An Urban's Rural View

It's spring, the season of hope. It's also farm-bill time on Capitol Hill, a season that would be more hopeful were it not for last year's dashed hopes.

Still, in the two days the North American Agricultural Journalists just spent in Washington we heard a lot of hope that this year won't be like last, when the Senate passed a farm bill but the full House didn't vote on the measure the House ag committee passed.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack told us: "Yes, we will have a bill this year. We have to have one."

Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican with several years on the House ag committee, said "yes" as well: "I believe we will get a five-year bill done."

Far and away the most elaborate and intriguing rationale for why this year will be different came from the ranking Democratic member of the House ag committee, Collin Peterson of Minnesota.

"I can't prove this," Peterson said as he began to outline his theory. Two things tripped up the bill last year "and neither of them was food stamps.

He said it "sells in the countryside to blame food stamps." It even sells in his district. "But that wasn't the problem."

Thing one: Republican Congressman (and former committee chair) Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, who Peterson said is close to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, had a strategy to "hold off until 2013," thinking the Senate would go Republican and Mitt Romney would become president, allowing the Republicans to write a bill more to their liking.

"That didn't work out too good," Peterson said. "That's out of the way,"

Thing two: House Speaker John Boehner wanted to do the farm bill last year but "wasn't in a position to bring the hammer down on Cantor." And, Boehner didn't like one of the things about the ag committee's farm bill Peterson likes most, its revamped dairy program.

Peterson said he's talked to Boehner about this. Peterson is "willing to negotiate on a couple of things" but has told Boehner the dairy program has the needed votes in the committee and "in my opinion has to be part of the bill."

Peterson says some of the dairy plan's opponents have characterized it as supply management. It isn't, he insists, because a dairy farmer who chooses not to take the insurance the program offers will be free to add as many cows as he wants, even in times of milk oversupply.

Without a new farm bill, the dairy sector is at risk, Peterson said. Dairy farmers are still reeling from 2009, when prices plunged. They're financially vulnerable. "If we get another oh-nine," he said, "we'll lose 25% of the dairy farms in the U.S."

It isn't clear what effect Peterson's pleadings will have on Boehner. But having won re-election as speaker in the new Congress, Boehner is in a more secure position than last year.

As interesting as Peterson's theory is, what's equally interesting is his willingness to share it with a group of journalists. Candor isn't a trait always found in elected officials. When we see it we should admire and cherish it.

And hope, in this season of hope, that we'll get more of it from more Congressmen in the future.

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