By Justin Walker
Communications Specialist
As farm bill talks continue, provisions were added to the $81 billion U.S. House disaster aid package approved last week to help cotton growers and expand an insurance program for dairy farmers.
In the 184-page disaster bill drafted by the House Appropriations Committee, provisions would help cotton growers become eligible for the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program, which issues payments when the effective price of a covered commodity is less than the respective reference price for that commodity.
The package creates a PLC reference price of 36.7 centers per pound for “seed cotton,” which is defined as “unginned upland cotton that includes both lint and seed.”
“The 2017 hurricane season was the most costly and damaging on record. The lasting impacts of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria may have disappeared from daily news coverage, but they continue to weigh on millions of Americans, including our nation’s farm and ranch families who were already struggling under hard economic times,” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway said in a statement. “While we’ve made significant strides in developing a strong crop insurance system and standing disaster programs to aid farmers and ranchers when Mother Nature strikes, multiple, back-to-back, devastating disasters require us to address current backlogs in critical emergency recovery programs, improve standing disaster programs and target assistance to address holes in the safety net, including for our nation’s citrus, cotton, livestock, dairy, fruit and vegetable, and other impacted producers.”
Some Democrats opposed the proposal, seeking instead a combination of any new farm bill benefits for cotton with a similar amount of assistance for dairy farmers. It is uncertain whether the House-approved provisions will be included in the U.S. Senate’s supplemental disaster bill, which is expected to be considered after the first of the year.
Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member, said last week that although she was “encouraged that the House has recognized the need to support both dairy and cotton, this bill misses an important opportunity to repair the broken dairy safety net.”
“Expanding insurance options for dairy farmers is a good first step,” Stabenow said. “But there’s more we can do to help our producers recover from tough economic times and lay the groundwork for further progress in the 2018 Farm Bill.”
Passing cotton and dairy provisions in an appropriations bill would reduce budget pressures on the House and Senate Agriculture committees when they write the next farm bill.
The bill also includes $541 million for watershed and flood prevention efforts, $400 million for emergency conservation projects and $165 million for repairs to rural water and waste disposal systems.
“This legislation is the next step in helping our fellow Americans recover from multiple, back-to-back, devastating disasters, including some of the largest major hurricanes, wildfires and agriculture losses this country has ever seen,” Rodney Frelinghuysen, House Appropriations Committee chairman, said.