Senators who helped shape the new farm law say the Agriculture Department is improperly implementing a new policy on payments to farmers.

But the department contends it is adhering strictly to the law as written and is not bound by a statement of intent that accompanied the legislation (PL 110-246).

The dispute centers on the threshold at which farmers can receive government payments. The law bars payments if the sum of the base acres of a farm is 10 acres or less.

Lawmakers said there should be some wiggle room under that provision, however. In the managers’ statement accompanying the legislation, lawmakers wrote that they “intend for the department to allow for the aggregation of farms” in determining who does and does not qualify for payments.

The Agriculture Department’s proposed rule essentially would make it tougher for farmers to reach the 10-acre threshold. For smaller operations to receive payments for combined land, the actual ownership of the tracts in question would have to be consolidated under one person that year.

Lawmakers said the proposed rule is arbitrary, restrictive and counter to the intent of Congress.

In an Aug. 11 letter to Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, all but one of the 11 Senate conferees who helped shape the bill, and 15 other Senators, insisted that the department’s proposed rule violates the legislation.

The bipartisan letter of complaint included Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and the panel’s ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.

Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., was the only Senate conferee who did not sign the letter.

Department spokesman Keith Williams said Schafer’s stance is that if Congress intended to allow an aggregated 10-acre exception for payments, “they would have put it into law — and they didn’t.”

“Congress debated this provision but removed it to have their legislation save $34 million over five years in order to claim a budget-scoring goal,” Williams said.

If Congress decides to change the law, and “require us to consolidate the farms,” then the department will do it, Williams said. “We will follow the law as Congress passes it.”

Harkin and conferee Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, subsequently responded by saying there is no inconsistency between the explanatory statement and the statutory language. The managers’ statement further clarifies that the statutory provision “streamlines payment administration, which is the very same purpose served by consolidating smaller bases acreages,” they said.

“USDA seems intent on going out of the way to cut off payments that would be made if a farmer were allowed to combine bases on farms,” they added.