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High on Congress’s agenda is the work of designing a package of emergency weather disaster assistance for farmers and ranchers. The American Farm Bureau Federation is urging Congress to provide emergency assistance soon for 2001 and 2002 losses, without taking money away from the farm bill.

Nearly 40 percent of the United States is in a severe to extreme drought. Drought has ravaged cornfields and dried up pastures in most of the West, much of the East and parts of the Midwest. Because of poor pasture conditions, many cattle producers are having to buy feed at high prices. Some producers are sending more of their animals to slaughter because they can't afford to buy feed. The increase in meat supply is sending meat prices downward.

The outlook for several crops shows less production and increased prices. That's good for farmers who have a crop to sell. But for many farmers, it just makes the loss of their crop even more painful. While spotty flood conditions have been less prolonged, they also have had severe affects on agriculture in parts of Texas and the upper Midwest.

Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Conrad Burns, R-Mont., have introduced a Farm Bureau-supported bill (S 2800) to provide the agriculture secretary the authority to use as much funding as necessary to assist farmers and ranchers with 2001 and 2002 losses due to weather disasters. The bill would designate the assistance as off-budget emergency funding, which would not have to be offset by cutting spending elsewhere.

Farm Bureau is reminding Congress that the farm bill was designed to help farmers plow through an economic downturn, not a weather disaster, and should not be tapped to pay for emergency assistance.

"We are not looking for income assistance," said Chris Garza, an AFBF director of congressional relations. "This is not the same as the previous packages that we received because prices were low. This is truly disaster assistance ... things that are out of the control of the farmer that are due to nature."

The new farm bill was designed to create a safety net that helps farmers survive low prices and to eliminate the need for continued ad hoc economic disaster assistance such as Congress passed in each of the past five years. But the target prices and countercyclical payments established in the farm bill do not help farmers who lose crops to weather disasters.

"Agriculture in times of disaster has always been funded through emergency assistance," Garza added. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., has introduced a bill (S 2830) to provide $2.9 billion in disaster assistance. Producers who purchased federal crop insurance would receive assistance for their losses in their choice of either the 2001 or the 2002 crop year, but not both. Producers without crop insurance would receive assistance payments only if they enter into three-year crop insurance contracts with the Agriculture Department.

On the House side, Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., has introduced a bill (H R 5310) to use funds not spent for the marketing loan program and countercyclical payments to, instead, fund disaster assistance.

Farm Bureau does not support either the Roberts or the Thune bill.