(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra says the prospects for passage of a five-year Farm Bill are positive — after the election.  “We have great hope that we can come together, that all four corners — meaning Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate can come together and pass a Farm Bill,” Feenstra says. If no action is taken before the end of the year, the federal farm policies in place decades ago will go into effect — meaning farmers will not get federal crop insurance subsidies, for example. “We have been meeting over the last few months, trying to get this done,” Feenstra says. “We as House Republicans passed it bipartisanly out of the (House) Ag Committee. We could take it to the floor, but we don’t want to negotiate against ourselves.”

The Senate Ag Committee has not passed its own version of the Farm Bill and Democrats who are in the majority in the Senate say the House G-O-P’s proposed 30 BILLION dollar cut in federal food assistance is unacceptable. Feenstra, a Republican from Hull, says funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a stumbling block. “SNAP is one of the challenges,” Feenstra says. “SNAP is the nutritional program that’s 85% of the cost of the Farm Bill. We want a responsible SNAP program. That’s very important.”

Ryan Melton of Webster City, the Democrat who’s running against Feenstra, says the Farm Bill needs to address water quality. “I certainly agree that we need to subsidize ag, but we have choice over how we do that,” Melton says. “I’ve talked to plenty of farmers on the ground that know — farmers themselves who know that the status quo is not working…that so many of folks cannot recreate in our rivers and lakes and our streams.” Melton says federal farm policy has to respond to the significant increase in large-scale livestock operations.  “You’re adding so much more manure to the landscape and yet you have not added more and more mitigation strategies to protect our waterways,” Melton says. “We need to sinc up the increase with increased protections for public health and for water.”

Melton suggests it’s time to consider federal regulations on how much manure and other farm chemicals can be applied to cropland.  “We need to be more responsible when we have a ramp up in industrial ag to also recognize the downstream implications, which are many,” Melton says, “to public health, to home values, to the hollowing out of our communities, to the fact that they are driving more and more small and mid-scale farmers off the land.”

Melton made his comments during a recent appearance on Iowa Press on Iowa P-B-S.