Rep. David Klindt (R-Bethany) discusses farm relief this week.
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by State Rep. David Klindt
Missouri has more farms than every other state except one, Texas.
So naturally, our state feels the pain of a slumping agricultural-economic market. This year, a severe drought, Asian economic recession, and national embargoes on agricultural exports have combined to hurt our farmers as well as the businesses that depend on those farmers. Attention to this issue heightened last week when Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman declared all counties in Missouri “agricultural disaster areas” because of the harsh drought, which Glickman called “one of the most severe in history.”
Underscoring the drought’s severity, cash receipts for crops are expected to decline again this year, according to the Farm and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri, by another $3 billion, which is on top of the $8 billion decline since 1996. Missouri farmers need real solutions to these problems.
Both the state and federal governments are trying to combat this farm emergency. Last week, Congress approved an agricultural appropriations bill that included $8.7 billion in aid to farmers. According to Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the goal of the bill is to “provide immediate financial relief to farmers while protecting the provisions of the 1996 Farm Bill, which allow farmers to decide what, when, and where to plant instead of returning to the old days of government-controlled supply-management, as some are proposing.”
Senator John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) reported that “Missouri farmers will receive $172 million in short-term aid for crop loss, plus other funds for drought relief, and livestock, dairy, and soybean assistance.”
The disaster-area designation opens up federal relief to Missouri farmers, including emergency low-interest loans. Farmers have less than eight months to apply for the loans, and more information on federal farm assistance programs can be found on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website at http://drought.fsa.usda.gov.
In its last session, the Missouri General Assembly enacted two major pieces of legislation, H.B. 888 and S.B. 310, aimed at helping Missouri agriculture. H.B. 888 provides aid and incentives for value-added agricultural business. This new law enables farmers to establish agricultural cooperatives and allows the Missouri Agricultural and Small Business Development Authority to make grants and loans for the development and operation of rural agricultural businesses who produce value-added agricultural products and who aid the economy of a rural community. It also provides for tax credits for contributions to the Authority. A contribution made in 1999, for instance, is eligible for a 100 percent tax credit which can be carried over for five years.
The General Assembly is greatly concerned about the needs of our state’s farmers. During the last legislative session, Rep. Maurice Lawson (St. Joseph) and I formed the Family Farm Caucus. This 70-plus member caucus is a bipartisan group of representatives who have come together to achieve compromise on measures that will help Missouri’s farmers. If you have any suggestions on how we as lawmakers may help our farmers and farm-dependent businesses, please contact me at (573) 751-1415. Together, we can help Missouri lead the nation in agricultural prosperity.