MOULTRIE — An agreement was made Thursday by the conference committee to present a $300 billion farm bill to the Senate and House for consideration next week. If it passes, the conference report will be sent to the president for his consideration, but Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., doesn’t think it likely President Bush will sign it into law even though he said the conference committee made strides to bend to his concerns.

The conference was long and frustrating at times, Chambliss said in a telephone press conference. However at others, it has been rewarding, he said.

“This is a very balanced farm bill. I think the president has a lot of reasons why he can sign it. Certainly, there are concerns on the part of the White House relative to the bill itself from a number of different prospectives, but what we have sought to do in a very bipartisan way is to move as close to the president’s concerns and positions as we could without compromising the overall safety net, and at the end of the day I don’t know what the president is going to do. He never directly told me that he’s going to veto this bill,” he said.

However, Chambliss doesn’t get the sense that there’s not a great chance he’s going to sign it.

“At the end of the day, we wanted to craft a bill that is a very strong bill that reflects the needs and concerns of farmers and ranchers all across America concerning a real safety net and at the same time provide real incentives to produce alternative energy and also good stewards of the land. I think we’ve done that,” he said.

“The White House thinks we’re spending too much money on this bill. This bill was intended to be $10 billion above the baseline, which was agreed to by the leadership of the House and the leadership of the Senate. The White House never concurred in that $10 billion, but that’s not their main objection. Their objection on spending is that it goes above $10 billion,” he said.

There were timing shifts so that crop insurance payments might be made to save the federal government a significant amount of money, he said. The president has said that the farm bill draft goes above $10 billion.

“The fact is we disagree about it,” he said. “...We have addressed each and every one of those concerns. We have not given the president exactly what he wanted, but we have moved very much in a direction toward the president. For example, with payment limits, they wanted a hard cap of no more than $500,000. Well, we’ve done that for non-farmers. We don’t have a $500,000 hard cap for farmers, but we moved in his direction.”

The general provisions “somewhat mirror” the 2002 farm bill, he said. The structure of the commodity title also is similar to the 2002 farm bill in that included are direct payments, marketing loan provisions and countercyclical provisions that kick in times where prices are low and yields are difficult. Chambliss said he doesn’t predict much payments needed this year or next year because prices of all commodities are as high as they’ve ever been, “certainly in my lifetime.”

The new farm bill does make a significant change in payment limit provisions in the commodity title. It cuts back the adjusted gross income limit from $2.5 million to $750,000 per producer. It eliminates the three entity rule, but it would allow a producer’s spouse, however, to qualify for payments if that person in involved in production, he said. The bill eliminates certificates but provides for direct attribution.

“Those are major, and I emphasize, major changes and reforms to the payment limit provision,” he said.

For non-farmers, those with an income of adjusted gross income $500,000 or more are not eligible to participate in farm programs.

“We’ve got a lot of criticism over the years for non-farmers receiving payments under farm bills. Some of that’s been justified, and some of that has not been. Suffice it to say, we’ve made a major move toward the White House in this issue,” he said.

Non-farmers are important to the way farmers operate in the Southeast, he said. The measure, however, will hurt farmers who can’t pay cash rent for the extra land they need for their operations, he said.

Farmers with income exceeding $750,000 on a three-year average would lose direct payments. Farmers with incomes of any amount can participate in marketing loan program and countercyclical program, which allow the federal government to achieve significant savings over projected expenditures, he said.