Friday was a PTO day for me, but as always I looked over my incoming work email. I had messages from 14 different organizations --ranging from mainstream commodity groups to the Union of Concerned Scientists -- commenting on the Senate Ag Committee bipartisan farm bill proposal, which was released Friday. The strong consensus from the groups: it's a good proposal that should be approved.
Oh, there were criticisms. For example, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition was disappointed that the proposal lacks "meaningful reforms to farm subsidy programs to limit economic and farm concentration." But overall, on balance, the 14 groups were positive.
Decide for yourself if the proposal is a good one. But this much I'm sure of: The Senate Ag Committee was trying to please many groups, some of whom have conflicting goals. Give one group want it wanted and another group, inevitably and unavoidably, would be dissatisfied. It was simply impossible to give every group everything it wanted. The Senate Ag Committee proposal is a compromise that tries to balance those conflicting goals.
I took the photo above this spring during the annual convention of the North American Agricultural Journalists in Washington. At one of our meetings, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the Senate Ag Committee chairman, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., the committee's ranking Democrat, promised that their committee would come up with a feasible, passable farm bill proposal. What happened Friday indicates they were right.
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