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Category: Farm Bill 2007

Sue the farm bill?
The 2008 farm bill could be challenged in court on the basis that it is encouraging damage to the environment, according to an article published in the Harvard Law and Policy Review. The article lays out a legal strategy for attacking the bill under the National Environmental Policy Act, the law ... Continued...

U.S.: NEARLY ONE IN SIX CITIZENS WENT HUNGRY IN 2008
As the World Food Security Summit got under way in Rome Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disclosed that nearly one in six U.S. households went hungry at some time during 2008, the highest level since it began monitoring food security levels in 1995. Altogether, 14.6 percent of ho... Continued...

Benefits of ACRE program cloudy for local farmers
ACRE, a new option for farmers in the 2008 Farm Bill, was projected to enroll most farms and save tax dollars. Many farmers, though, are leery of the new program and most are sticking with payments they trust. Until late July, the Wayne County Farm Service Agency hadn't enrolled a single farm ... Continued...

Problems implementing farm bill
The writing and passage of the 2008 farm bill was hardly a smooth ride. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise the bill’s implementation has been more of the same. In late June, over a year after the legislation passed, the House Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management was tol... Continued...

Getting Ethanol Right
Representative Collin Peterson is furious that the Environmental Protection Agency is doing its job. The Minnesota Democrat says the agency is trying to kill off the biofuels industry — to the dismay of the corn farmers and ethanol producers he represents. He has vowed to vote against any bill, incl... Continued...

Don’t Overlook Biomass Stimulus in Farm Bill
All of the attention focused on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act may have caused many folks to overlook other energy/fuel-centric federal “stimulus” programs. As of this writing, Title IX of the Farm Bill offers a number of good programs currently waiting in the shadows of the ARRA. The... Continued...

Obama budget riles farm groups
The Obama administration is continuing to push for a $500,000 cap on direct payments, a new limit on total farm program payments and elimination of cotton storage credits in its budget proposals for fiscal year 2010. Although the House and Senate budget committees rejected the proposals in their ... Continued...

Organic farmers to get piece of Farm Bill pie
Earlier this week Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced that organic farmers would be getting their piece of the 2008 Farm Bill pie. The 2009 Organic Farm Initiative sets aside $50,000,000 for a new initiative to meet the Obama administration's promise to encourage more organic ag... Continued...

Kay Hagan Sponsors Bill To Help Discriminated Farmers
Washington, DC -- The federal government would have to start paying money owed to thousands of black farmers as part of a discrimination settlement with the Department of Agriculture, under legislation introduced in the Senate. The bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and K... Continued...

Davis promises help for black farmers
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Artur Davis reassured black farmers Wednesday that Congress and the Obama administration will deliver on a promise to compensate them for past discrimination by the Department of Agriculture. "We are going to put more money on the table," Davis, D-Birmingham, told a group of bl... Continued...

Bipartisan Senate bill seeks lower tariffs on ethanol imports
A bipartisan group of senators is seeking to lower U.S. tariffs on ethanol imports to achieve "parity" with the blender's credit, which was reduced in last year's farm bill. The farm bill knocked the blender's credit from 51 cents per gallon to 45 cents per gallon. A new Senate measure (pdf) is a... Continued...

Farm bill aims to end agricultural pollution
Environmentalists lobbied Congress for years to put millions of dollars into the national Farm Bill to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. After all, they argued, the biggest source of nutrient and sediment pollution in the Bay today is agriculture. Finally, those efforts have paid off: Virginia re... Continued...

The Last Plantation
Delores Amason’s family has been farming for generations. Her father, Leroy E. Harvey, was a sharecropper who bought 40 acres of farmland in Tillery, North Carolina, through a New Deal program that offered loans to help small farmers own the land they worked. For decades, the family grew cotton, pea... Continued...

Farm Bill targets $23 million to stem runoff, erosion in watershed
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in January released $23 million, the largest amount of farm conservation money ever to target the Bay, to help farmers in the watershed take action to control erosion and nutrient runoff. The funds are the first of a four-year, $188-million commitment made in th... Continued...

Ag Secretary Vilsack extends comment period
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced he will extend the comment period on rulemaking by 60 days for the 2008 Farm Bill Farm Program's payment limitation and payment eligibility provisions. "Let's be clear -- in no way is this move a signal that we will modify the rul... Continued...

President-elect Obama presented with urgent ¡§Call to Action¡¨
As food banks scramble to respond to a dramatic increase in demand this holiday season, while unemployment surges and farmers face plummeting crop prices, a broad sector of groups are calling on the incoming Obama administration to put hunger and the global food crisis front and center on its list o... Continued...

New Report Exposes Subsidies to Factory Farms
Des Moines, Iowa - A report released today exposes how industrial hog and dairy operations are subsidized through the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The report, entitled Industrial Livestock at the Taxpayer Trough, estimates that between 2003 and 2007, roughly 1,000 indust... Continued...

GAO report: More subsidy ‘waste’
When Barack Obama recently reached for an example of cuts that should be made in the federal budget, the president-elect cited the latest Government Accountability Office report on “millionaire farmers” receiving subsidies. “Millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though t... Continued...

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement: New report exposes subsidies to factory farms
Des Moines, Iowa - A report released today exposes how industrial hog and dairy operations are subsidized through the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The report, entitled Industrial Livestock at the Taxpayer Trough, estimates that between 2003 and 2007, roughly 1,000 industr... Continued...

Kind: GAO Report Shows Illegal Farm Subsidies Went to Millionaires
A Wisconsin lawmaker is calling for more oversight after a report by the Government Accountability Office showed that nearly $50 million in farm subsidies were paid to ineligible multi-millionaires from 2003 to 2006. Congressman Ron Kind says the findings are 'a slap in the face' to the other Americ... Continued...