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‘Kick the can’ works (mostly) in processors’ favor
Story Date: 1/3/2013
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Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 1/2/13
New Year’s emergency Congressional meetings steered the country’s economy clear of the fiscal cliff and extended the provisions of the 2008 farm bill to the end of the current fiscal year. Compared with what might have happened, that’s not bad news for meat producers and processors.
With the last-minute agreements, the industry avoids having to deal with the effects of a 1949 law that would have driven dairy prices sky-high, or face the possibility of federal furloughs that threatened the availability of meat inspectors.
On the other hand, notes Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, the farm bill extension is “incomplete,” as it “ends funding for important parts of the bill, including disaster assistance, while continuing costly taxpayer subsidies that were ended in the farm bill passed by the Senate” last spring.
The “partial extension … reforms nothing, provides no deficit reduction, and hurts many areas of our agriculture economy,” the Senator said in a statement posted on her website.
Of major concern is the availability of disaster assistance, in the wake of two years’ of drought in some parts of the country and the ripple effect that has had on meat supply and prices. Feedstock supplies are low, and higher input costs have squeezed producer and processor margins.
Meanwhile
The fiscal cliff compromise (officially the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012) also extended three ethanol-related tax credits: A one-year extension of the cellulosic producer tax credit, accelerated depreciation, and the alternative fuel infrastructure tax credit, which promises to accelerate the entry of E15 to the marketplace.
Said Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, in a release about the legislation: “The extension of these important provisions demonstrates the Obama Administration’s stalwart support of biofuels and Congress’s belief in the promise of energy independence and job creation through domestic renewable energy resources.”
For more stories, go to http://www.meatingplace.com/.
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