TIFTON — U.S. Reps. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., and Collin Peterson, D-Minn., met with area farmers and agriculture businessmen Monday afternoon at Lewis Taylor Farms to discuss the 2007 Farm Bill. Peterson is the U.S. House Agriculture Committee chairman.

Marshall, whose district includes Colquitt County, introduced Peterson to the approximately 100 attending the meeting by saying, “He has been a farmer, he was in the Army and he’s also been a CPA who represented farmers.”

The meeting began with an update on the farm bill, followed by a question and answer session.

Peterson said the House Agriculture Committee, which is drafting the farm bill, “is not a partisan committee.” He said, “We try to keep that out and try to keep it bipartisan.”

Peterson told the audience, “The farm bill is halfway there. We have marked up five of the 10 titles.” He said he planned for the farm bill to be out of the House Agriculture Committee by July 4. He said the current farm bill expires on Sept. 30.

“The Senate committee is quite a bit behind us,” Peterson said. “The last two farm bills didn’t get signed until April.”

Peterson said in the event the new farm bill was not signed by the time the old one expired, “We can go back to ’49 law if nothing is done before it expires.”

He said the biggest problem for the farm bill was that “we are short of money.” Peterson said this was a result of trying to get a balanced budget and so “we use the pay-as-you-go rule.”

Peterson talked with the area farmers about recently passing a disaster bill.

“It’s not as much as we wanted,” he said.

He credited Nancy Pelosi as the person who was responsible for making it happen and said, “Pelosi stuck with us and she doesn’t have a farmer in her district.”

“We are trying to make everyone equally unhappy and maintain a safety net for farmers,” Peterson said. He said there was “no new money” and yet fruit and vegetable farmers wanted in. Peterson said he agreed they should be included, but said, “We haven’t figured out how to pay for all of this.”

He said the farm bill would have “a very significant” energy component for biodiesel and ethanol development and that they would have to identify the crops best suited for conversion, do the research and then “figure out what will really work in the real world.”

Marshall told the agribusinessmen they could expect a lot of changes in agriculture in the future. Speaking of the investments in peanuts, Marshall said, “We can’t let that go south.”

The first question asked of Marshall and Peterson was from a fruit and vegetable farmer asking if they would be included in the farm bill.