Source: POLTICO'S MORNING AGRICUTLURE, 11/12/18

The current and next House Agriculture Committee chairs plan to huddle today, despite the federal holiday, as they kick off what could be the final stretch of farm bill negotiations. Chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) — who's set to take the gavel in January — have some key decisions to make.

A path to compromise? Staff members from both chambers have come up with some options for resolving disagreements in the commodity title of the bill, four sources familiar with the talks told Pro Ag's Catherine Boudreau. The committees are looking at ways to expand the number of farmers eligible for updating their crop yields, because the House bill, H.R. 2 (115), would concentrate that benefit to producers, primarily in the Southwest, whose crops were damaged from the 2012 drought.

The yields that farmers report to USDA (as well as crop prices, their historically planted crops, and acreage) factor into the amount of subsidies they receive from the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs. For that reason, Senate leaders weren't too happy about an update applying to only a small region of the country.

Conaway, in order to offset the hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs associated with allowing a yield update, proposed that farmers could no longer receive payments on acres that hadn't been planted with crops eligible for government programs in the past nine years. Senate Agriculture leaders contend producers should be compensated for that loss, so farm bill negotiators are looking at providing some transition assistance, or giving farmers the chance to enroll those acres into a conservation program.

Closing in on conservation: Another hurdle to a final farm bill is reconciling the House proposal to eliminate the Conservation Stewardship Program and fold it into another working-lands initiative, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, with the Senate plan to maintain both and at a higher level of funding.