[00:02.320]this is the Agriculture Report.
[00:05.620]President Barack Obama signed a new Farm Bill
[00:09.130]into law this month.
[00:10.890]Under the legislation,
[00:12.490]the federal government will no longer
[00:15.090]guarantee automatic payments to farmers.
[00:18.540]Critics say the law replaces the old payment system
[00:23.110]with new assistance
[00:25.160]that may violate international trade rules.
[00:28.720]The law also includes changes in how the United States
[00:33.320]helps hungry people around the world.
[00:34.270]From VOA Learning English,
[00:36.390]The new Farm Bill ended $5 billion a year
[00:40.900]in automatic payments to farmers.
[00:43.820]The president said the law sends a message to people
[00:47.230]who have abused the system.
[00:49.990]"This bill helps to clamp down on loopholes
[00:52.500]that allowed people to receive benefits year after year
[00:54.960]whether they were planting crops or not.
[00:57.120]And it saves taxpayers hard-earned dollars
[01:00.770]by making sure that we only support farmers
[01:03.730]when disaster strikes or prices drop," the president said.
[01:06.080]The new legislation expands programs
[01:09.180]that protect farmers from bad weather or low crop prices.
[01:14.650]It raises the lowest price growers will be paid for some crops.
[01:20.300]And it offers a taxpayer-supported insurance program to farmers,
[01:26.220]the program guarantees that their wages
[01:29.520]do not drop much from year to year.
[01:32.820]Dan Sumner is an economist with the University of California, Davis.
[01:38.700]He told VOA on Skype that the new Farm Bill could cause problems.
[01:44.870]"That's the kind of assurances that the U.S. government
[01:48.870]is willing to provide that most farmers in the world,
[01:51.590]in fact, don't have access to," he said.
[01:53.040]He adds that with the help of the government,
[01:56.220]American farmers can produce and export more crops,
[02:00.730]but he warns that could hurt crop prices.
[02:04.480]"That drives down world prices and it's a little tougher
[02:08.500]for farmers in developing countries to compete with that," Sumner said.
[02:11.210]U.S. government subsidies pushed down
[02:13.720]world cotton prices in the early 2000s,
[02:17.870]the United States lost an international trade dispute over those payments.
[02:23.730]Dan Sumner says the new Farm Bill could re-open that dispute.
[02:28.890]But groups representing growers say
[02:32.450]trade rules do let governments
[02:35.060]pay a limited amount of subsidies to farmers.
[02:38.160]Dale Moore is the chief of policy at one of those groups
[02:43.080]- the American Farm Bureau Federation.
[02:46.000]"We're pretty confident that it would take an extremely bad situation
[02:51.200]for us to even come close to violating those particular limits,
[02:54.910]something the United States hasn't come close to in years," said Dale Moore.
[02:58.170]Other changes in the Bill should help food aid
[03:01.970]get to more needy people around the world.
[03:05.080]Aid groups will be able to spend more of the assistance they receive
[03:10.530]to buy food from markets near where it will be used,
[03:15.050]earlier rules forced aid groups to buy food from American farmers.
[03:20.810]Eric Munoz works for the aid group Oxfam America.
[03:25.410]"Not only will that save money,
[03:27.420]but it will help reach people faster.
[03:29.970]The actual program of buying locally is a much quicker response
[03:34.790]than buying food from the United States and shipping it," said Eric Munoz.
[03:36.740]He told VOA on Skype that with the same amount of money,
[03:41.200]help can now reach more hungry people.
[03:44.750]And that's the Agriculture Report.