STUTTGART - U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor accused his likely 2014 opponent U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton on Friday of manufacturing a crisis in farm policyby refusing to accept a national farm bill that includes funding for food stamps.
The U.S. House, which is controlled by Republicans, passed a version of thebill earlier this month that sets agriculture policy including federal support for farmers, but does not include food stamps and other programs to feed the poor. Cotton, a Republican from Dardanelle, opposed including the foodstamp portion.
“That was the critical moment, where a person could stand up and either help or hurt everybody in this room,” Pryor, a Democrat, told a room full of farmers and other agriculture industry workers at the 2013 Arkansas Rice Expo in Stuttgart. “Now we are in a crisis and that crisis [was] completely avoidable.”
Pryor said the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, won’t approve the legislation without the policy to feed the poor.
“This bill is unpassable , and everybody in the delegation except one has recognized that this is a train wreck. Unfortunately, on this development, Tom Cotton stands alone,” he said.
Pryor warned attendees that if the House and Senate cannot reconcile issues over the bill by early September, the country’s farm policy willrevert back to what it was in the 1940s. He said farmers growing certain crops like soybeans would get less or no help from the federal government because their crop wasn’t added to the farm bill until years later.
“The world of agriculture will change, our state will change, our lives will change and it’s not for the better,” he said. “Just think about how much farming has changed since 1949.”
Another option is to extend the policy currently on the book, which includes the farm and food provisions, for a year if the House and Senate cannot reach an agreement, the action lawmakers took last year.
The farm bill, known officially as the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, would have set agriculture policy- including federal support for farmers, conservation and rural economic development - and nutrition programs for the next five years. Most of the money in the bill is directed to feeding the poor including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The Senate version passed in May.
Cotton was the only member of Arkansas’ House delegation to vote against the initial version of the farm bill June 20, which failed on a 195-234 vote. He said at the time that he opposed it because it didn’t do enough to benefit Arkansas farmers and didn’t cut the food-stamp program enough. Others who opposed the bill said the food-stampprogram cuts, about $20 billion over 10 years, were too severe. U.S. Reps. SteveWomack of Rogers, Rick Crawford of Jonesboro and Tim Griffin of Little Rock all said at the time that the bill should have passed.
Cotton, along with Arkansas’ other three House members, voted 216-208 for a farm bill without the nutrition program on July 11.
In statements released after the votes, Cotton called the legislation without food stamps a “true farm bill.”
“For 40 years, farm programs have been chained to the food-stamp program. We’ve now finally broken this needless link,” he said in a July 11 statement. “We now have a farm bill focused squarely on farmers.”
Cotton grew up on a cattle farm near Dardanelle and has described himself as a farmer.
Agricultural policy expertshave said the split is likely not permanent. The food-stamp program was initially connected to federal payments to farmers in 1946 to draw support from both rural and urban farmers. The two policies have been in the same legislation since.
Cotton’s House spokesman Caroline Rabbitt said by email Friday that the farm subsidies in the two versions of the bill are similar, the House having voted on the version without the food-stamp provision.
“Arkansas farmers are tired of being held hostage to Barack Obama’s food-stamp program, which makes up 80% of the Senate’s so-called farm bill. The House passed a genuine farm bill with farm programs nearly identical to the Senate’s food-stamp bill,” she said. “If Mark Pryor would lead instead of following President Obama, maybe the Senate would pass a real farm bill.”
Pryor said the farmers hehas talked to are very upset with Cotton’s vote.
“They know that everybody else in the delegation, all five of us, didn’t want this to happen, but one guy did,” Pryor said. “It’s a very sore subject with the farming community right now.”
Arkansas Rice Federation Chairman Dow Brantley agreed. He said he wants the farm and food provisions to be in the same bill.
“We desperately want and need a farm bill,” he said. “We’d like for it to be together and we’d like for them to hurry up and give us something so we can make plans.”
Other attendees said they don’t care if the two provisions are in the same legislation as long as a farm bill is passed soon.
Brantley, who grows rice, cotton, corn and soybeans near England, said farmers need to know what help they may get from the federal governmentsoon so they can make decisions about what to plant next year.
“You can’t wait until Jan. 1 and say, ‘Hey, here’s your new farm bill’ and try to operate that year,” he said. “It takes time. We have a lot of things to get in place.”
He said it’s too early to tell whether Arkansas farmers will hold a grudge over the delay.
“I don’t know if we’ll have a long memory. Typically we just farm for the day. So we’re going to be looking at what’s at hand,” Brantley said.
Bob Fowler, who grew up row-cropping near Arkadelphia, said he thinks there is still room for a compromise on the bill by December or January.
Fowler said it’s difficult to predict what farmers will consider next fall, but he thinks holding up the farm bill will play a role in the campaign.
“Any major change like that is going to have to be answered for come election time,” he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 08/03/2013