6
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Capital Press Editorial Board.
April 28, 2017
All other commentary pieces are
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Opinion
Editorial Board
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com Online: www.capitalpress.com/opinion
O UR V IEW
Margin Protection
Program worth fixing
A
s a concept, the dairy Margin Protection Program
in the 2014 Farm Bill makes ample sense. As
originally designed, it would assure that dairy
farmers maintain some level of positive cash fl ow if milk
prices drop, feed prices skyrocket, or both.
The need for such a program is clear. The National
Agricultural Statistics Service All-Milk price dropped
from $21.70 in December 2008 to $11.45 in May 2009.
At the same time corn and other feed prices were higher
than their long-term average. This pushed most dairy
operations far into the red.
To survive, farmers borrowed against the farm.
Sometimes, that was enough. Other times, it led to
many farmers selling out or going out of business.
As a result, from 2007 to 2012, the number of U.S.
dairy farms dropped nearly 27 percent, from 67,866 to
49,628.
To stanch the flow of red ink, the National Milk
Producers Federation set to developing a way to protect
dairy farmers from catastrophic milk and feed price
swings. The group talked with farmers, economists and
others to come up with a program that would do just that.
Then the House and Senate agriculture committees took
the program and turned it into something that wouldn’t
work. By the time Congress and the Congressional Budget
Offi ce got done with it, MPP became one of the few
federal enterprises that actually makes money — at the
expense of dairy farmers. In 2015, 25,162 dairy farms
paid $72.9 million into MPP and received $730,000 in
benefi ts. In 2016, they began to abandon the ill-designed
program but still paid in $22.8 million and got payouts of
$11.5 million.
All while milk prices were plummeting.
Clearly, MPP doesn’t do what it was designed to. It
doesn’t prevent dairy farmers from taking a huge hit when
prices swing.
Congress is now getting ready to write another farm
bill. We’re not sure what form that legislation will take,
but with a few minor changes MPP can be changed from a
loser to a winner for dairy operators.
First, instead of using the national average price of
milk, it needs to use to actual price paid to individual
farmers for their milk.
Second, it needs to be based on the actual feed prices
farmers pay.
This will require more than someone in Washington,
Dairy MPP premiums vs. payouts
The USDA MPP has taken in nearly 8 times more money over the
last two years than it paid out, a difference of more than $83 million.
Total premiums/
administrative fees
Total payouts
$95.66 million
$12.2 million
Premiums and payouts by year/coverage level
Actual and estimated premiums paid and program payouts made by
coverage level, based on USDA’s July 2016 projected margin.
2015
Coverage
$8.00
7.50
7.00
6.50
6.00
5.50
5.00
4.50
4.00
Total
2016
Coverage
$8.00
7.50
7.00
6.50
6.00
5.50
5.00
4.50
4.00
Total
Participating
farms
264
1,430
501
6,397
3,850
506
743
136
10,939
25,162
Premiums/fees
($ millions)
$3.37
7.74
1.47
24.01
31.28
1.73
2.1
0.07
1.1
$72.87
Payouts
($ millions)
$0.73
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
$0.73
Participating
farms
138
225
158
2,184
1,877
342
463
405
18,801
24,292
Premiums/fees
($ millions)
$1.01
1.18
0.55
6.2
10.19
0.54
1.19
0.43
1.88
$22.79
Payouts*
($ millions)
$1
1.28
0.47
5.48
3.21
0
0
0
0
$11.46
*Estimate
Source: American Farm Bureau Federation
Capital Press graphic
D.C., punching a few numbers into a spreadsheet to
determine how little to pay farmers, but it will also
prevent farmers from being sold a bill of goods by another
government program that doesn’t accomplish its purpose.
Congress shouldn’t throw out MPP. It should just listen
to NMPF and dairy farmers this time and fi x a program
that’s needed.
O UR V IEW
Perdue is welcome, but late to the party
onny Perdue has been confi rmed
by the Senate as secretary of
agriculture.
It’s long past time. President
Trump has not moved quickly enough
on key appointments involved in
timely issues important to farmers
and ranchers.
The former Georgia governor was
the last cabinet offi cer nominated by
Trump, and didn’t receive a hearing
before the Senate ag committee until
March 23.
“I think the president saved the best
for last,” Perdue quipped to senators
during the hearing. The affable Perdue
received the appropriate chuckle
from the panel and gallery, but it was
already apparent that the nominee was
woefully late to the party.
Not only was he last invited to
the cabinet table, Perdue had not
been consulted on the Trump budget
proposal, released that morning,
that called for a 21 percent cut in
the USDA’s budget. Adding insult
to injury, some programs favored
by Perdue — organics and the farm-
to-school programs, for example —
received short shrift from the White
House.
This was not the administration’s
fi nest hour in the minds of many in the
ag community.
Perdue has a big stack on his desk,
and he won’t have a lot of help right
away to move things along. None of
the eight sub-cabinet positions — the
deputy and under secretaries who
manage various agencies within the
department — have been appointed,
let alone vetted. Those fi rst few staff
meetings are going to be lonely.
Also vacant are state-level
S
A GOP promise
to rural families
By ANDY BENTZ
For the Capital Press
W
hen Donald Trump
ran the table on
Hillary
Clinton
in middle America, many
coastal pundits were caught
fl atfooted. They never saw it
coming. But those of us in the
vast areas of Oregon domi-
nated by rural communities,
ranches, farms and forestry
operations understand exact-
ly how the GOP carved out a
new majority.
