The Senate is finally taking up one of the most important pieces of
legislation it will pass this year -- the five year $288 billion farm bill. This bill funds crop subsidy programs, food stamps,
commodities, school lunches, rural development and crop disaster funds.
But now, President Bush may veto the bill that the White House says it too expensive. The administration wants the bill to prohibit farm payments to those whose average gross income tops
$200,000 a year. This week, the Senate debated an amendment that would
limit farm couples to receiving $250,000 a year in crop support
payments; the current limit is $360,000.
There is even the possibility that it could be February before the bill is passed. Keep in mind that the Iowa caucuses will be taking place then.
Reuters says:
The Senate will not pass the $288 billion farm bill this year unless
senators forego amendment on hot-button issues like immigration reform
or the war in Iraq, Majority Leader Harry Reid warned on Tuesday.
The bill would create the first-ever program to shield farm income
from poor yields as well as low prices, expand food stamp benefits and
help develop cellulose, found in grass and wood, as a raw material for
fuel ethanol.
Before they could debate the first amendment on the bill -- a "hard"
cap of $250,000 a year on crop subsidies -- senators brought themselves
to a standstill over Reid's plan to allow only relevant amendments on
the floor.
The White House has threatened to veto the bill on grounds it raises
taxes, wrongly increases supports for dairy and some crops, and fails
to reform rules that allow huge subsidies.
"Here's where we are -- the Senate is gridlocked on the farm bill
because of the decision to fill the (amendment) tree," said Republican
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "Our farmers are too important to
wait until February."
Some specifics from the Senate Bill:
-
In the area of nutrition, the Senate bill gives $1.13 billion to expand
the fruit and vegetable school snack program to every state, targeting
low-income children. This amounts to more than three times what the
House is offering, with a slightly different approach. There is also
increased spending for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, Seniors
Farmers Market Nutrition Program and Community Food Projects, which
would lead to more government food purchases and encourage better
nutrition.
- Conservation is funded at an additional $3.7 billion, $1.2 billion
of which is for the Conservation Security Program, now called the
Conservation Stewardship Program, to enroll 13.2 million acres every
year. The bill also establishes a specific five-year funding level of
$1.28 billion to deal with the lack of funding in the current farm
bill.
-
There are also various incentive programs, grants and research monies
to develop biomass crop production--roughly $1 billion over five years.
- In addition, the bill ensures that mandatory country of origin
labeling (COOL) will be implemented for meats, fresh fruits and
vegetables. It also strengthens enforcement of the Packers and
Stockyards Act, including prohibiting packers from owning livestock
more than 14 days before slaughter.
See The Wall Street Journal's coverage.
Read Successful Farming magazine's coverage of the bill.
See what presidential candidates have said about farm policy.
Read this story to learn about how special interest groups like the sugar lobby hold power in the farm bill debate.
Beer Brewers/Drinkers Have Something to Worry About
My friend Jay Barrett, news director of
KMXT 100.1 FM in Kodiak, Alaska, dropped me a note to say:
Our beer supply is in danger. Well, good beer, anyway. [Listen to Jay's
in-depth story, which could easily be applied to wherever there are breweries, big or small.] Megabrewers probably don't have much to worry about since they have exclusive hops supplies and lots of buying power.
The price of barley malt and hops has doubled, and sometimes tripled, in the past year as ingredients become scarce worldwide. Bad weather has caused some hops crops to fail, and a few hops storage warehouses have burned, consuming several hundred thousand pounds this year. All the while barley farmers are being tempted to plant corn for ethanol production.
Jay says the national rush toward ethanol production tempted some hops growers to grow corn instead. The Brewers Association reports on its
Beertown.org Web site:
On November 1st, more than 280 Brewers Association (BA) members
participated in the latest edition of the BA’s Power Hour Web seminar
“State of the Crop: Hop and Barley Insights for 2007 and Beyond.”
Members listened to industry experts and received key information on
how to deal with the hop and barley shortages.
