By Billy Davis

Farmers from Panola County and surrounding communities heard reassurance from a Mississippi congressman that he is urging passage of an emergency farm aid bill in the U.S. House.

“The bill is still a possibility before the year is gone,” Rep. Travis Childers said of H.R. 4177, the Agriculture Disaster Assistance Act.

Childers co-authored the farm relief bill along with Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas.

Passage by the end of the year is questionable, however, since the legislation is presently in two House committees.

The farm bill was introduced following crop losses due to record-breaking rainfall in Mississippi and other Southern states. Seventy-nine of 82 Mississippi counties reported significant losses.

A Mississippi State report found that growers in Mississippi stand to lose about $444 million in revenue in 2009, with 64 percent of sweet potatoes, 50 percent of corn, and 44 percent of soybeans lost by year’s end.

Childers held the public forum Monday in a conference room at the Batesville Civic Center, where a standing-room-only crowd listened to the congressman and Michael Scuse, deputy undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Scuse, who farms in his home state of Delaware, told the gathering that crops had been left in wet fields across the South and Midwest. Scuse said his family had 100 acres of soybeans stranded in the field.

Childers and Scuse, when they fielded questions, heard several complaints that a USDA relief program is moving too slowly to help Mississippi farmers.

Farmers singled out – and complained about – the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program, known as SURE. It was included in part of a larger farm bill passed in 2008 to provide permanent disaster relief.

“It does not provide adequate relief and it’s not timely,” said Sledge Taylor of Como, who was the first to speak from the audience.  

The relief program is “conceptually sound but it doesn’t work,” said Chad Gray, a Grenada County rancher.

A banker, who said he traveled to the forum from Rolling Fork, told Childers that some farmers are still waiting for USDA forms to report their 2008 crop losses.

Those complaints mirror a report from U.S. Senator Thad Cochran. The USDA is still signing up farmers for 2008 crop losses, and SURE payments for 2009 crop losses aren’t expected to be available until 2011, Cochran said in a statement.

In the Senate, Cochran is co-sponsoring a companion farm relief bill along with Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln.

Childers, responding to the complaints, said the slow pace of the SURE payments illustrates the urgency of passing the current House bill. He also said the first SURE payments will come in the fall of 2010.

“Some of you, I know, can’t wait until next fall,” the congressman said.