Farm bill divides Midwestern and Southern farmers

Via Southern Nationalist Network

For once, it's not Democrats battling Republicans. The five-year farm and food stamps bill now being debated in the Senate is a regional fight, pitting rice and peanut growers in the South against corn producers and soybean farmers in the Midwest.

The half-trillion-dollar bill setting farm policy into the future outlines dramatic changes in how farmers are protected from financial and natural disasters. It would end $5 billion a year in direct payments to farmers whether or not they actually plant a crop and programs that reward farmers when prices fall below a targeted level.

Instead, the government would offer a new "shallow loss" program to aid farmers when revenues fall between 11 percent and 21 percent below five-year moving averages and would put greater emphasis on heavily subsidized crop insurance. Farmers' regular crop insurance would pay for losses above 21 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates this new shallow loss program could save taxpayers some $8.5 billion over the next five years compared with the current subsidy system.

As with all big changes, there are winners and losers. Southern rice and peanut growers see themselves as the losers. This regional divide is one of the two major obstacles to getting a farm bill through Congress before the current law expires at the end of September.

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