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Some farmers signaled a willingness to compromise to save the U.S. money. They suggested individual farmers should pick which safety net program they want from the federal government but not take assistance from multiple programs. Money saved under that plan could be used to expand agriculture insurance and price protection for all farmers, said Craig Lang, who leads the Iowa Farm Bureau and helped draft the proposal. Farmers with better insurance would be protected from problems that hit their wallets but are beyond their control, such as disease outbreaks and drought. "It protects the assets so you can come back the next year and keep producing either that meat, milk, eggs or crop, or whatever it is," Lang said. But the proposal was ripped apart by other delegates, especially Southern farmers. They prefer direct payments from the federal government
-- one part of the existing safety net -- and have complained that insurance premiums are too high for the benefits they receive. With that opposition, support for the compromise quickly evaporated, and delegates decided to lobby for direct payments, crop insurance and two other programs designed to protect farmers' bottom line. Wisconsin Farm Bureau President William Bruins, a dairy farmer, worried the lobbying group was asking for too much. "Let's make sure that each and every program that we support in the Farm Bill is important enough that we want to save some dollars for it," he said. "So let's not simply load the Christmas tree up with ornaments and see how many of those programs we can keep alive."
[Associated
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