As a top agriculture state, North Dakota has much at stake as Congress considers a new farm bill, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Monday.

Chairing a hearing in Bismarck, Conrad came looking for advice as he and colleagues craft the bill that will establish federal agriculture policy for the next five years.

The bill, which covers everything from price supports to rural economic development, will replace a 2002 farm bill that expires this fall.

Working off a preliminary proposal from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, Congress is busy adding its own priorities to the measure.

For Conrad, a member of the Agriculture Committee who's charged with drawing up the commodity portion of the bill, those priorities include inreasing the safety net of support payments, promoting renewable energy from biomass and enacting permanent disaster assistance.

He said the renewable energy portion is espcially significant this year because new technology such as cellosic ethanol has brought this portion of agriculture to the forefront.

"That is perhaps the number one opportunity for North Dakota and the nation in this new farm bill," Conrad said.

According to an analysis prepared by House Agriculture Committee staff, the bill in its current form calls for $602 billion of spending, a 22 percent increase from the 2002 bill.

It's especially important that some of that money be used to increase agriculture support payments, Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said in his testimony Monday.

The government determines support payments by setting a minimum price that a farmer should receive and compensating the farmer up to that level if the market price is lower.

But because of inflation, especially in the energy costs that affect everything from gas for the tractor to fertilizer for the crops, these minimum support levels need to be increased, Johnson said.

He also said North Dakota would benefit from adding a permanent disaster aid provision to the farm bill.

This way, farmers could get disaster aid more easily because Congress wouldn't have to pass a separate bill - which is often loaded with pork barrel spending - every time farmers in a disaster area need help, Johnson said.

Representatives from other groups touched by the farm bill used Monday's hearing to outline their own priorities for the legislation.

Jack Reich, vice president of the North Dakota Cattlemen's Association, said his industry would like to see a bill that helps U.S. ranchers compete with their heavily subsidized foreign counterparts while leaving the ranchers in charge of the details of their operations.

Reich, who's also a rancher near Zap, said a much discussed mandatory cattle identification system - using computerized tags and a database - would make more work for ranchers and be bad policy. He also said the bill should also avoid micromanaging how ranchers handle their land, livestock and water.

"Consumers can be assured that cattlemen contribute to the largest food supply in the world and care for their land and livestock in the process," he said.

Jeri Lynn Bakken, a representative of the Dakota Resource Council who also ranches with her husband, said the new bill should contain a provision requiring meat to be labeled with the country of origin of the animal that was slaughtered to produce it.

Doing so would provide the double benefit of allowing meat consumers to be more informed about the product they're buying and allowing U.S. ranchers to advertise the fact that their product is locally raised, Bakken said.

A separate portion of the farm bill includes provisions for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program.

Mitch Monson, executive director of Northwest Venture Communities, an economic development group based in Minot, said the new bill must strengthen these provisions to save dying rural communties.

Across North Dakota, rural communties are losing their young people at an increasing pace, leading many to wonder where the next small business owners and community pillars will come from.

Monson said this could be remedied through increased support for programs to help potential entrepeneurs and small business owners in rural areas.

The 2007 farm bill, officiallly dubbed The Healthy Farms, Foods and Fuels Act of 2007, is expected to come up for a debate and vote this summer.