As har vest pace quickened across the state, yield reports showed a marked improvement from last year’s drought.......3-4
Grain donations help fund a Livingston County faithbased organization assisting young men...............................8
Tis the season for adopted legislator fall har vest visits that include combine rides and grain elevator tours..........11-14
A service of
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Budget/debt agreement reached; post-mortem begins Illinois Farm Bureau mission: Improve the economic well-being of agriculture and enrich the quality of farm family life.
Monday, October 21, 2013
BY MARTIN ROSS FarmWeek
Periodicals: Time Valued
Congress and the president last Wednesday struck an 11th hour, temporary budget/debt limit deal that ended the federal government shutdown and left analysts mulling the potential economic and political damage left in its wake. Lawmakers ended the shutdown with a stopgap spending bill extending through Jan. 15 and suspension of the U.S.’ $16.7 trillion borrowing limit until February. The agreement was reached on the eve of “debt limit” expiration and a feared U.S. default. “The multi-billion-dollar question is how they’re going to bring these things to some kind of closure, some kind of workable solution, so they don’t have to spend a good part of the first quarter of next year going through what they’ve gone through over the last six weeks,” American Farm Bureau Federation Public Policy Director Dale Moore told FarmWeek. By popular estimates, the two-week shutdown cost the U.S. economy about $10 billion per day. Illinois Farm Bureau National Legislative Director
Two sections Volume 41, No. 42
Adam Nielsen noted financial markets “were reacting to hourby-hour, day-by-day movements” in Congress. He argued “it would be awful to ask people to go through this exercise again several weeks from now.” Now that a temporary agreement’s been reached, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, seeks a return to congressional consensus on “clean, bipartisan appropriation bills.” “That gets criticized as a piecemeal approach, but frankly, that’s our constitutional appropriations approach,” Davis told FarmWeek. “That’s what we need to get back to so that we avoid these continuing resolutions that give us across-theboard cuts, that give us sequestration, that also made
us forget that the farm bill expired two weeks ago. “The only way to stop these artificial deadlines from overtaking all the discussion in the media and in America is to get back to our constitutional appropriations process, where we don’t come down to the deadline. That’s what we used to do when the government worked.” Now that the budget impasse is temporarily over, Davis anticipates the House Water Resources Reform and Development Act “finally getting the floor time it deserves” (see page 7). He further expects House-Senate conferees to quickly negotiate, the president to sign a final farm bill and “opportunities for tax reform and transportation reauthorization.”
The problem is “we’ve lost two weeks of time because Republicans and Democrats couldn’t figure out a way to sit down and come up with a common sense solution to fund government,” Davis lamented. At the same time, the U.S. and the European Union were forced to delay substantive trade agreement talks until December as a result of the shutdown. AFBF’s Moore was uncertain how debate over contro-
versial issues such as tax reform or immigration will proceed heading into a 2014 election year. Democrats and Republicans will be “fighting for the hearts and minds of constituents” even as constituents struggle with what proposed policies “mean in real terms,” he said. D i s r u p t i o n o f U. S. market-related repor ts during the shutdown has See Shutdown, page 2
HARVEST HANDICAPPING
Conferee sees farm bill as a ‘role model’
House-Senate conferees hope soon to hash out a long-delayed, new farm bill. Illinois’ representative on the conference committee hopes he can help provide something more — an example for a Congress in turmoil. Taylorville Republican Rep. Rodney Davis, a sophomore on the House Ag Committee, has been named to the House-Senate farm bill conference committee. Illinois Farm Bureau championed Davis’ Rep. Rodney appointment to the panel charged with negotiating Davis a long-delayed ag policy package. IFB President Philip Nelson notes the conference includes a relatively small Midwest contingent, and trusts Davis to provide “good input” relevant to Illinois producers. “His principles on the farm bill are very similar to where we’re at on a number of fronts, whether it’s regarding crop insurance or the need to try to reform food and nutrition programs,” Nelson maintained. While Davis reported conferees had been unable to convene amid “the whole dysfunctional situation we’re going through,” he briefly met with some of the 11 other House Republicans on the panel. Conferees’ top priority is negotiation of “a good bipartisan bill that’s able to get out of both houses and signed into law by the president,” Davis told FarmWeek. As a result of recent House Rules Committee action, lawmakers effectively have “remarried” commodity and nutrition provisions the House separated this summer, he noted. Davis anticiSee Conferee, page 7
FarmWeek on the web: FarmWeekNow.com
Kevin Witges (in cap), checks yields with Crop Specialist Eric Green of Southern FS in Jefferson County. Witges noted last year was the driest he’s seen since he began farming in 1995. This year produced the wettest spring he’s faced. For more on the harvest, see pages 3 and 4. (Photo by Mike Orso)
Illinois Farm Bureau on the web: www.ilfb.org ®