To amend the commodity provisions of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 to permit producers to aggregate base acres and reconstitute farms to avoid the prohibition on receiving direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, or average crop revenue election payments when the sum of the base acres of a farm is 10 acres or less, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6849) to amend the commodity provisions of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 to permit producers to aggregate base acres and reconstitute farms to avoid the prohibition on receiving direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, or average crop revenue election payments when the sum of the base acres of a farm is 10 acres or less, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6849.

Let me also thank Chairman Peterson, chairman of the full committee, and Ranking Member Goodlatte for their hard work and effort in making

sure that we got a quick markup on this bill in committee and got it to the floor.

I introduced this legislation with my good friend and colleague, Representative Jerry Moran, to help thousands of American farmers who would have been adversely affected by really the willful misinterpretation in the 2008 farm bill by the Department of Agriculture.

Madam Speaker, the Department has interpreted the language in the 2008 farm bill in a manner that would prevent thousands of small farmers from receiving the program payments they are owed, putting them in jeopardy, in some cases, of financial hardship and some might even have to go out of business.

This is based on its misinterpretation of a provision in title I of the farm bill that was meant to prevent payments to those farms that are 10 acres or less. Despite clear report language outlining how USDA is to implement this provision, the Secretary has chosen not to read it as written.

I personally, along with a number of my colleagues, opposed the 10- acre provision in the farm bill when it was debated in the committee and again during conference, because we should not punish small farmers in America. But I understand the provision's intent: to prevent people who are not active farmers from gaming the system and getting government payments on land they didn't actively farm. I think that's appropriate.

However, I cannot abide by the interpretation that puts thousands of farmers who rent or lease small tracts of land for their farming operations and place them at risk of not receiving payments and could, in some cases, put them in jeopardy of being out of business, an interpretation that puts existing contracts between landowners and farmers at risk of being voided.

Let me just share with you what this means. In the State of Iowa, roughly 12,000 farms are affected; in Illinois, approximately 16,000 farms would be affected; in Ohio, 16,000 farms; in Kentucky, 20,000 farms; and in my home State of North Carolina, almost 16,000 farms would be adversely impacted if Congress let's the department rule stand. Nationwide, this number could be as high as 460,000 farms.

H.R. 6849 fixes this problem. It suspends the provisions in title I for the 2008-2009 crop years that would have required producers to have a minimum of a 10-acre base to receive program benefits. This provision provides time to consider a more permanent fix in the future.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Boswell) who has worked hard on this and this has a significant impact on his State.

(Mr. BOSWELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Holden) who has also been instrumental in this piece of legislation and works hard on the Ag Committee.

Madam Speaker, we have no further speakers.

Let me thank the gentleman from Virginia for his help, Ranking Member Goodlatte, Chairman Peterson, and all the members of the committee, and also my good friend, Congressman Moran from Kansas, who really was instrumental in working on this piece of legislation.

Let me just say to my colleagues, every State in America is affected by this piece of legislation from an agricultural standpoint. With that, Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in support of H.R. 6849.

I certainly support the fundamental purpose of this bill. I do have some concerns about the offset, the pay-for, that is necessary. I am also concerned that the bill only provides temporary relief.

As has been indicated, decisions were made in the farm bill to eliminate 10 acres from being considered for program payments under the new farm bill, and the attempt was made to make it clear that farmers could aggregate their properties. That has not been the case as the farm bill has been implemented by the Department of Agriculture, and we now are here to correct that mistake.

Mr. Etheridge and I, the gentleman from North Carolina, introduced legislation to do that in September, and this is the base behind the bill that we have before us today, although our plan was to allow farmers to combine base acres through two processes: either reconstitution or aggregation.

And when it became a concern that that bill would not pass in sufficient time and the offset was not there, the bill we have before us became the compromise; and I'm pleased knowing that this legislation must pass to be supportive of this compromise bill. It does mean that this Congress, the House Agriculture Committee, will need to come back in future years to make certain that we get this corrected.

Also, by speaking today, I want to raise the concern that I have with the offset that we're using. For a long time I have worried that my farmers, when they go to see their USDA officers, particularly FSA, at their county office, they have had tremendous delays in access to computers. And the offset for this bill is computer/IT funding in the Risk Management Agency, RMA. In my opinion, we need to find a more appropriate offset because we authorized only $60 million in the farm bill, $15 million in each of the 4 fiscal years for the IT system at the Risk Management Agency, and those systems were only updated--the last time was 15 years ago.

This would remove nearly $20 million from the original $60 million authorized in the farm bill, removing about a third of the money allocated for computer upgrades.

And so we have an opportunity, I hope, when the Senate passes similar legislation to sit down and see if we can't agree upon a different way of paying for this needed correction.

