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4B Daily News – Tuesday, June 11, 2013 Senate passes half-trillion dollar farm bill WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Monday passed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that expands government subsidies for crop insurance, rice and peanuts while making small cuts to food stamps. The bill passed on a bipartisan 66-27 vote. The legislation, which costs almost $100 billion annually, also would eliminate subsidies that are paid to farmers whether they farm or not. All told, it would save about $2.4 billion a year on the farm and nutrition programs, including across-the-board cuts that took effect earlier this year. Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, DMich., said the bill would support 16 million American jobs, save taxpayers billions and put into place ''the most significant reforms to agriculture programs in decades.'' But it would still generously subsidize corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, sugar and other major crops grown by U.S. farmers. The legislation would also set policy for programs to protect environmentally sensitive land, international food aid and other projects to help rural communities. The Senate passed a similar farm bill last year. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Monday that his chamber will take up its version of the farm bill this month. Debate in the House is expected to be contentious and much more partisan than in the Senate, with disagreements among the GOP caucus over domestic food aid that makes up almost 80 percent of the bill's cost. Last year, the House declined to take up the legislation during an election year amid conflict over how much should be cut from the food stamp program, which now serves one in seven Americans and cost almost $80 billion last year. That cost has more than doubled since 2008. The bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee last month would make much larger cuts to food stamps than the Senate version, in a bid to gain support from those House conservatives who have opposed the measure. The Senate bill would cut the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by about $400 million a year, or half a percent. The House bill would cut the program by $2 billion a year, or a little more than 3 percent, and make it more difficult for some people to qualify. In his statement Monday, Boehner signaled support for the House bill's level of food stamp cuts, saying they are changes that ''both parties know are necessary.'' Other Republicans are expected to offer amendments to expand the cuts, setting up a potentially even more difficult resolution with the Senate version. On the Senate floor, senators rejected amendments on food stamp cuts, preserving the $400 million annual decrease. The bill's farm-state supporters also fended off efforts to cut sugar, tobacco and other farm supports. Senators looking to pare back subsidies did win one victory in the Senate, an amendment to reduce the government's share of crop insurance premiums for farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $750,000. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said their amendment would affect about 20,000 farmers. Stabenow argued the amendment would result in fewer people buying insurance and undercut a separate provision in the bill that would require farmers buying crop insurance to comply with certain environmental standards on their land. Currently the government pays for an average 62 percent of crop insurance premiums and also subsidizes the companies that sell the insurance. The overall bill expands crop insurance for many crops and also creates a program to compensate farmers for smaller, or ''shallow,'' revenue losses before the paid insurance kicks in. The crop insurance expansion is likely to benefit Midwestern corn and soybean farmers, who use crop insurance more than other farmers. The bill would also boost subsidies for Southern rice and peanut farmers, lowering the threshold for those farms to receive gov- ernment help. The help for rice and peanuts was not in last year's bill but was added this year after the agriculture panel gained a new top Republican, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. Critics, including the former top Republican on the committee, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, said the new policy could guarantee that the rice and peanut farmers' profits are average or above average. Critics said the bill would subsidize large corporate farms when farm country is in the middle of an economic boom. Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group that has long criticized farm subsidies, said the legislation would simply redirect subsidies and ''needlessly cut nutrition and conservation programs designed to help the hungry and the environment.'' Boehner criticized farm subsidies in the House bill, which are similar to those in the Senate bill, saying his ''concerns about our country's farm programs are well known.'' Boehner, a former member of the agriculture panel, has voted against recent farm bills. But he acknowledged that the rest of the chamber might not agree with him. ''If you have ideas on how to make the bill better, bring them forward,'' Boehner said in a statement directed to his colleagues. ''Let's have the debate, and let's vote on them.'' The Senate bill also would: Calif. salmon experiment puts fish in river water Apple unveils music streaming service NEW YORK (AP) — Apple unveiled an Internet radio service called iTunes Radio on Monday and said the service will personalize listeners' music based on what they've listened to and what they've purchased on iTunes. Apple said iTunes Radio will be available this fall in the U.S. It will be free with advertisements included, although subscribers of