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By Mike Barnett
Editor
With the announcement of a new case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) detected in Canada during resolutions debate at the American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting, back room compromise replaced a floor fight as delegates with opposing views agreed on common policy.
Delegates clearly expressed concern about the process of opening U.S. borders to Canadian beef imports. But they just as clearly called on the U.S. government to use "sound science as a basis for reopening markets to ensure continued consumer confidence."
"We want the borders to be open," said Texas Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke. "But we also want our consumers to be assured they're getting a safe supply of beef."
American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman said AFBF's fundamental position is that border openings and closings be not only based on sound science, but the science needs to be implemented properly.
"We want to ensure that things are being done right in terms of animal health and food safety. And, we will continue to work with USDA to ensure that a return to normalized trade with Canada will proceed in an orderly fashion," Stallman said.
Country of origin labeling (COOL) was also a hot topic, as lengthy discussions regarding mandatory versus voluntary took center stage. TFB State Director Dan Dierschke, who is also the current Texas Beef Council president, said this has been a controversial topic at the convention for many years.
"There's a significant number of people who feel that a mandatory country of origin labeling policy would create more returns for producers," Dierschke said. "There's a significant number of others of us, on the other hand, that feel like the costs of providing labeling that is required...and as the law is written, there are substantial penalties for any violation of the law...we do not see any demonstration that consumers are willing to pay the additional cost..."
Texas Farm Bureau, Dan Dierschke said, was also successful in getting much of its policy—adopted at the state convention regarding animal identification—adopted at the national level. Those basic guidelines included the following:
•The program be as simple and inexpensive as possible for producers to implement.
•Cost sharing support from the federal government, especially for development and implementation.
•Confidentiality of producer information will be respected and exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
•Information be made available only to the proper animal health authorities in the event of an animal disease incident.
•The identification of animals will not be required until movement from the original registered premise.
Missing from the adopted policy was one section that Texas proposed—that the database related to individual animals that documented change from one premise to another be maintained in a private database.
"We feel the information could be more secure from Freedom of Information requests if it were in private hands rather than governmental hands," Dan Dierschke said. "Others felt otherwise and our view did not prevail."
On the issue of national farm policy, delegates continued AFBF's opposition to any reopening of the 2002 farm bill.
Delegates also discussed the effectiveness of the federal crop insurance program. They approved a resolution that farmers should not need a crop insurance policy in order to be eligible for ad hoc disaster assistance. The last two agricultural disaster bills passed in Congress required producers to have policies in order to qualify for the assistance in those bills.
Texas delegates were instrumental in getting a number of changes approved that they believe would make the crop insurance program work better in the Lone Star State.
One dealt with catastrophic crop insurance (CAT).
"We have a lot of members that only take the minimum, the CAT insurance," said State Director Steve Cochran. "We were quite concerned that American policy was to eliminate the CAT policies. But we were fortunate to put it back in the AFBF policy book."
Cochran was instrumental in getting language added that would allow CAT policies to insure dryland and irrigated fields separately.
TFB Vice President Lloyd Arthur was successful in getting several crop insurance resolutions adopted that would benefit Texas farmers, including:
•Policies should have provisions that allow APH when adopting new technologies such as drip irrigation.
•Policies should allow a producer to insure different farming practices separately (e.g., drip and pivot irrigation not considered as one unit).
•Policies should allow insuring 100 percent of an alternative secondary crop at planting time. This should not be considered "double cropping."
Two other issues important to Texas Farm Bureau—immigration and changing the federal income system—were discussed.
"There was a complete, total rewrite of our immigration policy," TFB President Dierschke said. "I think it's going to be very fruitful in getting some farm labor into the United States in a timely fashion."
AFBF has long supported immigration reform to make it easier for farmers to find legal, affordable laborers. However, delegates moved toward multi-section reform rather than a special program for agriculture. Under the new policy, AFBF would support omnibus immigration reform that affects multiple industries. The delegates opposed giving amnesty to illegal aliens.
TFB State Director Dan Dierschke led the Texas charge toward making the replacement of the U.S. income, estate and payroll tax codes with a progressive national retail sales tax on new goods and services for personal consumption, a priority issue for the AFBF. Texas Farm Bureau adopted policy supporting a consumption tax at its recent annual convention in San Antonio.
"What I said was I feel that it is not an American tradition to tax people for being productive and saving money," Dan Dierschke said. "My suggestion was to tax people when they spend money, not when they earn it."
