Stallman: Cutting crop insurance would anger farmers
March 22, 2013 | 06:26 PM
If Congress decides to cut the crop insurance program, “you’ll get farmers coming out of the woodwork,” American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman told reporters today in a wide-ranging news briefing.
Stallman said he is “cautiously optimistic” Congress will pass a farm bill this year, but he acknowledged that lawmakers are correct when they say that farmers have not been pressing them to pass a new bill.
“They should be more urgent than they have been,” Stallman said, attributing the lack of lobbying to farmers’ good financial position.
But Stallman also said that if farmers had not had crop insurance during the past two drought years, “people would have lost their farms.” Stallman also noted that better seed technology and tillage practices also reduced the impact of the drought, compared to 20 years ago. Farmers have been paid more than $15 billion for their losses this year.
Noting that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said the House will take up a farm bill this year, Stallman said he believes it is likely to happen.
“Congress would be held in a better light if they finish a farm bill this year,” Stallman said, noting that and finishing a farm bill for two years in a row would “look like we’re not taking care of business.”
Stallman said he believes the Senate Agriculture Committee will hold a markup in April and that his goal is to get a bill finished by September 30 when the current extension of the 2008 farm bill expires.
He said that Farm Bureau does not have a specific position on the commodity title of the bill, other than members want “multiple options.”
Stallman declined to comment on a proposal by the American Soybean Association to extend the counter-cyclical program with updated target prices. The ASA wants payments under that program made under historic acreage, but Stallman did not comment on whether payments should be on historic acreage or on current acreage, as some crop growers want.
On other topics:
• On a trade agreement with the European Union, Stallman said he is “not discounting” the difficulties of convincing Europeans to end their opposition to importing hormone-fed beef.
He also said he hopes the EU will soften its opposition to genetic modification, and said that on geographical indicators that say a labeled product like Champagne or Parma ham can only come from that location, “we don’t want any.” Geographical indicators, he said, are like Texas chili. “We don't expect it to be protected in international markets.”
• On the Trans Pacific Partnership talks, he said a delegation of Japanese farmers attempted to convince Farm Bureau to try to keep the United States from including Japan in the talks.
• On the slaughter of horses for meat, Stallman said, Farm Bureau continues to believe the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service should resume government inspection of meat from the slaughter of all kinds of horses.
When you buy horses, “you need to figure an end point for them,” Stallman said. “There comes a time when a horse is not viable economically.”
Even though horses are often named like pets, they should still be slaughtered for their meat, he said, noting that farmers call the unwillingness to slaughter named horses “the Flicka syndrome.” Stallman said that even though his mother cared deeply for horses she was willing to take them to the auction barn when they had reached their end of their useful life. “It’s just not the same as a cat or dog,” he said.
Bans on horse slaughter in the United States has led to abandonment or shipment to Canada or Mexico, he said. After Congress imposed a moratorium on the inspections in 2006, USDA stopped them, but since the ban has lapsed is considering resumption.
Dale Moore, a former USDA chief of staff who is now a Farm Bureau official, declined to comment on whether USDA is moving too slowly and noted that FSIS processes always take time.
• Immigration reform is “in a better environment than in the past 10 years,” but “it’s not on the fast track, that’s for sure.” Stallman said he is still not certain what the final legislation will look like. The two biggest issues for farm worker immigration, he said, is the number of workers that will be allowed into the country annually and how their wages will be determined.
• Water quality regulations are Farm Bureau’s biggest concern at the Environmental Protection Agency, he said, but the group is also trying to stop EPA from another release of data on individual farms similar to the recent one on animal feeding operations.
• Bureau has sent senators a letter on proposed amendments to the Senate budget bill under consideration today. Stallman said it was unclear which of the amendments might come up for a vote.
