Unlike past administrations, the Obama White House does not intend to release a set of recommendations for federal farm policy this year, even as lawmakers write the next authorization of the farm bill.

Although administration officials, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, will be called to testify in front of lawmakers at hearings, nowhere will their priorities be presented in a formal document. Yesterday's fiscal 2013 budget proposal, therefore, may end up being one of the few indications of where the president's goals lie when it comes to the nation's agricultural policy.

If that is the case, the administration's priorities for the 2012 farm bill center on eliminating direct payments to farmers, capping the Conservation Reserve Program, streamlining crop insurance and boosting renewable energy.

The budget comes just as this year's farm bill process kicks off with a Senate hearing tomorrow on energy and rural development programs (E&E Daily, Feb. 13).

"I think that the president's budget proposal just starts the conversation," said Jon Doggett, vice president of public policy at the National Corn Growers Association.

During a briefing on the budget yesterday, Vilsack devoted substantial time to the farm bill, praising Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) for working together to come up with a proposal last fall. Some aspects of the Obama budget proposal, such as the elimination of direct payments, stem from that effort, which called for $23 billion in cuts to agriculture over the next decade.

"We're going to continue to work with Congress and continue to provide them technical assistance," Vilsack said, "and provide them with thoughts and ideas that we have about what that next farm bill should do: strong safety net, continued commitment to conservation, understand the importance of trade, putting an emphasis on research and making sure that we continue to build the momentum that we're seeing from the bioeconomy."

But Lucas and Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) were quick to criticize the budget blueprint yesterday, blasting the president's proposal to scale back crop insurance. Roberts said the budget had little hope of passing Congress and criticized the president for attempting to usurp the Agriculture committees by setting farm policy.

"I look forward to working with Chairwoman Stabenow to pass a new farm bill this year," Roberts said. "It is through the committee's careful and open consideration of how to improve our nation's ability to meet critical global demand for food that will decide funding priorities, not through a budget proposal that according to Senate Majority Leader [Harry] Reid will not even be considered in the Senate."

Of all the issues to be tackled in the farm bill, the fiscal 2013 budget proposal most strongly provides an indication about the administration's thoughts on direct payments and the Conservation Reserve Program, said Dale Moore, deputy executive director at the American Farm Bureau Federation.

"Both of those are pretty clear signals to the two largest, as least as far as farmers are concerned, titles" of the farm bill, Moore said.

Obama has proposed capping the CRP program at 30 million acres, down from the current 32 million cap. Farm groups and congressional leaders have called for dropping it even further, to 25 million acres.

Overall, Obama's $154.5 billion agriculture budget would provide nearly $23 billion in discretionary spending, a decrease of 3 percent from enacted 2012 levels.

Steve Kline, director of the Center for Agricultural Lands at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said he found it "troubling" that the administration chose not to include funding for the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program. The two conservation programs currently do not have baseline funding beyond 2012 written into the farm bill.

"We have to keep the programs in good enough shape so that they can continue to function just at the basic level," Kline said. "We can't eviscerate them. We have to have these programs robust enough so we can pick back up when things start to pick up economically."

But not all agriculture experts agree that the budget proposal signals anything about the farm bill.

Ferd Hoefner, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said that it seemed like the administration did not put a lot of thought into the proposal, borrowing heavily from the agriculture leaders' fall proposal.

"Normally the budget proposal on the farm bill year would at least in part show what their farm bill priorities are. So I think in that respect it's pretty lacking," he said. "I would have expected a little bit higher level of thought being given to the process and you know, maybe put out a few ideas especially since $23 billion is going to be cut."

"It shows to me a lack of leadership on the part of the administration and stands out in clear contrast to other areas of the economy where they make a lot of proposals," he added.

In general, agriculture interest groups and Vilsack called for quick resolution to farm bill reauthorization, stressing the need to finish the bill this year. It is widely expected that the 2012 farm bill won't meet that goal, though, leaving even less money for farm programs next year. The budget debate is also expected to be long and tough.

"One would hope that the president's proposal is received and carefully reviewed," said Moore of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "But I also know from having watched this process since the early '80s from here inside the Beltway, the president sends his budget up to Congress and Congress typically in some form or another thanks him politely and then immediately declares that portion of the budget dead on arrival."

This year's farm bill reauthorization has been an unusual one, beginning with a proposal written by congressional agriculture leaders that was scrapped when the supercommittee on deficit reduction failed to come to an agreement.

Also fairly unusual compared to other reauthorizations is the president's choice to not release a farm bill proposal. Last time around, in 2008, then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns held a set of field hearings that resulted in an in-depth set of suggestions for lawmakers.