The Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee says the new farm bill will be done on time verses the delays the legislation has faced the past few cycles. Plus, they will fight to keep baseline funding levels. Texas Representative Mike Conaway says with the current state of the farm economy the agricultural industry needs to have the farm program in place to give farmers an adequate farm safety net to keep them in business.
Conaway says they are looking at a change in how the ARC county payments are figured to get rid of the big discrepancies from county to county. As a result they are considering using RMA verses NASS yield data.
He says another change will be in the Margin Protection Program for dairy as it was ineffective for most producers when milk prices dropped below their cost of production.
He says House Ag Ranking Member Collin Peterson also wants the CRP program acreage raised to 40 million acres and the committee will also be looking at a fix for the ineffective STAX program for cotton.
