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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Glickman Urges Action On Farm Bill Farmers Lack Information To Plan For Coming Year

Associated Press

American farmers need to know now how the pending and far-reaching farm bill will affect their fortunes this year, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman says.

“They are telling me, ‘Let us farm,”’ U.S. Rep. Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, said Tuesday in agreeing the legislation halted by wrangling over the national budget must be enacted soon.

Glickman and members of the state’s congressional delegation attended this year’s Idaho Ag Summit in Boise.

The U.S. House could take up the proposed farm bill next week, Glickman said. The Senate has passed a version. Crapo said the House measure could go before conference committees by the first part of March.

American rice growers already are planting their crops without knowing for certain how the measure will affect them, and wheat farmers are next in line.

Because of the Agriculture Adjustment Act, Glickman said he could be obliged to announce loan rates, allotment sizes and other details about those commodities without having the farm bill set in stone.

That means higher subsidies and low quotas would prevail.

“Farmers need to know, and their lenders need to know, what the situation will be this year.”

About half of the Conservative Reserve Program contracts in Idaho expire this year. The system that has cut erosion on American farmland by 75 percent is vital and its parameters also depend on the bill, he said. Setting aside highly erodible land reduces sediment flowing into the streams and provides an important habitat for wildlife.

Glickman said the debate in Congress is too focused on subsidy payments. In the days ahead, Americans probably will not remember what the subsidy levels were this year. But they will recall that they had food on the store shelves, due to the highest crop production and lowest food costs of any nation in the world.

Glickman said about 40,000 acres of Idaho crops were damaged by last week’s flooding. Federal “jump teams” are setting up in the Panhandle to process applications for federal assistance.