The elections are over and it seems like there’s not much going on in Washington, D.C. besides the old politicians moving out and the new ones moving in. But rest assured, there are some people working diligently to get things accomplished over the next few months. At USDA, they are working to get regulations in place that implement the 2008 Farm Bill.
Remember the Farm Bill? It seems like so long ago that it was passed. After nearly three years of deliberation, about six to nine months of delay, eight temporary extensions of the 2002 Farm Bill, and one incomplete Farm Bill veto and override – finally a Farm Bill!
This is definitely one for the record books – the first Farm Bill to ever be vetoed by the President, let alone vetoed twice, and it includes five new titles that were not a part of the previous Farm Bill, including a livestock title.
So, what happens now? Now is when the hard work within UDSA gets even harder. After any legislation, such as the Farm Bill (formally known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008), the agencies responsible for carrying out the legislation must draft the regulations to implement the programs. Which means the people at USDA in Washington, D.C. are busy putting together the details of commodity programs, the crop insurance provisions and nutrition assistance programs, just to name a few. This process can be long and drawn out, meaning that the programs and plans passed by Congress on June 18, 2008, may not be ready to go until much later.
Now we have a Farm Bill, and the regulations are coming out, or at least in the works, so what’s in it for you? Sorting through all of the different titles of the Farm Bill, which is well over 1,000 pages long, is time consuming and confusing. Reading the regulations that implement each and every program won’t be much better. But below there are a few provisions of the newest Farm Bill that might be of particular interest to you as a livestock producer.
The Livestock Title of the 2008 Farm Bill includes provisions for supporting livestock and poultry producers. One key provision of this title is the further implementation of country of origin labeling, or COOL. It adds to the list of covered commodities so that chicken, goat meat, ginseng, pecans and macadamia nuts are now included. Another aspect of the Livestock Title aims to protect producers in contracts with livestock and poultry companies. Provisions to take notice of are protections that allow producers and growers to decline arbitration before entering into contracts and requirements that USDA establish criteria to determine if there is discrimination against smaller volume producers through undue or unreasonable preferences or advantages. Other provisions in the Livestock Title deal with access to markets for small, state inspected meat and poultry processing plants and improvement in enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act.
The 2008 Farm Bill created five new disaster programs, which are collectively referred to as Supplemental Agriculture Disaster Assistance programs. They include Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees and Farm-Raised Fish, the Livestock Forage Disaster Program and the Livestock Indemnity Program.
Programs such as these usually require that a producer have crop insurance, or pay a “buy-in fee” which provides eligibility to receive disaster assistance for non-insurable commodities. The importance of these programs is that they are permanent disaster provisions – a big change from the way disaster assistance has worked in the past. Previously, if a disaster was declared in your county, and Congress decided to offer disaster assistance, then ad hoc legislation was passed. This process took valuable time to get assistance to those who needed it most. Hopefully with the permanent disaster provisions, the process can begin immediately when the assistance is needed.
Shannon Mirus, of Prairie Grove, Ark., is a staff attorney with the National Agricultural Law Center.