President Trump spoke
unapologetically to rural
voters about his support for
agriculture, promising to
roll back needless regulatory
limits on productivity, while
strengthening
America’s
commitment to programs like
the Renewable Fuel Standard
(RFS), which allows U.S.
farmers to compete against
foreign oil producers. It’s a
bipartisan program that has
worked for over 11 years to
create a stable market for bio-
fuels, and it will only grow in
importance to Oregon as new
innovations allow us to create
more and more homegrown
energy from existing bio-
mass, including wood scraps
from lumber operations.
The RFS ensures that oil
companies can’t lock rural
biofuel producers out of the
market, giving consumers
more affordable options at
the pump. It’s a perfect ex-
ample of a policy that works
for American energy security,
for our environment and for
rural communities struggling
with economic stagnation.
Some 97 percent of U.S. fuel
is now blended with some
amount of homegrown etha-
nol, holding down prices and
protecting against manipula-
tion by hostile oil exporters,
like Venezuela and Russia.
Biofuels also replace
some of the most toxic addi-
tives in gasoline, like methyl
tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE).
MTBE was a gasoline addi-
tive notorious for contami-
nating groundwater supplies
until ethanol offered a clean-
er, more affordable way to
increase octane for better
performance.
Moreover, the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture re-
ports that carbon emissions
are slashed by 43 percent
when biofuels displace pe-
troleum-based fuel — a
number that continues to
rise as farmers learn to grow
more crops on less land year
after year.
Guest
comment
Andy Bentz
Thanks to these innova-
tions under the RFS, biofu-
el production now supports
nearly 16,000 Oregon jobs,
including those at one of the
West Coast’s premier biore-
fineries in Morrow County.
These facilities not only
deliver homegrown ener-
gy, they generate a steady
stream of high-protein, low-
cost feedstock for ranchers
because only the starch por-
tion of grain is fermented for
fuel production.
No matter how you look at
it, the RFS is a clear winner,
and it remains one of the few
untarnished pillars of eco-
nomic growth in rural com-
munities at a time when U.S.
farm incomes are expected to
fall for a fourth straight year
due to a global crop surplus.
These rural families are
struggling, and policymak-
ers — Republican or Demo-
crat — who fail to recognize
the importance of supporting
America’s agricultural econ-
omy can expect the same
response from voters that
shocked pundits in 2016.
It’s not about partisan poli-
tics; it’s about delivering on
a promise to protect home-
grown fuels and revitalize
rural growth, as President
Trump vowed to do.
Senior leaders in Con-
gress, like our own Con-
gressman Greg Walden, who
chairs the House committee
responsible for domestic en-
ergy, should keep these fam-
ilies in mind as lawmakers
look to craft the next farm bill
and oil companies ramp up
efforts to dismantle the RFS.
Democrats learned their les-
son in 2016, and they are
reaching out to rural voters.
The success of those efforts
will depend largely on how
well GOP leaders stay on
track to restore growth out-
side of city limits.
Andy Bentz is the man-
aging member of Bentz
Solutions LLC, a consulting
group based in Ontario,
Ore. Bentz Solutions works
with natural resource
industries in governmental
and public relations in the
Western U.S. He is part of
the third generation of a
ranching family in South-
east Oregon and retired
as the sheriff of Malheur
County in 2011.
Readers’ views
Not a Monsanto fan
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press File
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has much to do to catch up after taking offi ce this week.
executive director appointees who run
the Farm Service Agency and Rural
Development.
During his confi rmation hearings,
Perdue said he would like Congress
to establish a separate sub-cabinet
position within the USDA to deal with
trade issues. That’s an idea former
Secretary Tom Vilsack had kicked
around during his tenure but never put
forward.
Sounds like a good idea. There’s
no overstating how important trade
is to American farmers, particularly
to producers here in the Pacifi c
Northwest.
But here again Trump’s actions
have given producers pause.
During the campaign both Trump
and Secretary Clinton spoke out
against the proposed Trans-Pacifi c
Partnership. The president quickly
took the United States out of the pact
upon taking offi ce, favoring instead
stronger two-way deals with Pacifi c
trading partners. He has also signaled
a desire to renegotiate the North
American Free Trade Agreement with
Canada and Mexico.
It’s too early to tell if any of this
will be good or bad for agriculture. It’s
all stymied because Robert Lighthizer,
Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Trade
Representative — our country’s chief
trade negotiator — has been approved
by the Senate Finance Committee
but has not yet been scheduled for
confi rmation by the full Senate.
We would like to see the president
move more quickly on issues vital to
U.S. agriculture. Filling the vacancies
at the USDA and making more
progress on trade would be good fi rst
steps.
“Monsanto’s vegetable seed lab makes end user its fi rst
priority.” What a crock. Monsanto only wants end users to
like the taste. And in the article one would be led to believe
that they do not do GMO — another crock.
Their lawsuits over little farmers, and their interest in
glyphosate are not adequately covered in your articles, and
you would leave me the dumb farmer thinking everything
is honkey dory.
Not so. Monsanto is a PIG of cultural agriculture, and
should be stopped from planting anything in the state of
California. Why is it that fruits and vegetables I buy at
the store with the Monsanto brand do not have seeds that
sprout when I replant the vegetative seeds from produce
from Monsanto?
It is because of genetic engineering. These guys are not
our friends, and I do not care what it tastes like, if it comes
from Monsanto, it is going into the compost pit.
Randy Burke
Gualala, Calif.
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