Farm bill fails to reach floor

Conditions for farmers and producers in eastern New Mexico are neither here nor there as they enter 2013.

The much-anticipated new farm bill did not get a chance to reach the floor of Congress. Instead, the existing farm bill was extended as part of the fiscal cliff deal Congress reached in the 11th hour.

"The farm bill was set to expire in September," said New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau Executive Vice President Matt Rush.

Rush said subcommittees of Congress worked together to create a new farm bill, but were unable to bring it to a vote before the session expired.

"The agricultural community as a whole was supportive of the new farm bill," Rush said. "It offers protection and insurances that the current farm bill does not."

Although extending the current farm bill doesn't create much progress in addressing the struggles farmers and producers in eastern New Mexico are facing, such as severe drought conditions, the outcome would have been much worse if Congress had not done anything.

"With no...farm bill, it would have reverted back to a farm bill from the 1940's," Rush said. "It would have been chaos if we had reverted that many years. So many things have changed in that amount of time. It would have been incredibly harmful to producers."

But Rush says not passing a new farm bill has created a large setback.

"All the work that was done has to start over because it's a new Congress," he said. "We're back to square one and we got a year's worth of time."

Rush highlighted new items that were in the new farm bill that would be beneficial for producers in eastern New Mexico.

"There were new price supports for dairy industry that was not in previous farm bill," Rush said. "The system worked, Republicans and Democrats came together and everyone was satisfied."

He also mentioned a new program for peanut growers with some added insurance as well as drought insurance for livestock producers.

Rush said those in the agriculture community have a unified sentiment that no one in Washington D.C. is looking out for them or cares about the importance of what's going on in rural areas.

"What we really hope happens is to get the House and the Senate to pick up

where they left off," Rush said. "They need to take what work was done last year and reintroduce this year and try to get it approved."

U.S. Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., said the current farm bill will be extended for nine months.

"In the absence of a new farm bill, it was important to include an extension

of the current law that prevented milk prices from skyrocketing and hurting

New Mexico families and dairy farmers," Lujan said.

Lujan is hoping that Congress will make a sound decision when voting on the next farm bill, which will impact farmers and producers in eastern New Mexico.

"Moving forward, I hope that Congress will pass a new farm bill that will replace outdated dairy programs with new tools that address the realities of today's dairy industry," Lujan said. "I have met with dairy farmers in eastern New Mexico and understand how important this effort is to their livelihoods."

Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association President Joe Parker Jr. is indifferent about the deal reached.

"This isn't perfect," Parker said. "This short-term fix gives extreme animal activist groups more opportunities to target the livestock industry, and while we have been successful holding them off in the past; we will have to continue to work hard to keep them from harming the cattle industry in the next farm bill."

Parker said ranchers would have much rather seen a fiscally responsible 5-year farm bill signed into law.

"A 5-year bill would have provided more predictability for important conservation and research programs that help ranchers produce better beef for consumers while protecting our natural resources," Parker said.