WASHINGTON -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is coming under intense pressure from farmers and Congress to make extension revisions in the payment limitations rule that the Bush administration issued before leaving office.
Vilsack already has extended the comment period for the rule and told the USA Rice Federation Feb. 10 that he may extend all crop farmers' June 1 deadline signup for the new farm program. But he also said he does not expect to change the stricter eligibility criteria for receiving subsidies for the 2009 crop year even though it might be changed for 2010 and beyond.
That answer did not satisfy the rice grower leaders who said afterward that Vilsack should finalize new payment limitation regulations for the full five years of the 2008 farm bill rather than requiring them sign up for one set of rules for the 2009 crop year and another set of rules for 2010 and beyond.
Reece Langley, a rice lobbyist, said rice and other crop grower groups think the Obama administration "ought to back up and figure out what they need to do. Don't say you have got to live with what we've dealt you for this year."
Wading through regulations
ADVERTISEMENT
Clarence Becker, a Lake Arthur, La., rice grower said after Vilsack's speech that his filing will involve gathering an extensive amount of information. The new rules limit subsidies to people with off-farm incomes of more than $500,000, and Becker will have to include his wife's off-farm employment. The new rules also require that farmers and landowners be "actively engaged" in the farm operation, and Becker said he will have to work with the landowners for whom he farms to see if they still are eligible to receive subsidies. Their eligibility will be complicated by business structures that have been set up to protect them from liability, Becker said.
"It's a matter of wading through these things," Becker said. "It's a new system. There are going to be mistakes made."
A spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture ranking member Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said Chambliss and a bipartisan group of 22 other senators are looking forward to a response to a letter they sent Vilsack Feb. 10 urging him to liberalize the rules that the Bush administration wrote. At the same time, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who championed stricter payment limits in Congress, are pushing for stricter limits than those the Bush administration imposed.
While Vilsack's answers on the new payment limits rule may not have completely satisfied the rice growers, they also heard him offer rare praise for their exports.
"Thank you for your contribution to the economy of this country," Vilsack said. "You export to more than 10 countries. (That's) one of the reasons there is an (agricultural) trade surplus."
Free trade advocates frequently have criticized U.S. rice exports, saying that subsidies allow the industry to compete unfairly with producers in developing countries.
Vilsack said that when he was governor of Iowa and attended the failed World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 he learned "everyone grows something and everyone's culture is connected to what they grow." He said he "will make sure USDA is at the table" in trade negotiations." Vilsack said he is a supporter or labor and environmental standards in trade agreements, but "I don't want to be in a position where we give away the farm to get those labor and environmental standards."
With budget deficits headed toward $1 trillion per year, the best way for farmers to justify getting government money will be "not just because we farm but because we're doing something beneficial for everybody," Vilsack said. One of the best ways for farmers to do that, he added, is to engaged in activities related to address climate change.
ADVERTISEMENT
After the speech, Vilsack told reporters that he would urge EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to raise the blend limit of ethanol in gasoline above the current 10 percent. He also said pork producers and others concerned about the delay in implementation of country-of-origin labeling rules "need to be patient. We'll have more in a couple weeks."