The
brewing industry is seeing an overall hop production that is 10-15%
below the current demand. Worldwide hop acreage has dropped almost 50%
in the last 10 years. Barley crops are also taking a hard hit. In the
last two years North American brewers and producers are seeing a
significant shortage in their supplies as the demand for barley has
risen and meager worldwide harvests largely due to poor weather
conditions are sending European and Australian brewers to North
American suppliers. Due to high corn prices and demand, there is a
shift in feed grain source away from corn and toward barley and oats,
further stressing the amount of barley available for malting. Moreover,
there is an increasing move to plant crops used in bio-fuel production,
causing forecasts of further reduction of barley acreage in the future.
Read more details about the effects of hop and barley shortages in the November/December issue of The New Brewer, available November 19.
BusinessWeek says that if you like beer from smaller brewers, you'll soon have to pay more:
Oh, and one other thing: Beer prices are likely to climb. How high
is anybody's guess. Craft brewers don't have the means to hedge against
rising prices, like their industrial rivals.
"I'm guessing,
at a minimum, at least a 10 percent jump in beer prices for the average
consumer before the end of the year," said Terry Butler, brewmaster at
central Washington's Snipes Mountain.
Sales have been
relatively flat in recent years among the country's big three brewers
-- Anheuser-Busch Cos., Molson Coors Brewing Co. and SABMiller PLC.
unit Miller Brewing Co -- while small, independent brewers have
experienced tremendous growth. The craft brewing industry experienced a
12 percent increase by volume in 2006, with 6.7 million barrels of
beer. Sales among microbreweries, which produce less than 15,000
barrels per year, grew 16 percent in 2006.
Now the bright
spot in the brewing industry is facing mounting costs on nearly every
front. Fuel, aluminum and glass prices have been going up quickly over
a period of several years. Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as
more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while
others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn.
A
decade-long oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the
crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United
States, where one-fourth of the world's hops are grown, acreage fell 30
percent between 1995 and 2006.
The Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle adds:
Beer brewers use 30 to 35 varieties of the hop flower in brewing.
Prices of some varieties are up as much five times higher than a year
ago, said Paul Gatza, director of the Colorado-based Brewers
Association, a trade group of craft beer producers.
"Some of them won't be available at any price," Gatza said.
According
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the nation's inventory of hops
held by brewers, growers and dealers as of Sept. 1 was 47 million
pounds — down 22 percent from two years ago and the lowest Sept. 1
inventory since 1981.
Malt prices, meanwhile, have gone up 30 percent to 100 percent from a year ago, Gatza said.
The Decline of the Personal Letter
Here is a question: Did e-mail lead to the decline of the personal letter? Personal correspondence has been declining for 15 years, but when did this decline start? It began when telephones became common, according to
a nice piece from
The Republican in Springfield, Mass.
The paper reports that despite e-mail and the Internet, mailbags are as full a ever -- just not with letters:
And to make matters worse, the volume of so-called standard
mail, including catalogs and other advertising, is on the
increase.
"Our research shows that personal correspondence has
been declining for about 15 years. Personally, I think
it's a tragic loss. I enjoy getting a letter,"
said Gerry J. McKiernan, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal
Service.
"In your mail on any given day, if there is a
personally addressed letter, it's either the first
thing you open or the last. It's never in the middle.
It's the last if you hold off because you want to savor
it," he said.
Postal Service research found that the average household
now receives just one personally addressed letter a week,
including such things as holiday cards and wedding
announcements, McKiernan said.
"However, the decline didn't start with the
Internet. We track the beginning of it to the decrease in
the price of long-distance phone calls," he said.
According to the Postal Service, first-class mail,
including personal letters and bills, peaked in 2001, when
there were 103.6 billion individual pieces delivered. In
2006, there were 97.6 billion pieces delivered.
Some Things That Are Bugging Me
- The other morning I heard something on National Public Radio about Americans 'invading" Iraq. This is an interesting verb choice, I think. Did we invade or did we liberate, free, occupy or attack? I think the verbs we choose say a lot about our biases.
- A couple of years ago during sweeps months, knucklehead reporters often showed up on TV volunteering to be tasered to demonstrate how it feels to get hit with an electrical jolt. I wonder who will be the first to demonstrate what waterboarding is like. Geraldo, where are you?
- Six years ago, somebody launched an anthrax attack in America. It shut down post offices and Congress, and disrupted business. And the case was never solved. I find that to be amazing.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning
Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other
materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and
analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it
will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The
column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of
the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be
corrected.
A report came out I believe by ABC that claimed...
