Missouri's General Assembly failed to resurrect a vetoed bill that would have subsidized Missouri dairies' insurance premiums under the federal margin protection insurance program. Farmers say that the failure will endanger the state's dairies.

The bill would have allowed Missouri to pay a portion of farmers' premiums under the federal milk margin protection insurance program, according to the Columbia Missourian.

"We're going to continue to lose dairy farms in the meantime until we can get enough help to purchase good insurance to protect dairy farmers during rough times," the Missouri Dairy Association executive director, Dave Drennan, told the Missourian. "The dairy act would have helped them pay the premium in hopes that they would buy better insurance coverage."

Drennan said that the state lost almost 100 dairies in 2012 because of severe drought in the state, and that margin protection insurance would have helped keep them from closing. Missouri milk production in 2013 was down to 1,300 million pounds, 116 million pounds fewer than in 2012.

The main point of contention regarding the bill was an amendment that classified captive deer as livestock, and moved the authority to regulate them from the Missouri Department of Conservation to the Department of Agriculture, according to Missourinet. Deer farmers had pushed for the change because farmed deer were regulated as wildlife. The change was opposed by the conservation community, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Conservation and Governor Jay Nixon.

The bill was delivered to Nixon May 20, 2014, and vetoed by him July 8. The Missouri Senate adopted a motion to override the veto on Sept. 10, but the House defeated the motion the same day, according to the Missouri Senate website. The vote was 108 for and 52 against, one vote short of the 109 votes necessary to overturn the veto.

Rep. Keith English, D-Florissant, was one of many who supported the initial bill but not the veto override. "When you have bills that are this big and cause so much division for issues that are completely unrelated to each other, you have to break them up into smaller bills," he told the Missourian.

Rep. Bob Burns, D-St. Louis, voted with English to uphold the veto, and said that he hopes the dairy portion of the bill returns in the next legislative session, without amendments. "There's nothing more important than protecting local businesses, but this is one prime example of how politics can get in the way of what's best for people," he told the Missourian. PD

—Summarized by Progressive Dairyman staff from cited sources

Read about the details of the federal program.