AMERICAN FARM BUREAU RELEASES FARM BILL RECOMMENDATIONS
The American Farm Bureau released its recommendations April 23 for the 2007 Farm Bill. Issues addressed included the Farm Bureau’s support for eliminating the fruit and vegetable planting prohibition (on direct payments), and its advice to discontinue state block grants for specialty crops authorized by the Specialty Crop Competitiveness Act of 2004.
The organization’s recommendations do include the addition of $250 million per year in conservation program funding for specialty crop growers to compensate them for the elimination of planting restrictions.
Farm Bureau also said it supports maintaining the baseline funding for the commodity title and conservation title rather than transferring funding from one title to another. It supports a revenue-based counter-cyclical safety net program to protect against both low prices and low yields, and it favors a standing catastrophic assistance program that is integrated with a re-rated crop insurance program.
