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Editor’s note. OSU agricultural economist Carl Zulauf spoke with Buckeye Farm News at the OFBF Trends and Issues Conference. Following are excerpts from this interview.

BFN: Dr. Zulauf, your speech is titled "Why the 2007 Farm Bill is Going to be Different." Why is it?

ZULAUF: The readers should know this is not as relevant as it was when (the title) was first created because of the failure of the WTO round of negotiations to make substantive breakthroughs. And I think that was the major pressure on the farm bill that was building. I also think it's becoming increasingly clear that the president has pretty well lost a great deal of power right now in terms of his ability to move agendas forward.

Having said that I think there are still reasons for why this farm bill could end up being different, but now it's probably going to lie more along the lines of pressure from the budget deficit. I think that's a real possibility because we're going to have a debate over extending the president's tax cuts, which will keep the budget deficit high. So I think there's not as much pressure now as there was before Hong Kong but I think the pressure is there and it's primarily budgetary right now.

BFN: Regardless of the amount of farm bill spending that's cut, do you see a reapportionment of how farm support money is spent?

ZULAUF: I think we've been doing that the last 25 years but particularly the last 10 years. If you look historically, we spent 80 percent or more on price support payments of one form or another let's say 25 to 30 years ago. We're spending now under 50 percent on that. It's been shifting towards direct income support or fixed payments. One of the surprising things is how much is shifting towards risk management, specifically crop insurance and ad hoc disaster assistance. They're now about a quarter of the expenditures of all farm programs. And of course conservation programs have increased, but what surprises many people is that the increase has been much smaller than what people think. It's gone from about 10 percent of the budget 25 to 30 years ago to about 16 percent now. But I think these trends are in place, and this farm bill will continue that. I'm not sure there will be a lot of major shifts in the distribution, but I think there will be a lot of debate and when you get a lot of debate you never know what's going to happen.