Dems juggle needs in $286 billion farm bill

Democratic lawmakers are struggling to finance billions of dollars in automatic payments to grain and soybean farmers during a record commodity boom - and add another multibillion-dollar "permanent disaster" program for Great Plains farmers plowing highly erodible land - while at the same time providing promised money for nutrition, conservation and California fruit and vegetable growers in a $286 billion farm bill.

Lawmakers face an April 18 deadline to pass a new five-year farm bill when a temporary extension of the current law expires. But what began last year as a plan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to preserve crop subsidies by adding money for everyone else is cracking under the weight of a White House veto threat, rising food inflation, increasing pressure on fragile farmland and a slowing economy that make crop subsidies harder to justify each day.

The stalemate has dragged on for months and caused fits for Pelosi, who pushed through the House version of the bill last summer hoping the crop subsidies would help newly elected Democrats from Republican-leaning farm states. Most farm bills pass with little notice outside farm country and the industry press.

Instead she has faced an onslaught of criticism from reform groups, including a Bay Area-based healthy food movement, that contend the Depression-era subsidies promote industrial farming and encourage the use of the grain-based sweeteners, fats and carbohydrates that permeate junk food.