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American Farm Bureau Federation President Discusses Ag Issues

The 68^th Annual National Association of Farm Broadcasting Convention is being held in Kansas City, Mo., this week gathering the nation's farm broadcasters as well as leaders of agricultural industry, commodity groups, farmer and rancher organizations, marketing groups, and manufacturers.  A topic that is receiving a lion's share of attention is the current situation with the Farm Bill as the leaders of the House and Senate Agricultural Committees continue to struggle to come to an agreement that can be sent to the Super Committee. Farm Progress's Jason Vance had the opportunity to sit down with American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman and discuss the Farm Bill as well as several other important agricultural issues.

On the topic of the Farm Bill, Stallman says this has been an extremely unusual process due to the situation with the deficit reduction Super Committee process that Congress set up. He says he understands why the attempt it being made to write the Farm Bill within the Super Committee.

"That wraps it into the product that the Super Committee will put out to the House and the Senate for an up or down vote," Stallman said. "In the sense that that avoids all of the amendments that could occur and the dismantling of any proposal, that's a good thing. The bad thing is it's not really a normal process where you have time to vet policy and really do analysis and come to a conclusion about what the best policy positions would be."  

Stallman discussed what might happen to the Farm Bill, should the Super Committee fail to act by Nov. 23. He also discussed the waves of regulations that have been proposed recently that would unduly burden agriculture and also talked about the passage of the long overdue Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama.

To listen to the complete conversation, use the audio player on this page.