Lucas believes if the Senate can pass some form of the Farm Bill by Nov. 16 before legislators go home for the Thanksgiving break, there may be an opportunity to get the bill finished by the end of the year. If not, an extension of the 2002 Farm Bill may be necessary or the bill will revert back to the original 1949 Farm Bill, he said, and a lot has changed in 58 years.

“If (we) extend in mass by another year, most (farmers) will say ‘good’ because it was working, successful and popular,” Lucas said.

But Tim Bartram worries that if the Farm Bill is not extended it may affect those who need advance payments or need to renew bank loans that may run out.

“We already have a crop in the ground and we don’t know what rules we’re playing under,” said Bartram, a wheat farmer and rancher near Guthrie and the executive director of the Enid-based Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association.

The largest portion of the Farm Bill deals with feeding programs.

Rodney Bivens, executive director of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, wants action taken on the new bill so that more food can go toward feeding the hungry in the state. There is a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that provides commodities to Oklahomans, but since commodity prices are so high the amount of food provided to communities has decreased, he said. The decline is about 1.4 million pounds statewide since the fiscal year began in July.

The new bill may provide double the amount of commodities Oklahoma now receives.

Clay Pope, a former state lawmaker and now executive director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts, also worries about the fate of some of the state’s conservation programs if the bill is not reauthorized or extended.

A program like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program — a cost-share program to work on farmland to look at areas such as nutrient management, soil conservation and improvements to wildlife — is a program he does not want to disappear. The same applies to the Conservation Reserve Program to retire land and the Farmland Protection program to make sure agriculture land doesn’t become subdivision land.

“Every week that passes (without a new Farm Bill) there is more concern on the countryside,” Pope said.

Fresh from the

Farm — Bill

Lucas had predicted in February that the new Farm Bill probably would include less money to commodity programs and more money for conservation efforts and feeding programs.

Commodity programs are designed to keep farmers of products such as wheat, corn, cotton, rice and sugar, in business. Most crops grown in Oklahoma fall under that umbrella.