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Friday, December 9, 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Preliminary Plans for Farm Bill Hearings Announced | Hoosier Ag Today

Preliminary Plans for Farm Bill Hearings Announced | Hoosier Ag Today

Supercommittee's failure will restart farm bill process | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com

Supercommittee's failure will restart farm bill process | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com

WASHINGTON — Count pheasant hunters as among those likely disappointed that Congress is plowing under that new farm bill. Biofuel producers, on the other hand, may be happy to see the bill go.

Those groups were among the winners and losers in the hastily crafted bill that the House and Senate agriculture committees had planned to stuff in a deficit-reduction plan that a congressional supercommittee was charged with writing. The supercommittee gave up trying to agree on the plan, leaving the agriculture committees in Congress to start over on the farm legislation.

The agriculture committee leaders did all their work on the bill behind closed doors and never released an actual text of the legislation. But Pheasants Forever, an advocacy group, successfully lobbied the lawmakers for provisions that would have steered conservation funding to landowners who preserved grassy areas as habitat for the game bird.