GRAPEVINE, Texas – The Obama love-fest is over as far as American farm commodity groups are concerned, at least when it comes to one burning issue.
U.S. president Barack Obama released his 2010 budget proposals last week, which contain significant rollbacks to farm support programs.
The move has wheat, corn, soybean and sorghum growers hopping mad.
Presidents of the four associations issued a joint news release calling on the Obama administration and Congress to stick with the safety net as outlined in the 2008 farm bill, which expires in 2012.
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They were rallying the troops at the 2009 Commodity Classic, an annual grain industry mega-conference.
“We have grave concerns,” said David Cleavinger, president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.
He urged the 4,300 farmer delegates attending the conference to contact their members of Congress to let them know the proposed cutbacks are unacceptable.
Obama’s budget calls for an end to direct payments to farmers with sales exceeding $500,000 US a year, a $250,000 cap on total commodity program payments and rollbacks in crop insurance programs. It is the first proposal that most concerns American farmers.
“We’re very concerned about that statement,” said Bob Dickey, president of the National Corn Growers Association.
“We will take a strong stand to defend our corn producers.”
The 2008 farm bill includes a provision that weans farmers off subsidies once they reach $750,000 in gross farm income. It is a far cry from the $500,000 gross sales cap Obama is proposing.
“We’re talking about a very different type of criteria for determining payment limitations,” said Sam Willett, senior director of public policy with the National Corn Growers Association.
The Obama proposal would affect an estimated 126,000 farmers and require tinkering with a piece of legislation that was years in the making and is just starting to be rolled out.
“You will find very, very few people in the agricultural community who think it would be wise to reopen that farm bill,” Willett said.
Direct payments already took a hit in the farm bill and won’t return to full funding until 2012, which is why legislators will likely share that view, he said.
“Right now there’s just no appetite in Congress for undertaking that type of legislation. We just don’t see it really occurring.”
Daren Coppock, chief executive officer of the National Association of Wheat Growers, said the Obama administration doesn’t grasp the breadth of what is being proposed.
“It doesn’t take a very big farm to get to $500,000 in gross sales. That could be a much, much smaller farm than people inside the administration think.”
He agreed with Willett that there is no appetite in Congress to reopen a farm bill that was finalized just a few short months ago and that already contains “meaningful payment limits.”
Coppock is comforted by the fact that the budget for fiscal 2010 doesn’t start until Oct. 1, 2009, so there is a lot of political debate ahead.
“Presidential proposals and what actually gets through Congress frequently are very different,” he said.
