House Suspends Base Acre Provision In Farm Bill

The House of Representatives passed bipartisan H.R. 6849 to suspend for the 2008 and 2009 crop years a Farm Bill provision requiring producers to have a minimum of 10-base acres to receive program benefits. The House passed the legislation by voice vote in response to the USDA’s plan to deny farm program benefits to hundreds of thousands of producers nationwide by refusing to allow for the aggregation of small base acreage.

“The USDA’s decision to eliminate such a large number of base acres could affect hundreds of thousands of producers all across this country,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson. “Their selective interpretation of the Farm Bill is doing no favors for America’s farmers and ranchers, who are rightly concerned that the Department is ignoring the Congress’s clearly stated intent. With passage of this bill, we are making clear to farm country that the Farm Bill will be implemented as Congress intended.”