Without sufficient funding, the Risk Management Agency will be forced to limit future product approvals, enhancements, and expansions, and I believe that will adversely affect farmers and ranchers. RMA must be able to interface with 17 insurance companies that deliver Federal crop insurance covering more than 1.1 million policies and $89 billion in liability.

Upgrades are not only needed to allow services to continue but are also necessary to implement current technology to improve program integrity and data security and the protection of personally identifiable information.

Again, I raise the concern and hope that as this bill works its way through the process, that we can find a more satisfactory offset than the information technology, the RMA IT account, at the Department of Agriculture.

I am here to support this legislation. I appreciate the fix that it provides. We need to figure out a permanent solution, and we need to figure out a different way of paying for it. I look forward to continuing to working in the process to see that those two things occur.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6849, which will prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture from denying farm program benefits to farmers who have several small plots of land that are eligible for commodity program payments.

H.R. 6849 is a bipartisan bill that was introduced by my House Agriculture Committee colleagues, Representatives Bob Etheridge and Jerry Moran, the Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Subcommittee. An amended version of the bill passed the Committee by voice vote last week.

On June 30 of this year, about a month after Congress overrode the President's veto on the Farm Bill, the US Department of Agriculture published a notice stating their intent to ``not approve requests for farm combination reconstitutions of farms having base acres of 10 acres or less.''

The Department's notice is a substantial change from what was in place prior to the 2008 Farm Bill and runs contrary to what was intended by House and Senate conferees who wrote the provision. The manager's report states that small base acreages could be aggregated to allow for farm program eligibility if the sum of the acres is over 10.

The USDA's decision to eliminate such a large number of base acres could affect hundreds of thousands of producers all across this country.

Their selective interpretation of the Farm Bill is doing no favors for America's farmers and ranchers, who are rightly concerned that the Department is ignoring the Congress's clearly stated intent.

Madam Speaker, in recognition of the difficulties in paying for this fix over a ten year period, the Committee amended the bill to temporarily solve this problem by suspending the 10 base acre provision for two years. This temporary, less expensive solution is fully offset in order to meet Congressional Paygo requirements.

With passage of this bill today, Madam Speaker, it is my hope that we can make clear to farm country that the Farm Bill will be implemented as Congress intended.

I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 6849.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I support H.R. 6849 which voids the payment prohibition to farmers who have fewer than 10 acres of working farmland for the 2008 and 2009 crop years.

This measure protects farmers who would be denied benefits because it addresses a specific provision in the farm bill that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has misinterpreted. The intent of that original provision was to stop gardeners in New York City from getting program payments. It was never intended to prevent bonafide farmers from participating in commodity programs.

The farm bill provision and the accompanying report encourage the Secretary of Agriculture to allow farmers to aggregate base acres from multiple working farms to qualify for those program benefits.

However, the USDA has decided to interpret the language of that provision differently and prohibit aggregation. It is unfortunate that we are forced to pass further legislation to make sure this intent cannot be misconstrued. However, if we do not take action, the result will be damaging to thousands of farmers who depend on program payments.

I believe it is necessary that we pass this bill in order to protect those thousands of farmers who are being adversely affected by the USDA's interpretation of a specific provision in the farm bill. This is a growing concern throughout the country. Specifically, in my State of Virginia, the Virginia Farm Bureau contacted me directly because it was worried about the negative impact this interpretation would have on the livelihood of its producers.

I support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it as well.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, at this time it is my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the ranking member of the Commodity Subcommittee, such time as he may consume.

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, I would urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and yield back.

Madam Speaker, I submit for printing in the Congressional Record the following exchange of letters between the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Ways and Means with regards to H.R. 6849.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Ways and Means,

Washington, DC, September 27, 2008.

Hon. Collin Peterson,

Chairman, Committee on Agriculture,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Peterson: I am writing regarding H.R. 6849,

which may be considered on the floor today, and which

includes amendments to section 901 of the Trade Act of 1974

(19 U.S.C. 2497(a)). As you know, the Committee on Ways and

Means has jurisdiction over legislation amending the Trade

Act of 1974, and thus, these amendments fall within the

jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means.

However, in order to expedite this bill for floor

consideration, the Committee will forgo action. This is being

done with the understanding that it does not in any way

prejudice the Committee with respect to the appointment of

conferees or its jurisdictional prerogatives on this bill or

similar legislation in the future.

I would appreciate your response to this letter, confirming

this understanding with respect to H.R. 6849, and would ask

that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be

included in the Record.

Sincerely,

Charles B. Rangel,

Chairman.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Agriculture,

Washington, DC, September 27, 2008.

Hon. Charles B. Rangel,

Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, Longworth House Office

Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Rangel: Thank you for your letter regarding

the Committee on Ways and Means' jurisdictional interest in