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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Farm Bill talks still stuck in North-South divide

"With time running out, House and Senate farm-bill leaders were still acres apart Wednesday night after an exchange of offers that only highlighted their competing visions of how to reshape commodity subsidies," with a distinct North-South divide, veteran D.C. agriculture-policy reporter David Rogers writes for Politico.

Senate negotiators have agreed to include rice, peanuts and wheat in a new income-insurance program that would take the place of direct payments, but the Senate's offer, which "covers 75 percent of what had been the difference between the competing baselines for these three crops," is not enough for the House, Rogers reports.

From there, it gets more complicated, but Rogers is the best at explaining it. He concludes, "without a deal soon — the only choice will be no Farm Bill, and starting all over again in a new Congress." To read his story, click here.

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