Corn, soy lobbies offer key farm bill compromise

by Erik Wasson - 11/19/13 6:08 PM ET

In effort to push the farm bill over the finish line, lobbyists for corn, soy and canola producers on Tuesday offered a key compromise.

The American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association and U.S. Canola Association wrote to the farm bill leaders on the issue of how to calculate subsidies and how linked they are to production.

The groups have been pushing to de-link priced based supports from the amount of acres farmers actually plant, because doing otherwise could cause farmers to overplant in their view.

“Various arguments have been presented on both side of this debate, and while we will not go into these details, it is important to know that, without a solution, we see a likely extension of the 2008 Farm Bill,” the groups writes. “In the interest of finding common ground on this issue, we offer a compromise that would allow us all to move forward.”

The groups say that instead of using the number of acres planted now or historically, the farm bill use a rolling five year average of planted acres not including the current year.

“We believe this novel approach addresses both the needs and the concerns of farmers growing all program crops in all regions of the country,” the letter states.

The move comes as House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that falling corn prices are driving commodity groups to try to compromise in order to ensure an updated safety net passes Congress this year.

NCGA’s Sam Willett told The Hill that falling prices, driven in part by an Environmental Protection Agency decision to lower the requirement to blend corn ethanol in fuels, is not driving his group to change its position.

“These suggestions have nothing to do with recent decline in prices. In preparing our policy approach it has generally been assumed that prices will go up and prices will go down,” he said.

Willett said he has seen all sides come closer to a deal that gives farmer as diverse as rice and peanut and corn and soy adequate protection but the suggestion was made to nail down one of the thorniest aspects of the farm bill.

He said that House arguments that a cap on payments based on historical acres limits the market distorting effects does not hold water.

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