It was plenty cold this morning in St Paul, but that didn’t keep an over-flow crowd from showing up at the Farm Bill Forum at National Pheasant Fest. Provisions in the bill will have a direct affect on how many of the people in the audience manage their land, and on their pocketbooks. They also care about conserving and protecting wildlife habitat, it’s no accident that the two provisions of the Farm Bill expected to be talked about today have to do with conservation, and with policies towards bio-fuels, especially ethanol.

The new Farm Bill has been passed by both the House and Senate, what remains is to get the two versions reconciled and the final bill voted on. Members of the panel, therefore, represented the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the administration. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was in the audience.

The members of the panel held a brief huddle before sitting down, no doubt engaging in the usual veiled threats and hints of blackmail that traditionally accompany this type of event:

The panelists then sat. Dave Nomsen (left), Pheasants Forever VP of government and Chuck Conners (right), Acting Secretary of Agriculture at one table:

Senator Tom Harkin (left), Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Representative Collin Peterson, (right), chair of the House Agriculture Committee at the other:

They then got down to the topic at hand. Everyone gave a few opening remarks, starting with Secretary Conner, who congratulated Pheasants Forever on twenty-five good years, then thanked Rep Peterson, and Senators Harkin and Klobuchar for their work on the bill (assume from here on that everyone started their remarks with a round of congratulations and thank-you’s.) Conner added that he’d worked on five previous farm bills, thought this one could be the best.

Senator Harkin expressed concern that Conservation Reserve Program Land (CRP) was being lost to market demand for corn and wheat. he put in a plug for expanding the Conservation Security Program, changing the rules over CRP to not allow land in the program to expire in five years, and took a shot at the administration for using accounting gimmicks to puff up its numbers on proposed conservation spending.

Collin Peterson stressed that the bill needs to be passed by March 15 in order to avoid current programs expiring, and emphasizing his wish to avoid a Presidential veto. He said that the main disagreement is over amount of spending, with both the Senate and House at higher numbers than the White House. The range is 8.5 to 12 billion or so, a small number in the context of the entire federal budget.

Dave Nomsen the took over as panel moderator. He expressed his belief that the overall Farm Bill was very good, differences were minor, and Congress should get on with passing it.

Chuck Conner then re-iterated that the CRP and CSP programs couldn’t compete with what farmers can make planting on good farm land, that the programs need to more and more be targeted at the right type of land.

There was supposed to be a question and answer period after the Forum discussion, but they ran over-time and cut the questions short. Which turned out to be OK because they spent the last twenty minutes on the topic I would have asked about if I could, whether or not there was going to be money available for more research into alternatives to corn for then production of ethanol.

Turns out the topic was right near the top of their list. Harkin, Peterson, and Conner all talked extensively, and what emerged was the Bill takes a two-pronged approach, with money available for both growers of alternate bio-fuel crops, such as switchgrass, and builders of processing plants. The caveat is that both pieces need to be in place, manufacturer and supplier, before funding becomes available. Plus farmers would be working on CRP land, so the crops would have to be managed for the benefit of wildlife. Collin Peterson emphisized, and Harkin agreed, that more research needs to be done, and that it would be about five years before they expected ethanol to be made from the cellulose of a plant like switch-grass.

They did have time for one question, a reporter from Grand Forks asked if the process of setting up a conference committee and making a deal would take too much time. Everyone expressed their confidence that would not be a problem and that the bill absolutely had to be passed by both the House and Senate no later than March 15th.

All in all, it was an informative session, and good to know that government can still function in a way that gets people involved and keeps them informed as to what’s going on.

A big event today at the National Pheasant Fest in St paul is the Farm Bill Forum, before that started there was a press conference with the Acting Secretary of Agriculture, Chuck Conner. The announcement concerned the approval of 45 projects in the SAFE program, SAFE stands for State Acres For Wildlife Enhancement. Secretary Conners stressed that the program is the result of close work with state and local agencies, the land affected is targeted and selected for its potential as wildlife habitat. The 45 new projects announced today cover 260,000 acres, 23,000 of which are in Minnesota. The Minnesota acres have been selected for their potential as pheasant habitat. The Secretary referred to the new program as an example of the administration’s conservation approach “at its finest”.

It’s not a huge amount of land, but the announcement served to start the day off on a good note, and was well-received by the large crowd that was gathering for the Farm Bill Forum scheduled to take place immediately following the press conference. I took notes throughout the Forum, and should have a summary of what was said posted later this afternoon.

Made it over to the National Pheasant Fest in St Paul this afternoon and spent a couple of hours just wandering through the exhibits and getting a feel for the event. They’re expecting a good crowd, and as you can see, there were already a lot of people here just an hour or so after they opened at 1:00 PM:

Lots of exhibits and displays and seminars on everything from cooking to hunting vacations and wildlife habitat management. Here’s people talking conservation in the habitat and nature area:

There’s also a whole area dedicated to activities for kids, including archery and shooting ranges, a casting practice exhibit, and a how to build your own birdhouse exhibition:

Wildlife art exhibits and exhibitors are abundant, they run the gamut from carved wooden ducks to intricate paintings and even a wildlife sculpture garden:

One of the most popular sections of the Fest is the dog exhibit area, with people and their dogs hanging out, demonstrating their skills, and admiring each other:

The dogs in the second picture are Curly-Coated Retrievers, and both the dogs and their owners were so friendly that I promised I’d put in a plug for them and their organization, the Curly Coated Retriever Club of America.