Photo by Travis Pratt Peter C. Witmer, executive assistant to Pennsylvania’s agriculture secretary, spoke recently at the Dairy Industry Overnight and Advisory Council meeting in Frederick. The council is examining ways to maintain a thriving dairy industry in Maryland.

Closer to home, positions differ also.

Agriculture is Maryland's largest industry. The state's 12,100 farms cover more than two million acres and produce $1.3 billion of agricultural products.

While the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is elated that the House-passed bill includes $212.5 million in conservation funding specifically dedicated to protecting Chesapeake Bay waterways, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has one concern.

"The Farm Bill is a good bill, but it has one fatal flaw inserted at the last moment by the Democratic leadership," Bartlett said.

Bartlett said a provision that would raise taxes on international companies that "insource" jobs to the U.S. would result in a tax hike on more than 101,100 Maryland workers. But he's hopeful that the Senate version of the bill would strip away the provision.

The Senate will take up the bill in early September when the senators return from a five-week summer recess.

Chuck Fry is Maryland Farm Bureau vice president and a Tuscarora dairy farmer.

Fry said he's pleased with the bill overall but he wants to keep assistance for commodity programs intact because Maryland's farmers produce a lot of specialty crop.

"I'm OK with how it looks today but I don't know how it will look after the Senate gets done with it," he said.

Fry also wondered how the Chesapeake Bay Foundation got its $212 million for waterway cleanup.

He's all for conservation, Fry said, but too often farmers are required to implement conservation programs that call for expensive capital expenditure. Mandated farm conservation projects should be backed up with funding.

"The Chesapeake Bay is America's largest estuary and we have an obligation to preserve and protect it for future generations," U.S. Senator Ben Cardin said, in recent testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Cardin urged the committee to include "important conservation programs that will give farmers the resources they need to be profitable while at the same time helping to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay." He said much of the excess nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment that ends up in the Bay starts on the farm.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed encompasses part of six states -- Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia and all of the District of Columbia. The watershed is home to more than 16.6 million people and more than 85,000 farms.

National voices

Some groups, like the National Family Farm Coalition, described the House version of the bill as "a continuation of a failed policy that has left us with fewer family farmers and more consolidation of our food supply into a handful of companies' hands."

The National Family Farm Coalition, founded in 1986, describes itself as a voice for grassroots groups on farm, food, trade and rural economic issues to ensure fair prices for family farmers, safe and healthy food, and vibrant, environmentally sound rural communities.

Cato Institute scholars Chris Edwards and Sallie James believe that farm subsidies should be ended. They said federal lawmakers are ducking a real opportunity to wean farmers off taxpayers' money.

Frederick County's farmers received about $44.75 million in federal government aid from 1995 to 2004.

To farm subsidy critics, Fry said farmers are subsidizing everyone who goes to the grocery store.

"You can't have it both ways. If you want Chinese food, go ahead. I'm all for open market but the price of people's food will go up" without subsidies, Fry said. "The world needs food. They come to us for food."

Fry said the United States is experiencing a trade deficit with other countries.

"A big country like this and we're importing food," he said.

Fry said many people don't know that most of the billions in the omnibus farm bill do not end up with the farmer.

The five-year appropriation is divvied up among farm commodity price and income support, conservation, trade, research, nutrition, rural development, forestry and energy programs.

"If you look at how it's broken up, about 12 to 14 percent goes to the farmer. A lot of it goes to welfare programs and food stamps," Fry said.

Gareth Harshman, Frederick County Farm Bureau president, agreed that the bulk of the money goes to food consumption, such as food stamps.

"But one thing that concerns me personally is that more and more food is being imported," Harshman said. "There are still dairy products coming into the country and I wish I had the answer as to why."

Harshman said the American consumer is better protected eating foods produced in the United States. Foreign producers do not adhere to the stringent quality standards that American farmers are required to follow, he said.

Jim Greenwood, president and chief executive officer of the Biotechnology Industry Organization said the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) contains "forward-looking proposals that can help America reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen its dependence on foreign oil by promoting renewable energy, biobased products, and sustainable new sources of biomass."

But Bread for The World, a Washington-based nationwide Christian movement that seeks justice for the world's hungry people by lobbying the nation's decision makers, describes the proposed bill as "patently unfair."

"The top 16 percent of producers receive two-thirds of farm commodity payments. Those families have an average net worth of $1.8 million," according to Bread for The World.

Richard R. Oswald of Langdon, Mo., fifth-generation farmer, described the bill as a missed chance to slow the decline of the family farm.

Huge payouts to large farms will never help rural communities because large farms contribute little to local economies, Oswald said.

"What farmers want is the comforting knowledge that when bad luck, bad weather or bad markets come (and they always do), there will be a mechanism, an insurance policy, to soften the blow," Oswald said.

Fry and Harshman agree.