ORLANDO, Fla. There probably won't be significant changes in agriculture legislation this year, but a full-blown policy debate is expected in 2000, cotton producers were told Tuesday.
Such is the assessment of John Maguire, the National Cotton Council's representative in Washington, D.C., who spoke during the Beltwide Cotton Conference. The five-day meeting here, hosted by the NCC, will continue through Thursday.
Although Congress appropriated almost $6 billion in disaster relief last year, the current agriculture legislation, Freedom to Farm, was not amended, Maguire said.
He expects there will additional money late this year for the supplemental agriculture transition program, but there likely won't be a return to the old USDA offerings that tied payments to a multitude of restrictions. Only moderate adjustments to the current farm law are expected this year, he said.
Moderates hold the power in Congress, Maguire said, pointing to a slim Republican majority in the House, where Larry Combest, R-Lubbock, will head the Agriculture Committee. The ranking Democrat on the committee is Charles Stenholm of Stamford.
An unknown is the replacement of Bob Livingston, who was to be House speaker before abruptly resigning from Congress. Livingston, said Maguire, was a strong advocate of agriculture.
In the Senate, agriculture Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, will return. He's what Maguire called a strong advocate of Freedom to Farm.
Maguire believes the most pressing issues to be considered by the new Congress will be budgetary matters, followed by appropriations, Social Security, HMO reform, USDA oversight, trade and the environment.
For agriculture, the key considerations will focus on crop insurance reform and how the last of the 1998 disaster money is allocated, he said, adding that securing additional funding will present major challenges.
NCC President Jack Hamilton told delegates that his organization will convene a committee of industry leaders to evaluate options and begin to prepare recommendations during its annual meeting next month in Memphis.
''The loss of Step 2 funding removes a program provision that not only helped to keep the price of cotton competitive for our customers, but one that also helped to support the price farmers received for their cotton,'' he said. ''We cannot survive with a marketing loan program that supports farm prices only to a level of 51.92 cents and relies exclusively on Step 3 imports to keep U.S. cotton price-competitive.''
If the Step 2 competitiveness plan can't be restored in its entirety, then some other farm program adjustments will have to be made, Hamilton said.
And although planting flexibility provided by the current farm bill is ''embraced by most farmers as good policy,'' it is not the answer to ''our current dilemma because there are not alternative crops that can be produced profitably at today's prices,'' he said.
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