Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 2/20/18

Dairy farmers secured a long-sought win in the recently enacted budget agreement, but House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson doesn't think the provisions go far enough. As a result, he has secured a different proposal in the farm bill draft, which the committee is expected to unveil by the end of March, reports yours truly. 

The proposed change: The Margin Protection Program allows farmers to insure against low margins - the difference between milk prices and feed costs - and obtain higher levels of coverage if they pay more in premiums.
The main difference in Peterson's proposal is that it would allow dairy farmers to insure margins up to $9.50. The current limit is $8. The proposal would also make premiums less expensive for those higher coverage levels on the first 5 million pounds of milk, or about 200 cows (the average size of a U.S. dairy farm in 2012, when USDA last published a Census of Agriculture, was 144 cows.)

Peterson's office had an outside analysis conducted by the University of Missouri, comparing his proposed changes to the Margin Protection Program with those included in the $300 billion budget and disaster-aid package. The analysis indicates that a 200-cow operation selecting the highest level of insurance coverage would receive eight times the indemnities throughout the rest of the year under Peterson's plan.

"We heard all across the country that MPP doesn't work," an aide to Peterson told POLITICO. "Our concern is that if we only make an incremental adjustment and producers don't see additional support, they will walk away forever." 

On Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin heard from Wisconsin dairy farmers, who praised tweaks to the program but said the bigger problem was too much milk, the LaCrosse Tribune reported.

What the earlier deal does: As yours truly reported this month, the budget package's inclusion of provisions changing MPP and allowing seed cotton to be eligible for commodity subsidy programs could help ease the way for an on-time farm bill. The deal now gives agriculture lawmakers extra money to work with, to the tune of about $1.2 billion over 10 years, mostly because the dairy provisions are not offset.