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Ag doing its part to reduce the deficit

Kansas State University Agricultural Economist Barry Flinchbaugh says agriculture is contributing to deficit reduction by shouldering decreases in federal commodity program spending.

The venerable ag and political pundit says the Deficit Reduction Commission calls for a 10 percent cut in farm spending in the 2012 farm bill, which he says agriculture can live with.

“The point that needs to be made is that in the year 2000 we spent $32 billion on commodity programs; we’re now down to roughly $10 billion,” Flinchbaugh told Brownfield, during a recent interview. “If that happened across the board in the U.S. government we would be talking about what to do with our surplus.”

Flinchbaugh says he expects to see more attempts at reducing federal farm spending, but he says the cuts can likely be kept to a minimum.

He concludes, however, that agriculture will have to settle for the current baseline of $10 billion to $12 billion available for the farm bill. “We certainly won’t do any better than that.”

AUDIO: Barry Flinchbaugh (2 min. MP3)