Apple's iTunes Match music-storage service will get a commercialfree version of iTunes Radio. That service costs $25 a year. In unveiling the long-expected service Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple enters a crowded field. Google Inc. started an ondemand subscription music service called All Access last month. Other leading services include Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora. Apple was a pioneer of online music sales and is still a leader there, but streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify have emerged as popular alternatives to buying. Pandora relies on its users being connected to the Internet at all times and plays songs at random within certain genres for free. As with Pandora, iTunes Radio will let people create stations based on specific songs, artists or genres. So users can put in a particular song, and the station will play songs like it. Apple did not provide details on how the other songs will be determined. Pandora uses a formula to analyze songs based on musical and other characteristics. Users won't be able to type in the name of a specific song and have it play right away. Pandora doesn't allow that either. That's something available through other services that charge monthly fees, including Spotify and Google's All Access. Analysts were lukewarm. ''This is a nice free feature that lots of people will probably try out, but existing Pandora users won't have much reason to switch,'' Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at Ovum, said in an emailed comment. Dawson said a service that lets people call up specific songs on demand would have made a bigger splash, ''but that would likely have disrupted Apple's existing iTunes business, and the music industry as a whole, too much.'' Pandora charges $36 a year for ad-free listening, more than Apple at $25. Pandora also has a free, adsupported version like iTunes Radio. In February, Pandora capped free listening on mobile devices to 40 hours per month. Apple did not say whether its service would have any limits. ITunes Radio will also offer featured stations, which play songs that are the most-talked about on Twitter, for example. The service integrates Apple's Siri virtual assistant so that users can get information by speaking questions such as ''Who plays that song?'' Users can also tell Siri to skip songs, stop or pause playing. And they can ask to play more songs like the one currently playing, or buy them on iTunes with a click, Apple said. SACRAMENTO (AP) — State fish and wildlife officials are studying a new way of transporting hatchery salmon that are intended to repopulate the Sacramento River system, a newspaper reported. About 100,000 Chinook salmon have been taken to San Francisco Bay, where they were released, in water actually from the Sacramento River, The San Mateo County Times reported this week (http://bit.ly/12h3faP). The theory being tested is that the fish will develop a memory of the water's chemical makeup that will improve their ability to get to the river from the bay to spawn. Fish and Wildlife biologists have raised concerns that too many hatchery fish are straying and not returning to the river. The experiment could help boost salmon populations and impact how hatcheries release the fish, the newspaper reported. ''We're hoping that this is the way of the future,'' said Andrew Hughan, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman. Salmon are known to develop smell-related memories on their way to the ocean that guide them on their return trip. The process is known as imprinting. ''They know how the water tastes and smells from their river of origin,'' said Colin Purdy, leader of the study, now in its second year. But they are also vulnerable on their trip through the river — hence the decision to release them directly into the bay. That decision, however, deprives them of the chance to imprint, a phenomenon the fish and game experiment seeks to re-establish. Researchers will determine how many of the 100,000 salmon released as part of the experiment return to the Sacramento River. They will then compare that number to the survival and stray rates of two other groups from the same hatchery. 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The new policy includes a market stabilization program that could dictate production cuts when oversupply drives down prices. The program faced little opposition in the Senate but a similar overhaul in the House bill is expected to face resistance in that chamber, where Boehner last year called the new stabilization program ''Soviet-style.'' He reiterated those concerns in his statement Monday, saying he will support an amendment on the floor to challenge the proposed policy. - Make modest changes to the way international food aid is delivered, a much scaled-back version of an overhaul proposed by President Barack Obama earlier this year. Senators adopted an amendment that would slightly boost dollars to buy locally-grown food close to needy areas abroad. Currently, most food aid is grown in the United States and shipped to developing countries, an approach the Obama administration says is inefficient but that has support among farmstate members in Congress. - Consolidate programs to protect environmentally-sensitive land and reduce spending on those programs. Expand Agriculture Department efforts to prevent illegal trafficking of food stamp benefits. 529-3689 Tree Service Certified line clearance tree trimmers *Specializing in hazardous tree removals *Beautification/Canopy Lift Trimming & Pruning * Firebreaks Free Estimates ~ Senior Discounts 5 Millon dollar insurance coverage • Mowing • Edging • Weedeating • Clean-ups • Free Consultation Voted #1 Tree Service in Tehama County We can beat any licensed contractor prices! 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