Congress can’t seem to reach an agreement with regards to the fiscal cliff but the leadership of the agriculture committee said that they have a compromise on the farm bill Sunday. The deal would keep milk prices from increasing to $6 to $8 per gallon.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow announced that in addition to the one-year extension, which has the support of the committee, House Republicans is also considering two other extension bills. One is the one month extension and the other is extension of the dairy policy that expires on January 1.
If the 2008 farm bill is left to expire on Monday, prices paid by the government to farmers would go back to their 1949 levels. Economists warned that the price consumers pay for milk could double. This would include other dairy products such as yogurt, cheese, butter, and ice cream.
Wheat and other commodities could have been affected by the price increase as well. According to Stabenow, if a new Farm Bill is not passed in the next couple of days, Agriculture Committee leaders in both chambers as well as both parties have made a short-term Farm Bill extension that would stop the increase in milk prices as well as curb the damages to the whole agriculture economy of the nation.
Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said that the measure is far from perfect but it is his hope that it will pass the House and Senate and signed by the President by January 1.
