Senate lawmakers will kick off the 2012 farm bill process Wednesday with a hearing on rural energy and economic programs.

The hearing in the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee is the first of a series of four farm bill hearings announced by Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) earlier this month. It will start what is likely to be a months-long reauthorization process that few experts expect will be completed by the end of the year.

Farm-state lawmakers Wednesday will hear from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, rural assistance groups and energy advocates. Included on the witness list is Steve Flick, president and chairman of the Show Me Energy Cooperative in Missouri, which has developed a facility to convert biomass into pellets of fuel for home heating.

Advocates fighting to keep full funding for the farm bill's energy provisions have a tough road ahead of them. Eight of the programs in the energy title lack mandatory funding beyond 2012, meaning that money set aside for them will have to be offset elsewhere in the bill.

The energy title of the farm bill includes the popular Rural Energy for America Program, which helps farmers and rural businesses make energy efficiency programs. It also includes the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which provides funding for farmers who plant feedstocks for biofuels refineries.

Both programs were cut in the fiscal 2012 appropriations bill, passed by Congress and signed into law last fall. Lawmakers capped the biofuels program at $17 million, down from a current cap of $112 million, and reduced REAP by 64 percent from its authorization in the farm bill.

Agriculture leaders, including Stabenow and Senate committee ranking member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), continued the energy title but significantly reduced funding in a proposal submitted in the fall to the congressional supercommittee on deficit reduction. That proposal was scrapped when the supercommittee failed to come to an agreement.

In December, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the House Agriculture Committee's ranking member, told reporters that he had lost faith in the energy programs' success.

But Andy Olsen, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said Friday that "we are very hopeful" that Congress will fully support energy in the farm bill.

"We're expecting a positive reception" at Wednesday's hearing, he said. "These programs have always enjoyed bipartisan support."

But he acknowledged that it has "been a rough ride."

"Here's the odd thing about energy and conservation programs," he said. "Poll after poll shows that those are the most popular parts of the farm bill with the American people. Unfortunately, when you look at the 2012 farm bill, they are the programs that are most threatened by the political process in Washington, D.C."

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 9:30 a.m. in G50 Dirksen.

Witnesses: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; Mathias McCauley, director of regional planning and community development at the Northwest Michigan Council of Governments; Florine Raitano, immediate past president of the Rural Community Assistance Corp.; Mark Rembert, executive director at Energy Clinton County, Ohio; Charles Fluharty, president and CEO of the Rural Policy Research Institute; Steve Flick, chairman of the board at Show Me Energy Cooperative; Lee Edwards, president and CEO of Virent Inc.; Bennie Hutchins, energy program coordinator at Ag Energy Resources LLC; and William Greving, a sorghum farmer from Prairie View, Kan.