GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) pledged her commitment to a group of fruit and vegetable growers last week to continue working on a new farm bill that will include benefits for specialty crops, while maintaining fiscal responsibility for taxpayer dollars.

Delivering the keynote address via teleconference at the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market Expo’s Industry Outlook Luncheon on Dec. 6 in Grand Rapids, Stabenow said a proposal that would cut $23 billion from the current farm bill should become the basis for the next farm bill.

Some components of the proposal, she said, include elimination of direct payments and moving toward a risk-based program, more focus on crop insurance and other areas of support when farmers experience a loss, and a requirement that the crop insurance industry move forward with provisions for specialty crops. Specialty crop provisions are especially important to Michigan growers, who she said boast the second most diverse agricultural industry in the nation.

Although an overall effort to reduce the nation’s deficit by $1.2 trillion in the next two years died in the “Super Committee,” as chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Stabenow said she and her colleagues worked across party lines to develop a plan that would reduce spending in the agriculture budget.

“The Super Committee gave each committee the opportunity to submit the kind of deficit reduction cuts that we feel were appropriate,” she said. “I really felt that when cutting agriculture, it was important that we came together.”

Stabenow said she “reached out” to her Republican counterpart on the committee and they worked to develop a joint recommendation to reduce the agriculture budget.

While she said she is disappointed the Agriculture Committee is the only one that completed its task – the Super Committee did not complete the process it set forth, either – the agricultural leaders “did come together with changes in agricultural policy that would allow for $23 billion in cuts and deficit reduction, and at the same time strengthen agriculture for the future.”

She said the partnerships forged during this process will be used as the Agriculture Committee moves forward with its farm bill process.

“One out of four jobs in Michigan come from agriculture. Sixteen million jobs in the United States come from agriculture. So, when I look at the farm bill, I see a jobs bill,” Stabenow said. “It isn’t just about “the number of jobs but also the economic certainty for research that we need to create with policies that hopefully make sense.”

In 2008, specialty crops were added to the farm bill, which greatly impacted many of the growers in attendance.

“Over the years we have been doing a number of things to increase opportunities for professional growers, through the farm bill process,” Stabenow said. “Every page has (Michigan growers) in the farm bill, as it always has.”

Other areas of the new proposal focus on extending the specialty crops provisions in the 2008 farm bill and extending the provisions for block grants and research to create 10-year funding in some areas instead of the current five-year funding. In addition, Stabenow said the committee focused on providing additional help to farmers’ markets and for nutrition efforts to “make sure we kept the fresh fruit and vegetable program intact.

“Basically, through the agreement that we came up with, we continued to focus on the diversity of agriculture including specialty crops – which is about 50 percent of what we do in agriculture across the country – and to expand on important research and block grant flexibilities that have been very important for us in Michigan,” she said.

The committee also explored conservation, using a “principles, not programs” approach. This approach, Stabenow said, challenged it to look at overall policies that make sense for agriculture “to support what you all do,” instead of focusing on specific programs.

By taking a “fresh look,” Stabenow said the committee recommended reducing 23 conservation programs to 13, and regrouped them into broader “tool boxes” such as working lands, easements, Conservation Reserve Program and regional partnerships.

“We have saved money, but we have continued everything that was being done,” she said.

In rural development, she said when the committee looked overall at the USDA, it proposed streamlining and eliminating 31 percent of the programs to create easier processes for farmers. “Our goal was more flexibility and less paperwork,” she said.

The process, she said, will continue in 2012 as the committee continues to “flush out areas where we have consensus and identify areas where we still have work to do.

“We need to keep saying loudly and clearly that a safe, abundant food supply is a national security issue for our country and that what you do is very important to our economy and to our way of life,” Stabenow said.

Supporting agriculture in rural communities “is a very important way for us to move forward economically,” she said.

“Even though we didn’t get this accomplished in the Super Committee, we are going to use this as a foundation as we discuss the conservation title and move forward,” she said. “We really did the hard work and made tough decisions.”