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Farmers hope five-year farm bill might put breaks on fiscal cliff

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KBIA
Farmers in southeast Missouri are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding in 2011.

Missouri Farm Bureau delegates are gathering at the Lake of the Ozarks this week to set a lobbying agenda for the coming year.

Farmers hope the looming fiscal cliff will push congress to pass a five year farm bill. 
Blake Hurst is president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, and he sounds kind of exhausted when talking about a farm bill that’s stalled out  in the House Agriculture committee. 
He says if lawmakers really want to slam the brakes before rolling off fiscal cliff, the farm bill is a pretty good place to start.
“Both the House and the Senate version save somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion," Hurst says. "Seems to me that it would make a lot of sense to include the Farm Bill in that fiscal cliff negotiation because it saves money.”
Hurst says there needs to be clear farm policy before putting next summer’s crop in the ground.
The farm bill is a sprawling piece of legislation that includes five year funding levels for everything from nutrition assistance programs to federal crop insurance.

Janet Saidi is a producer and professor at KBIA and the Missouri School of Journalism.
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