About 150 farmers and others closely associated with agriculture soaked in better than an hour of a lecture by Dr. Art Barnaby Wednesday morning.
Barnaby, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, highlighted specifics of the 2014 U.S. Farm Bill in a session in Iola High’s lecture hall.
The bill, two years late since the previous one expired in 2012, was signed into law by President Obama on Feb. 7.
It authorizes expenditures of $956 billion over the next 10 years, with about $80 billion in its first year going to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as food stamps.
Barnaby said less than $5 billion was expected to go to farm payments this year.
“There are many decisions yet to be made,” he added.
For farmers, Barnaby said the decision was whether to choose revenue insurance or price guarantees, with complicated formulas to be digested in the process.
“Information within the bill is being updated frequently,” he added. “Is it simple? Yeah, but only the government can figure it out,” taking into account average yields on farms and the county in which they’re raised, price projections on a national scale and verified yields at harvest.
Payments have been capped at $125,000, but those apparently can be altered through ownership arrangements.
SNAP payments were also cut, with about 850,000 households losing $90 a month in benefits.
For farmers, safety net programs within the bill include Agricultural Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage, Supplemental Coverage Option, Stacked Income Protection Plan and changes to commodity insurance.
He delved into specifics that some farmers privately admitted left them a bit baffled, but that they had full understanding of his admonition that they shouldn’t get into a program “without being willing to take risks. You don’t get here (being a farmer) by being risk-adverse.”
A philosophical torpedo that nearly sank the bill in the House was “a big fight over means testing” for benefits, he said, with the concept defeated by a mere 12 votes — of 435 in the House.
The fear of including means testing was that large farms might drop out of the program and scuffle what the bill meant to do, Barnaby said, likening it to young, healthy people eschewing group health insurance, which drives up rates.
Sign-up for farm bill programs won’t occur until sometime this fall, which he described as a good outcome.
“The longer it takes, the better informed you’ll be,” Barnaby concluded.
