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MILC Program Excluded From Current Farm Bill Draft
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 05/24/2007

A price safety net program for dairy farmers has not been included in the newest Farm Bill proposal within the House Agriculture Committee. On Wednesday, the package was drafted by the panel, but they failed to include funding and reauthorization for the Milk Income Loss Contract Program.

The news prompted 45 Congressmen from dairy states to write a bipartisan letter to committee leaders urging them to re-authorize MILC. It was signed by members from Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Maine, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California and Minnesota.

Wisconsin Congressman Dave Obey, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee and is leading the fight to put funding for the MILC program in the domestic spending bill, made no guarantees that MILC would be part of the compromise package that he and other Democratic leaders were working out with President Bush.

Meanwhile, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota said an extension of the MILC program in the domestic spending bill is crucial to the subsidy being included in the Farm Bill this fall. If MILC supporters can win this week's battle, the program can be included in the Farm Bill at a cost of $2 billion over 10 years.

As Wisconsin Ag Connection report earlier, a loophole in the last farm bill made MILC expire two years before the other major commodity programs. But when lawmakers tried to extend that deadline last year, the Congressional leadership once again ended payments a month earlier than other programs and created a gap that denies dairy a guaranteed seat at the table at the start of negotiations for the next farm bill.

Wisconsin farmers received $486 million through the program during the past four years.


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