Bill Huffman
Director - Governmental Affairs

October 24, 2008

We are pleased to announce that the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative Annual Meeting will be held on Friday, November 21st at the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. and the business session will get underway at 10:00 a.m. We ask that FRC members mark this on their calendars. We look forward to another large turnout and another successful meeting.

USDA News

There were reports this week that USDA Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner will become the next CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives (NCFC) when the Bush Administration leaves office in January. No formal announcement has been made by NCFC. A USDA spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the rumor. If true, Conner would replace former CEO Jean-Mari Peltier, a native of California, who left recently to become the head of the National Grape and Wine Initiative in California.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said this week that he has made a decision to use the 2007 and 2008 crop years as the base for the new Average Crop Revenue Program (ACRE) that was established in the 2008 Farm Bill. The ACRE program is a voluntary economic safety net program growers can sign up to participate in should they chose to give up part of the direct payment and their counter-cyclical payment under the existing law. The ACRE program has been receiving a great deal of study and comment by various university economists, many of whom caution growers to learn as much as they can about the program before they elect to enroll in 2009.  Schafer’s decision to recommend the 2007-2008 crop years as the base for determining the payment levels must be approved by the Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It is expected to cost the government more to use the much higher prices of the 2007-2008 crop years than the 2006-2007 crop years when commodity prices were much lower. We predict OMB will direct Secretary Schafer to use the 2006-2007 crop years, saving the government a considerable sum of money.

Bush Calls for Trade Agreement Approval

President George Bush continues to call for Congress to approve stalled free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The President is asking the House and Senate leadership to take up these trade agreements when members of Congress return in November for a lame-duck session. In his latest appeal, Mr. Bush linked liberalized trade with the three nations to efforts to resolve the global financial crisis. It is doubtful that Congress will take up the three trade agreements, focusing its effort instead on the economy and the possibility of another stimulus package.

World Trade Organization (WTO) trade officials and ambassadors to the WTO are still trying to reach an agreement on the DOHA round of trade talks before the end of this year.  The problem continues to be tariffs and subsidies in agriculture. We do not expect any resolution to agriculture tariffs and subsidies without further reductions in U.S. farm subsidies.

Harvest Nearly Complete

FRC-Stegeman received its last load of green rice this morning completing a good harvest in the upper valley area.  There are three growers still harvesting and delivering to FRC-West Sacramento.  We expect they will be done within the next 7-10 days.