USDA willing to work with Congress on budget baseline

USDA officials indicated recently they would work with Congress to somehow preserve 2012 farm bill budget baseline that could potentially be lost through the renegotiation of the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. The comments, delivered to CongressDaily on the record by a USDA spokesperson and in less official terms to Hill leaders, came days after 10 commodity groups including the National Association of Wheat Growers wrote Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, expressing “grave concern” about baseline losses from savings achieved through the process, which was called for in the 2008 farm bill.