| From NSAC's May 4-8 weekly update, here is the good, bad, and ugly from the budget the Obama Administration has presented to Congress:
Great News
(The short version of what you can take away here is: lots of great programs got increases in funding.)
Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program: Increased funding from $4 mil to $26 mil. NSAC says "If approved by Congress, the program will then grow dramatically next year, helping to spur growth in jobs through small rural business development."
The Rural Cooperative Development Grants Program: Increased funding from $6mil to $14mil. This program "provides funding to cooperative training centers."
The Value-Added Producer Grants Program: Increased funding from $19mil to $22mil. NSAC says:
VAPG has long been an NSAC priority, including our successful drive to have local food products and mid-tier value chains added as program priorities, along with a stronger priority for small and mid-sized farms and beginning and minority farmers in the 2008 Farm Bill.
The Rural Energy for America Program: Funding increased from $60mil to $128mil.
The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account Program: This is a new pilot program that would get $5 mil. That's very good news.
Direct Farm Ownership Loan Funding: Increased funding from $222mil to $393mil. Apparently there's a huge budget shortfall for this in 2009, and the 2010 budget does a lot to make up for that. Right now there's a huge waiting list for loans.
And no budget cuts for...: the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, Outreach to Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, Organic Research and Extension Initiative, Farmers Market Promotion Program, Seniors Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and Community Food Grants.
Bad News
Turning to research and extension, the news is bad to mediocre. While organic, specialty crop, beginning farmer, and minority mandatory spending would be left intact by the White House proposal, discretionary programs remain a level funding, despite very significant increases in non-agricultural research in other government agencies. This is the continuation of what is now a long-term trend, with food and agriculture research winding up at the bottom of the heap as increased science dollars flow to health, energy, and other parts of the government research efforts.
In other words, even though they aren't decreasing our funding for ag research, compared to huge increases in funding that everyone else (i.e. non-ag research) got, what we got totally sucks. It's kind of as if Santa got you a book and you were pretty happy with it until you found out that he got everyone else a Nintendo Wii. Now your book kind of sucks.
Not only would the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program remain stuck at $19 million under the Obama request, but even the larger Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) would stay constant at $201.5 million. Organic Transitions research and extension is also held constant at $1.8 million. One other level-funded program is nonetheless a bit of a bright note. The ATTRA sustainable agriculture information service program would remain at $2.6 million, but given consistent proposals to do away with the program under the Bush Administration, it is a welcome relief to see the presidential request for funding.
Ugly News
I've already reported on this here, but Conservation programs totally got the shaft- by about $750mil. This happens all the time. They authorize Conservation programs to get some money in the farm bill and then they take it away when they actually go to appropriate the money. It makes lobbying for Conservation VERY frustrating because even after a victory in the farm bill, you still haven't won. You're just waiting to see how much they take away from you later.
In size order, the White House wants Congress to cut the Wetlands Reserve Program by $438 million, Environmental Quality Incentives Program by $250 million, Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program by $43 million, Farmland Protection Program by $30 million, and Agricultural Management Assistance program by $5 million.
The new team uses the same excuse as the old - the farm bill increases spending for these programs unrealistically. To that tired old canard the new team adds a new wrinkle - the farm bill and the USDA regulatory process has made some of these programs less attractive, and therefore they project demand is projected to go down. Obviously this claim begs the question of why they are not fixing the problem areas through regulation and guidance rather than creating a self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.
The Big Picture According to NSAC
Here are a few observations made by NSAC about the Obama budget taken as a whole.
Relative to the FY 2009 agriculture appropriations, the President would spend an additional $1.4 billion, a 6.5 percent increase. That number actually masks the full spending increase, however, because it does not account for the $750 million-plus bank robbery of the farm bill conservation programs, a figure about $500 million higher than in FY 09. So the full extent of increased discretionary spending in the White House proposal would be about $1.9 billion.
The biggest increase, once again, is for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. WIC funding is projected to climb another $917 million over and above the historically unprecedented $6.9 billion in 2009, itself a near billion dollar increase over 2008. These huge increases are due in part to the recession, in part to food price inflation, and in part to increased outreach to eligible but non-participating families. Out of the entire agricultural appropriations bill, this single program would receive 35 percent of total available funding under the President's proposal.
Readers may recall the effort by the sustainable agriculture community to secure addition funding for the WIC program as part of the economic recovery (stimulus) bill. That effort resulted in a contingency fund of $400 million that can be used for WIC in 2009 and 2010 and should negate any negative impacts on the agricultural bill should WIC costs increase even faster than anticipated. While the effort on the stimulus bill successfully contributed to a final 2009 bill that kept all of our priority farm bill mandatory programs completely intact, it would appear we could easily find ourselves back in a very similar spot for the 2010 bill unless we roll up our sleeves and fight hard again this year.
Though it does not count against the agricultural appropriations bill, the budget also projects an increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) of over $7 billion, to $61.4 billion, a stunning 55 percent increase in just two fiscal years.
The other big discretionary funding winners in the President's budget are Food and Drug Administration and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, both slated for substantial increases. The agricultural appropriations bill includes both of those agencies plus the Farm Credit Administration, in addition to all of USDA not including the Forest Service. The Food Safety Inspection Service would also increase by 5 percent under the Obama proposal. |
