidy granted to farmers based on the amount of cropland they have for commodities such as wheat and corn. The payments originally were included in the 1996 Farm Bill as ways to support farmers with the elimination of price supports as well as to help farmers manage risks associated with crop production. Now, however, the payments are hard to justify, as they are not based on yield from land nor profit.
“I’m not surprised they’ve gotten rid of them,” said Trent Taylor of Blue Horizon Farms in Hesperus. He has participated in the program for the last 30 years and said payments were more substantial during the 1980s and ’90s.
“It’s definitely going to hurt some people, especially with the years we’ve been having, but they’ve been weaning us off the payments,” he said. “The amounts included in the last Farm Bill were pretty wimpy.”
Instead, the $5 billion in savings from the elimination of direct payments will go to crop insurance programs, which aim to target producers and areas that need it most, such as in drought conditions.
“Crop insurance is really vital for a lot of agriculture producers in our district, especially with the recent drought conditions,” said Joshua Green, communications director for Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez. Tipton serves on the House Agriculture Committee and played a role in crafting the final bill.
Taylor gets insurance through the Farm Services Agency and other private farm insurance companies.
“It’s not great, but it takes the sting out of it,” he said.
“This is not a perfect bill,” Green said. “We have got to make sure that funding goes to those who truly need assistance, eliminating fraud, abuse and waste, which has been Representative Tipton’s focus throughout.”
Taylor said a lot of farmers in Southwest Colorado have put parts of their land into the Conservation Reserve Program, also funded by the Farm Bill. The program pays farmers to leave environmentally sensitive land unplowed for a number of years to re-establish land cover and improve its quality.
The $8 billion cuts in food stamp funding included in the bill will not affect Colorado, said Liz McDonough, public information officer for the Colorado Department of Human Services. The cuts affect the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, in which 17 states take part.
Funding for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILT, was included in the bill, after the funding was not included in the appropriations bill passed by Congress in January. PILT provides federal funds to local governments that have large tracts of federal land to offset losses in property taxes. The program is important in much of Colorado, including La Plata and Montezuma counties.
However, the 2014 Farm Bill funds PILT for only one year, leaving uncertainty in county budgets. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has introduced a bill that would fund the program permanently.
“This victory is a down payment on our commitment to rural communities,” he said of the inclusion of PILT funding in the Farm Bill. “Congress must step up and pass my bipartisan bill to permanently fund the PILT program. Colorado communities and local leaders expect nothing less.”
Udall’s bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee and also served on the Farm Bill conference committee, which negotiated the final bill.
Katie Fiegenbaum is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald. Reach her at kfiegenbaum@durangoherald.com.
