By Charles Abbott
Reuters
Wednesday, October 17, 2007; 12:24 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Grain, cotton and soybean growers could protect their income from crop failures as well as poor prices -- a signal change in the federal safety net -- under a plan unveiled by Senate farm leaders on Wednesday.

The framework from the Senate Agriculture Committee earmarks $4.2 billion to improve food stamp benefits, $3.7 billion in extra spending on land stewardship and $1.3 billion in new funding for biofuels. There would be cuts of several billion dollars over five years in agricultural programs.

Chairman Tom Harkin of Iowa said the committee would meet next week to write its farm bill. Harkin and the two other authors of the framework, Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, expect support from the panel.

"We have tried to set a policy here for the future," Harkin said during a telephone news conference. For weeks, he has said a successful farm bill must include significant increases in nutrition, stewardship and renewable energy programs.

"Farm bills don't make sharp turns. But we do try to bend the rails" with the new bill, Harkin said.

While the Senate framework would continue traditional crop supports, it would give farmers the option, beginning in 2010, of enrolling in an "average crop revenue" program. It would release payments when statewide income from a crop was below a target set by law, responding to crop and yield woes.

Traditional supports are based on prices alone, an approach critics say does not help when growers lose a crop and have nothing to market.

Growers who opt for revenue protection would be allowed to plant fruits and vegetables on land eligible for crop supports. Those crops now are banned.

The revenue protection plan would give farmers a payment of $15 an acre annually, lower than the "direct" payments now offered on corn, cotton and rice.

"I have long maintained farmers would rather have a strong safety net," than receive a direct payment, Harkin said.

Overall, the revenue plan would save as much as $3.5 billion, partly due to the smaller annual payments. Direct payments total $5.2 billion a year.

The House of Representatives included a revenue protection option in its farm bill, passed on July 27. It uses a nationwide trigger on crop revenue and would not let growers opt in and out annually as the Senate plan does.

Just as the 2002 farm law was the first to boost biofuels, the new feature this time will be "a big section" for fruit, vegetable, nut and nursery crop growers, Harkin said.

Along with putting money into improved food stamp benefits, Harkin said, the framework would spend $1 billion over five years to make fresh fruits and vegetables available as a school snack to 4.5 million poor children each year.

New money for land, water and wildlife conservation would expand an infant "green payment" program for land stewardship and renew programs to preserve wetlands and grasslands. Harkin said 13 million acres a year would be added to the green payment program, renamed Conservation Stewardship Program.

The largest U.S. farm group, the American Farm Bureau Federation, sees flaws in the revenue protection plan. They say it would remove the option for farmers to forfeit their crops to the government when prices are low, and could run afoul of world trade rules by linking payments to crop production.

"The alternative program not only creates problems for some farmers, but U.S. agriculture as a whole," the group said in a letter to Harkin on Wednesday.

A band of small-farm advocates, environmentalists and religious groups said the Senate farm bill must include "meaningful" reforms of farm payment rules. Growers are limited to $360,000 a year but there are various ways to elude the limit.