March 13, 2002
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email:CGalen@nmpf.org
In a letter sent Tuesday to House and Senate Farm Bill conferees, NMPF asked the officials to include in the final conference report the $2 billion in direct dairy payments in the Senate's version of the 2002 Farm Bill. The House version of the Farm Bill does not feature any dairy payments.
The NMPF letter does not specifically support the payment formula included in the Senate Farm Bill. That formula divides the $2 billion between 12 Northeastern states, where producers would split $500 million of the money, while dairy producers in the rest of the country would be eligible to receive the remaining $1.5 billion.
In the letter to the conferees, NMPF endorses the inclusion of a dairy payment program that “equitably allocates the funds, and does not disrupt the orderly marketing of milk through out the country.” In order to help the conferees better define the term “equitable,” NMPF's letter suggests that the Farm Bill negotiators consider the following criteria for a dairy payment program:
- It should be national in scope.
- It should not discriminate among states and regions.
- It should not discriminate among farmers by limiting payments based on herd size.
- It should not cause competitive disadvantages or advantages among dairy farmers.
- It should not increase production to the point where overproduction eventually erodes the farm gate prices.
“As you begin your discussions on the conference report, we urge you to apply these same principles that our dairy farmers used two years ago in considering new programs for the 2002 Farm Bill,” NMPF President and CEO Jerry Kozak wrote in the letter.
Kozak's letter was referring to the grassroots outreach process NMPF used in 2000 to develop a set of policy principles to help dairy farmers work with their elected officials in the preparation of the 2002 Farm Bill. The grassroots process, involving a series of regional listening sessions referred to as the Dairy Producer Conclaves, helped define the issues for which a general consensus exists among dairy farmers across the country.
Most of the dairy-related items in both the House and the Senate versions of the Farm Bill were addressed during the conclaves, and should be included in the final conference report on the Farm Bill because they were already approved by the House and Senate, respectively, in their versions of the Farm Bill. Those items include:
- Extending the Price Support program;
- Requiring importers to pay their fair share into National Dairy Promotion and Research programs;
- Establishing a national Johne's Disease education program;
- Extending the Dairy Export Incentive Program (DEIP).
- Fixing the statutory mandatory inventory and price reporting language to prevent further costly reporting errors by the USDA, and;
- Supporting increased Market Access Promotion (MAP) program funds.
“We thank you for supporting [these items'] inclusion in the Farm Bill conference report,” Kozak wrote the conferees. “These programs are national in scope and favorably impact dairy farmers in all regions of the country.”
Negotiations over the Farm Bill are expected to last at least several weeks, and possibly longer, due to several points of contention between the two farm bill versions.
To read the letter sent to the Farm Bill Conferees, please click on Government & Industry. The letter is under Federal Orders and Economic Policy in the Farm Bill Section.
The National Milk Producers Federation, headquartered in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of U.S. dairy producers and the cooperatives they collectively own. The members of NMPF's 31 cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of 60,000 dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies.