politics

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration proposed Wednesday to end subsidies for thousands of the country's wealthiest farmers.

Any farmer whose adjusted gross income is more than $200,000 a year would be ineligible for commodity payments under President Bush's proposal for the 2007 farm bill. That's substantially lower than the current limit of $2.5 million and would prevent 72,000 farmers who now receive subsidies from getting them, officials estimated. That's 3.6 percent of the nation's farmers, but federal officials couldn't say how many in each state would be affected.

Overall, the proposal would result in spending $10 billion less than the 2002 farm bill and make more money available to conservation and energy programs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"We ... took a reform-minded and fiscally responsible approach to making farm policy more equitable, predictable and protected from challenge," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

Most farm subsidies go to producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton. Corn and soybeans are Minnesota's leading crops.

The new income cap would affect "those with larger outside incomes and what you would call a significantly large farming operation," said Gene Hugoson, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. "This is talking about an income that's $200,000 still after all the expenses have been subtracted."

It's unclear how many farmers in Minnesota would be affected should the proposal pass muster with lawmakers, but farm groups suggested the number would be high.

The plan received mixed reviews.

Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, called the proposal a "flag of reform."This is not your grandfather's farm bill," he said. "I know there are a lot of folks in the subsidy lobby that would have liked it to have been more of the same."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who sits on the Senate agriculture committee, expressed general disappointment, saying the proposal "fails to include a permanent disaster assistance program and that is unacceptable."

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who also sits on the committee, said there are "deep cuts and harmful changes to every commodity under the Farm Bill safety net, as well as to the Federal Crop Insurance Program, that would hurt Minnesota's rural communities."

Brady Averill is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.

Brady Averill • baverill@startribune.com