The House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management met Thursday to review commodity programs for the next farm bill. National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson testified before the subcommittee and urged its members to include provisions to deal with a long-term collapse in commodity prices. Johnson says the Senate Ag Committee’s farm bill contained a number of positive aspects – but did not include a way to deal with a long-term commodity price collapse. He says the 2012 Farm Bill needs a program that helps to ensure prices don’t fall to a price where family farmers can no longer make a living – such as the Market-Driven Inventory System. Johnson also emphasized the need to look at long-term cost savings of farm bill programs rather than just short-term costs. He says lawmakers must be penny-wise – but not pound-foolish. While MDIS will have a cost – he notes a University of Tennessee study demonstrates it will save money in the long run.

Johnson says permanent disaster programs save money as well. As an example – he explained that the U.S. spent 30-billion dollars between 1996 and 2002 in emergency and ad hoc disaster programs to help farmers and ranchers when prices collapsed and the farm bill had no safety net for them. He says the cost to extend the SURE program and similar disaster assistance programs for five years – which could have replaced ad hoc disaster programs – is 8.9-billion dollars.