Agriculture will see major changes after Pres. Bush’s budget proposed several cuts in subsidy payments to reduce the nation’s deficit.

The most important change is a 5 percent commodity cut for farmers.

“A variety of different payments would be calculated to a standard formula then reduced 5 percent,” said John Johnson, deputy administrator for farm programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

On average, about 128,000 Illinois farmers receive payments through the commodity program, said Jeff Squibb, communication manager for the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Collectively, they would lose about $35 million in program payments.

The reduction is not a cut in income, but a cut in the revenue needed to operate the farms, Squibb said.

“It costs a considerable amount of money to own and operate a farm, and that price support program was intended to be a safety net during tough years,” Squibb said.

The current commodity program is a 6-year plan from the 2002 farm bill meant to help farmers during times when market prices are low said Greg Millburg, governmental affairs director for DeKalb County Farm Bureau, 1350 W. Prairie Drive in Sycamore.

Farming is a multi-year process, in which a lot of planning and commitment must be made years in advance, Millburg said.

Farmers are now going to have to readjust their plans because of the loss of their safety net, he said.

“It’s being pulled out from under them and taking away some of the commitment made in that process,” Millburg said.

A second proposal from the president’s budget is an overall reform of payment limitation rules.

The maximum amount of subsidy a farmer can receive is $360,000 per year, Johnson said. The proposed change would reduce that to $250,000.

The cut will not necessarily impact many of the farmers in Illinois.

According to records at the DCFB, no one in the DeKalb area has received that much money, Millburg said.

The changes to the agriculture budgets are being viewed by some experts as a major issue for more than just farmers, Squibb said.

“Certainly the farming community would be impacted, but we believe the cuts go much deeper than that, and we believe it will have an impact on rural Illinois also,” he said.

Agricultural industry employees make up about a quarter of the Illinois work force, and, while farmers make up only about 2 percent of the population, they are the foundation for a diverse multi-billion dollar industry, Squibb said.

He said there are many jobs tied to farms that employ people all across the state.

“There certainly will be consequences for other parts of the Illinois economy, which is why we are encouraging the president to reconsider and Congress to reject the agriculture budgets,” Squibb said.