The 2007 Farm Bill has taken center stage in Congress. Central to the Farm Bill debate is providing a farm safety net that will provide the United States with the food security it deserves. It is critical that the agriculture industry in North Dakota be both informed of proposals now before Congress and involved in the process of writing the new Farm Bill.

The current commodity title of the Farm Bill, which has cost less than one-third of 1 percent of the federal budget, is a safety net that provides farmers with direct payments to ensure farm stability and loan deficiency payments and countercyclical payments to provide support should commodity market prices fall below set target prices.

Virtually every Farm Bill proposal now before Congress would drastically cut direct payments in the next Farm Bill. Direct payments to North Dakota farms amount to $225 million per year, leading to almost a billion dollars of economic activity annually in our state. The direct payment program is also the only farm safety net program wheat growers have been able to take advantage of over the term of the 2002 Farm Bill, even during times of disaster and total crop loss.

Giving up these predictable, World Trade Organization-compliant and market-friendly payments for other priorities is simply not acceptable. There are many areas of agricultural policy that need to be addressed, but federal funding for issues like disaster assistance and biofuels production should never come at the expense of farm stability.

The North Dakota Grain Growers Association endorses the National Association of Wheat Growers Farm Bill plan that would expand the safety net for wheat by increasing the wheat direct payment and target price, providing farmers with more countercyclical protection when wheat prices fall.

The NAWG plan will help farmers offset the tremendous increases in the cost of farm inputs and will put wheat producers on a more level playing field with other commodities.

People need to contact Congress now. Investing in farms is investing in the economic stability of our local communities, our food security and our future. We've recently seen what unsafe food imports have done to our pets; imagine what a dependence on unsafe food imports would do to our families. Americans deserve food that is safe, abundant and affordable, and producers deserve a Farm Bill that allows them to provide for these needs.

(Martin is president of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association. - Editor)