Glickman Gives Wish List to Conferees

April 7, 2000

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has sent his list of preferred changes to a conference committee that is to consider reconciling differences between the Senate and House versions of crop insurance reform. Staff meetings to prepare for the conference have been going on throughout this week.

Two issues about which Glickman has spoken before and that seem to be the most troublesome to the administration are adequate funding and who will chair the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation Board of Directors. Glickman says the chair must be filled by someone from USDA; the legislation calls for one of the part-time members to fill the chair.

"I emphasize in the strongest terms than, unless this legislation authorizes and Congress appropriates adequate funds for USDA to implement the changes this legislation mandates, USDA will be unable to implement the legislation, and neither Congress nor the administration will satisfy producers’ expectations," he said in letter to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-TX).

USDA believes it will need $110.6 million over five years to implement the legislation with about $32.4 million of that for research and development. So Glickman wants the conference committee to increase the statutory ceiling on mandatory spending for research and development from the Federal Crop Insurance Fund.

On the subject of the FCIC chair, Glickman said both bills specify that the chair "either may or must be" one of the part-time members, "each of whom is a person who would bring a personal financial conflict to the board. The bill would require that the members come from the very interest groups that benefit from the program ... we do not believe that the chairman of this very significant program’s board of directors should be a person with such an inherent conflict, nor do we believe that a majority of the members should have those conflicts."

Therefore, he added, the board "must be chaired by a USDA official, and the membership balance must not be overly weighted with part-time, financially interested members."

Both bills address the effects multi-year losses have on a producer’s yield history, but the respective provisions are structured "in very different ways and should be redesigned to provide this assistance to affected producers in a manner that minimizes complexity and ensures meaningful relief for hart hit producers," Glickman said.

The Senate bill also includes a pilot program, funded at $500 million over three years, to encourage farmers to choose from various risk management options. But to be effective, Glickman said, any such program must be structured "so that the available options are easily understood by producers."

He urged the conferees to work with USDA to find ways to "simplify and clarify this initiative."