By JERRY HAGSTROM

For the Capital Press

WASHINGTON -- House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said hearings on the 2012 farm bill will begin Wednsday with testimony by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and that there will also be a series of regional hearings this spring , including in California, Idaho and Wyoming.

Peterson told reporters in a telephone news conference that he intends to hold another hearing in Washington with academics and economists to give a broad overview of the farm situation and then move to hearings around the country. Peterson said he plans hearings beginning in late April in Des Moines, Iowa; Boise, Idaho; Fresno, Calif.; and Cheyenne, Wyo., and to hold another round of hearings in May in Atlanta and in Alabama, Texas and South Dakota and one in North Carolina in June.

Peterson also noted the committee will hold a hearing on dairy policy in Harrisburg, Pa., on Tuesay.

Peterson emphasized that the bill will be written within the confines of the farm bill baseline when the bill is written, but he also noted that the baseline will probably shift several times before 2012 depending on economic conditions.

"My interest is in providing a safety net for the average commercial production farmer out there," Peterson said. "That's where I think we have a role. Those guys don't have the deep pockets to have half a million dollars themselves to put a crop in."

But he also added that the 2008 farm bill provided the biggest increases ever in the nutrition and conservation programs and that he wants to protect those as well. "Obviously given the economic situation and people out of work we want to make sure the feeding programs, the nutrition are there for people during this time." He also said that farmers need more technical assistance than is currently provided to make use of the conservation programs.

In the news conference, Peterson made many of the same points he made on a March 30 visit to the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore.

All options are open in terms of changes to the farm program to provide the safety net, Peterson said.

Farmers in his Minnesota district, he said, are most interested in making sure they have a crop insurance program that works. The program of marketing loans when prices are low is not working well because the rates are too low, but the government does not have the money to increase them, he said.

Congress should make changes to the cotton program to make it complaint with World Trade Organization or the United States will be "back in the soup" facing the same retaliation it was facing from Brazil before the Obama administration recently resolved that case with a promise to change the cotton program in the farm bill. He said dealing with the cotton program could lead to some row crops being handled differently than others in the bill.

He also said that he wants a full exploration of whether direct payments are driving up land prices and costs for beginning farmers and that the average crop revenue program known as ACRE should be constructed along county rather than state lines to function properly.

Peterson also said his committee is opposed to using budget authority from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program as an offset to increase spending on child nutrition programs.

The Senate Agriculture Committee-passed bill uses a decrease EQIP spending by $2.2 billion over 10 years to provide almost half of a $4.5 billion increase in child nutrition programs over 10 years. "There is pretty universal opposition from the committee to using EQIP money to pay for this," Peterson said today in a telephone news conference. But he also noted that the House Education and Labor Committee, which has jurisdiction over the child nutrition programs in the House, does not appear to be headed toward using the EQIP program as an offsets.

Environmental groups have opposed the use of the EQIP money to pay for the child nutrition programs, saying that conservation funding should be used to pay for increases in the school lunch and breakfast programs.