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Want to Know How You Can Help? Be an ADVOCATE. Advocates Alert 12/10/2007: Farm Bill Votes Need Your Help! The Senate is now taking up the Farm Bill, and key amendments will be voted on as early as tomorrow! Call to Action: Please call your Senators and ask them to support adding more funds to the Farmland Protection Program (FPP) and Grassland Reserve Program (GRP), to protect valuable farm and range land from being lost to development. Two amendments that will be offered promise increases funding for FPP and GRP. Each involves taking money from other farm programs -- one by limiting subsidy payments, and one by curtailing subsidies to providers of crop insurance. These may be controversial in some farming communities. But if they aren't, we hope you will ask both of your Senators to support these amendments: 1. The Dorgan-Grassley amendment offered by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), will limit the maximum farm program payments any individual can get to no more than $250,000. That frees up funds to be added to a number of programs, including adding nearly $100 million to FPP and GRP. 2. The Brown-Sununu amendment offered by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and John Sununu (R-NH), will cut the subsidy given to companies that offer crop insurance to farmers. Because crop prices have risen, the insurers are selling more dollars of insurance, but the same number of policies. Under the existing law, they would get twice as much money for selling the same number of policies. The savings from this amendment would go to a variety of programs, including $100 million to FPP and $50 million to GRP. Please ask your Senators to support these two amendments because conserving working farm and ranchlands and open grasslands is important to your community and state. Be sure to tell your Senator about your land trust and its commitment to these goals. If you are hoping to get an FPP or GRP grant (both programs give grants to land trusts to purchase conservation easements), these amendments will help ensure that adequate funding is there for your projects! The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121, and they can connect you to any Senate office. Once online with your Senator's office, ask to speak to their natural resources or agriculture aide. Thank you for helping! Update on Tax Incentive for Conservation Easements The Senate farm bill includes the tax provisions passed by the Finance Committee, making the 2006 conservation easement tax incentive permanent*. It now appears that the Senate will pass its farm bill this week or next, and that the bill will include the easement incentive. But before it becomes law, there will have to be a House-Senate conference committee, and that would probably not be finished before the end of the year. But there is huge pressure to finish it before the end of February. The most likely scenario, if there is a final farm bill vote in February, is that it would include tax provisions that would be retroactive to January 1. The House passed a one-year extension of the conservation easement incentive in November, as part of a much bigger bill to extend a variety of expiring tax laws and prevent more people from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. The Senate took this bill, and, because of complicated tax politics that have nothing to do with the conservation easement provision, removed the one-year extensions from the bill before sending it back to the House. A one year extension now seems to lack a clear path to passage before the end of the year. The good news is that the extensions still have to be done, and probably will be -- but it now may be in 2008. If they are, they would be retroactive to January 1. Russell Shay For the latest updates on the NEW TAX INCENTIVE go to www.lta.org/publicpolicy ! * The Senate farm bill also includes a provision authorizing $1.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds for purchase of forest lands, and a provision creating tax credits for protection of endangered and threatened species habitats on private lands. Sign up to be a Land Trust ADVOCATE at: http://www.lta.org/publicpolicy/advocates.htm
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