Missouri senators back new farm bill

WASHINGTON -- Missouri Sens. Kit Bond and Jean Carnahan voted in favor of the farm policy overhaul that won Senate passage Wednesday.

Senators approved the bill on a 64-35 vote, sending it to President Bush, who is expected to sign the measure into law.

New, independent analysis shows Missouri farmers would receive about $475 million each year under the new farm bill, an increase of $167 million over average annual payments under current law.

However, the analysis by the University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute does not factor in millions of dollars in emergency payments to Missouri farmers after prices collapsed in 1998. Also, government spending will fall if prices rise, because the new bill sets up price supports.

Long-term help

Bond, R-Mo., said the measure would "provide farmers the long term assistance and certainty they need to continue producing the world's safest and most abundant food supply."

But while the measure aims to help farmers survive low prices, Bond warned it would fail to boost market prices without an expansion of U.S. trade policy such as trade promotion authority for the president.

Carnahan, D-Mo., said, "Farmers and business people all across Missouri support this farm bill because it is fair to all segments of our agriculture industry."

She added she was pleased that, unlike an earlier version, the final bill would still allow rice and cotton farmers to collect unlimited amounts of some subsidies. These southern crops are capital intensive, she said.

"The payment limitations compromise will preserve the viability of Missouri's rice and cotton producers while denying benefits to millionaires and others whom farm programs are not intended to benefit," said Carnahan, who lobbied leaders of the Democratic-controlled Senate against efforts to cap payments.

The bill would boost agriculture spending by nearly 80 percent over the cost of existing programs, raising subsidies for grain and cotton growers. It scraps the market-oriented Freedom to Farm law passed in 1996, which was intended to make growers less dependent on the government but lost support when prices plummeted two years later.