Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) late last night announced she was postponing today's highly anticipated markup on the farm bill, a massive five-year piece of legislation that determines farmland conservation programs, commodity subsidies and nutrition assistance.

Stabenow did not give a specific reason for the delay; earlier in the day, the senator said she was going full steam ahead on the bill. A statement from the committee said a new markup would be announced shortly.

"The Agriculture Committee has made significant progress and have bipartisan agreement on the bulk of the farm bill," Stabenow said in the statement. "We are committed to continuing to work together in a bipartisan way as we come to agreement on a few outstanding issues. This is a bill that impacts 16 million jobs and a huge sector of America's economy, and it is important that we move prudently to create the best possible product."

Agriculture Committee members have filed some 120 amendments to the bill, but it is still unclear which ones will get a vote. Overall, the 900-page legislation Stabenow and committee ranking member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) would save $26.4 billion over the next decade, according to numbers released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

In general, the bill would eliminate direct payments and other subsidies for farmers, strengthen crop insurance and provide reforms in nutrition assistance. Among its provisions, the bill would consolidate the bill's 23 conservation programs into 13, a similar proposal to one crafted by congressional agriculture leaders last fall for the failed supercommittee process.

Stabenow said yesterday she was confident she had support for proposed changes to the conservation title. She and Roberts have proposed cutting more than $6 billion from conservation over the next 10 years by consolidating programs.

"We have very strong support for the conservation title," Stabenow said. "That's one of the areas I'm most proud of in terms of not only reform but strengthening conservation."

Despite the cuts to the programs, the bill also has support from conservation groups, which say the senators did the best they could with what they were given.

"We think that the conservation title did pretty well, all things considered," said Steve Kline, director of the Center for Agricultural Lands at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. "We certainly applaud Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts on a job well done given the circumstances. The programs, the functions we thought were really quite good going into this farm bill, have been maintained."

The changes would consolidate the bill's easement programs for wetlands and grasslands under one larger program, the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. The program would offer permanent easements through partnerships at the local level, much like current farm bill wetlands and grasslands programs do.

Stabenow and Roberts have also proposed grouping all of the bill's regional initiatives, such as those in the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes, under a Regional Conservation Partnership Program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and individual states would determine which projects get funded under a competitive process.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program, a cost-share program that helps farmers make environmental improvements on their lands, would remain largely intact and engulf a smaller program that focuses on wildlife habitats.

On Monday, Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), a former Agriculture secretary, said that consolidation of the 23 programs was a needed improvement.

"It's too complicated. When I was secretary, we tried to consolidate some and streamline and simplify, and it really needs to be done," he said. Having complex programs "just burns up valuable resources."

Other big programs

The other two large elements in the proposed bill are the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Conservation Reserve Program, both mainstays of the current farm bill conservation title.

The senators have proposed to decrease the acreage in the Conservation Reserve Program, though, to coincide with a rash of farmers leaving it to take advantage of high crop prices. The program pays farmers to idle their land for conservation reasons; under the Stabenow-Roberts proposal, it would be reduced from 32 million acres to 25 million by 2017.

In all, conservation would be cut by $1.8 billion over the life of the five-year farm bill, and by $6.4 billion over the next 10 years, according to Monday's Congressional Budget Office report.

Gene Schmidt, president of the National Association of Conservation Districts, praised the proposal, saying it would bring about more flexibility to the conservation programs. But he warned that $6 billion in cuts was about all the programs could manage.

"If we go below that $6 billion cut we've already taken, it's really going to hamper the ability for us to get conservation to maintain the momentum we've been able to make," Schmidt said.

Among the amendments filed to the bill by Senate Agriculture Committee members are several that would make changes to conservation programs, but none of them would drastically alter the framework proposed by the agriculture leaders.

An amendment filed by Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) would further streamline conservation by requiring USDA to create a single application for all its conservation programs. Lugar has also filed an amendment that would allow early opt-out from the Conservation Reserve Program and one that would limit the number of acres in the Conservation Stewardship Program to 100 million.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has filed a couple of amendments that would strengthen grassland protections in the bill. One would increase the funding for the voluntary public access program, a program much loved by sportsmen that allows private landowners to open their property up for hunting, from $30 million to $50 million.

Conservation groups said they were particularly encouraged by an amendment filed by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and co-sponsored by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Johanns. The amendment would limit crop insurance benefits and subsidy premiums to crops grown on land that has been converted from native grassland.

It would, for example, reduce premium subsidies for crop insurance by 50 percent for the first four years of crop production on converted native grassland.

In the 2008 farm bill reauthorization, Thune was part of an effort to include a full "sodsaver" provision, as it is known, that would have excluded such land from all crop insurance benefits for the first few years of planting. The provision passed the House and Senate but was stricken from the bill during conference.

"We think that given the cuts to conservation and increases in crop prices and strengthening of crop insurance that sodsaver is needed now more than ever," said Aviva Glaser, the National Wildlife Federation's agriculture policy coordinator. "This is a great way to help protect grasslands, and we're very supportive of that provision and thankful of Senator Thune."

Other amendments filed with the Senate agriculture committee include:

• An amendment by Johanns that would increase set-asides in conservation programs for veteran farmers and ranchers.

• An amendment by Brown and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) that would limit certain farm subsidy payments to farmers earning more than $500,000 in adjusted gross income. Another amendment by Brown would enable USDA's Risk Management Program to offer a pilot crop insurance program for specialty crops and livestock.

• An amendment by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) that would require that crop insurance be provided to producers of organic crops under the same conditions it is provided to commodity crops. Currently, organic farmers must pay a 5 percent surcharge for crop insurance. Another Casey amendment would allow greater inclusion of wood products in the bio-based markets program.

• An amendment by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) that would specify that any bushel of corn sold to an ethanol plant is not eligible for any other benefits.

• An amendment by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) that would provide $800 million in mandatory funding for farm bill energy programs (E&E Daily, April 24). Co-sponsors are Nelson, Bennet, Brown, Thune, Casey and Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.).

• An amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would put a payment limit on marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments.

• An amendment by Hoeven that would statutorily allow USDA to use money from the Rural Energy for America Program to install blender pumps at gas stations.

• An amendment by Lugar and Bennet that would establish a Rural Energy Savings Program, a new loan program through the Rural Utilities Service to fund electric infrastructure (E&E Daily, March 22).