While a month ago the notion of a five-year Farm Bill seeing congressional action in 2012 was considered a long shot, the fact both the Senate-passed bill and the House ag committee-approved bill carry significant program savings -- $23 billion in the Senate; $35 billion in the House - means some hybrid version of a Farm Bill will be part of any fiscal cliff deal. Whether what eventually winds up in a deficit reduction/tax rate package is a straight extension of 2008 programs, a new five-year Farm Bill or a combination of extension and new program initiatives is still being negotiated, with the direct payment title and the title carrying food stamp benefits as the biggest hurdles that must be overcome. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D, MI) told a Washington, DC, audience this week she will not accept a straight extension of 2008 programs as that leaves 37 current programs unfunded while continuing direct payments to producers. Rep. Frank Lucas (R, OK), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, told the same audience he can work with an extension as it would provide producers operational certainty, allow USDA to prepare for new programs and cuts in old operations, and give he and Stabenow the opportunity to hammer out a 2013 five-year Farm Bill come early spring. Neither of the ag panel chairs, however, gave any clue to what the eventual farm program component of the fiscal cliff deal might look like.  

More evidence the Farm Bill is going to be part of the fiscal cliff package is the flurry of meetings among the four top ag leaders in the House and Senate over the last two weeks. Already press reports indicate some major shifts in position, particularly from Senate leaders. This week Stabenow said she's willing to entertain deeper cuts to federal food stamp programs than her chamber's bill now contains, if that's what it takes to get a five-year package included in the fiscal cliff deal. At the same time, Senate ag panel ranking member Sen. Pat Roberts (R, KS) says he's now willing to talk about revising his chamber's Farm Bill commodity program title to include some form of marketing loan and deficiency payment scheme - a move that would mitigate southern producer opposition to the Senate's risk/crop insurance approach - again, again if that's what it takes to get a 2012 package done. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in delivering the President's plan to Capitol Hill, said several times last week farm program payment cuts will be part of a deal to get to the "down payment" all sides have agreed will be part of getting a fiscal cliff solution to Obama for his signature.

The number being kicked around by the White House and congressional negotiators is $32-35 billion in cuts from direct payment, crop insurance and conservation programs, with some of the savings used to fund disaster relief programs. Unresolved and likely to be decided directly by House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) and President Obama is how much to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - the old food stamp component of the Farm Bill - with the Senate currently willing to lop off about $4.5 billion, but the House seeking a much more ambitious $16 billion in cuts, primarily through elimination of states' ability to set their own benefit eligibility criteria. The SNAP portion of the Farm Bill's $1-trillion price tag over 10 years is roughly 80%. The President's broad proposal does not include entitlement program changes so there's no White House number for food stamp reductions.

New infrastructure will help UC Davis assess livestock's environmental footprint.

Davis, Calif. -- There's a time warp at the UC Davis feedlot.

It's the 21st century on most of these 50 acres of pastures and pens two miles west of the main campus, where renowned scientists produce ground-breaking research on animal welfare, livestock production and environmental quality. This is where you will find, for example, the multimillion dollar environmental chambers and bovine bubbles where UC Davis Professor and UC Cooperative Extension specialist Frank Mitloehner and his team work to minimize unwanted nutrient losses by animals - which affect water and air quality - and increase those nutrient values in the products we consume.

"That mill is badly outdated," says John Pereira, managing partner with Frontier Ag, a merchandiser of agricultural and feed commodities based in the Sacramento Valley. "UC Davis has a top-rate animal science program that's making a huge difference in our industry, keeping agriculture productive and sustainable. They absolutely need a new feed mill."  And leaders from the industry are working to make that happen. Pereira is President of the California Grain and Feed Association (CGFA), which recently started the effort and donated $150,000 towards building a new UC Davis feed mill -- $100,000 now and $50,000 once construction begins in early fall 2013. "It's our way of supporting the work UC Davis and Frank Mitloehner are doing, which is some of the world's finest research," Pereira says.    

Mitloehner was recently selected to chair a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization committee to measure and assess the environmental impacts of the global livestock industry. The international effort is the first step toward improving the sustainability of the livestock sector, particularly as the global consumption of meat, dairy products and eggs continues to rise. As chair of the new committee, Mitloehner will lead representatives of national governments, livestock industries, and nonprofit and private sectors in establishing science-based methods to quantify livestock's carbon footprint, create a database of greenhouse gas emission factors for animal feed, and develop a methodology to measure other environmental pressures, such as water consumption and nutrient loss.  

"A new feed mill will really help that effort," Mitloehner says. "We very much appreciate the California Grain and Feed Association's contributions. We're also reaching out to conservation groups and other stakeholders, because quantifying livestock's environmental footprint is important to us all."  The new feed mill will cost $5.3 million -- $2 million of that from in-kind equipment donations already pledged from industry and $3.3 million in monetary donations. The UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences contributed $100,000.  

"All the preliminary work has been done," says Dan Sehnert, animal facilities coordinator for the UC Davis Department of Animal Science. "With the help of an industry planning committee, we have a site map, an approved Environmental Impact Report, and everything else we need to get started once we have the funds."

UC Davis animal scientists are awarded millions of dollars in grant funding, but that money can't be used to support infrastructure, like a new feed mill. The current feed mill was a gift from the California Cattle Feeders Association in 1961.  "It was state-of-the-art at the time," says Mitloehner, leading a recent tour of the feedlot. "And it has served us well. But now, it is totally outdated."

The House Republican leadership this week named seven new GOP members to the House Agriculture Committee, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) confirmed Rep. Collin Peterson (D, MN) will remain committee ranking member, but ag interests were surprised when House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) made good on an earlier warning to his Republican colleagues that leadership is watching votes and public statements and those two factors will be part of the committee assignment process. The new GOP ag committee members are Dan Benishek (MI), Chris Collins (NY), Rodney Davis (IL), Jeff Denham (CA), Richard Hudson (NC), Doug LaMalfa (CA) and Ted Yoho (FL). One vacancy remains on the Republican side of the committee. The poster boy for GOP leadership's tough stance on committee assignments is Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R, KS), who lost his seats on the House Agriculture Committee and the House Budget Committee. Insiders say Boehner is trying to yoke up his party, getting members to toe the party line on votes and stop making public statements which undermine his leadership, especially as he goes toe-to-toe with President Obama on fiscal cliff negotiations.  

Huelskamp, who represents Kansas' First District - "The Big First" - a seat previously held since 1963 by Bob Dole, Keith Sebelius, Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran, is an outspoken fiscal and social conservative. He voted against the FY2012 GOP budget because he wanted deeper spending cuts and against the ag panel's Farm Bill because it didn't cut enough from the federal food stamp program. Saying he has not been given a reason for losing his ag panel seat, Huelskamp said this week, "This is clearly a vindictive move and a sure sign that the GOP establishment cannot handle disagreement." Kansas ag interests let Boehner know they were not happy with the action as it leaves one of the nation's largest ag states without a policy voice on the House ag committee. Other members losing key committee spots include Rep. David Schweikert (R, AZ) and Rep. Walter Jones (R, NC) who will not return to the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Justin Amash (R, MI) who also lost his seat on the Budget Committee. For his part, Boehner is quoted as telling his party steering committee the action was not taken lightly and in no way represented a "purge" of independent conservative voices. Ironically, Boehner himself was the victim of similar "discipline" in 1998, when he lost his chair of the House Republican Conference.