The Oregon Farm Bureau welcomed a $180 billion national farm bill for boosting wheat subsidies and land conservation funding in eastern Oregon.
The U.S. Congress released details of the bill Tuesday. The legislation will govern farm subsidies for 10 years and overhauls a 1996 law which farmers had complained left them unprotected against swings in commodity prices on the international market. The bill boosts spending nationally by 70 percent. "Our general reaction is positive," Dave Dillon, spokesman for the Oregon Farm Bureau, said.
Oregon farmers will benefit from additional acres admitted into the Conservation Reserve Program, a government payout for owners of environmentally sensitive land. The program is widely used in eastern Oregon's arid wheat growing regions that are vulnerable to erosion.
About 2,000 landowners have already taken advantage of the program to leave 417,239 acres fallow in Oregon. They received about $19 million dollars in compensation from the Department of Agriculture, according to a database made public last year.
More farmers are likely to join, said Jean Wilkinson, the bureau's associate director for government affairs.
The bill raises the Conservation Reserve Program limit from 36.4 million acres to 39.2 million acres nationally. It's not clear how many additional acres will fall in Oregon, Wilkinson said.
Owners of agricultural land in Oregon will also benefit from a four-fold increase in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program that pays farmers to reduce fertilizer runoff and clean up manure, Wilkinson said.
Wheat farmers would see a boost of about 10 percent in price supports under the bill. The exact increase has not been determined.
In one area, however, Oregon farmers will reap less than their counterparts in other states.
Oregon farms yield a wide range of specialty and niche crops such as grass seed, Christmas trees and various types of berries. The state is also the country's leading producer of hazelnuts. Price supports, reserved for major grain crops traded on international markets, do not apply to these crops.
A few states in the Midwest receive the bulk of these subsidies.:
