President Barack Obama signed a new Farm Bill into law-英语听力

[00:02.320]this is the Agriculture Report. [00:05.620]President Barack Obama signed a new Farm Bill [00:09.130]into law this month. [00:10.890]Under the legislation, [00:12.490]the federal government will no longer [00:15.090]guarantee automatic payments to farmers. [00:18.540]Critics say the law replaces the old payment system [00:23.110]with new assistance [00:25.160]that may violate international trade rules. [00:28.720]The law also includes changes in how the United States [00:33.320]helps hungry people around the world. [00:34.270]From VOA Learning English, [00:36.390]The new Farm Bill ended $5 billion a year [00:40.900]in automatic payments to farmers. [00:43.820]The president said the law sends a message to people [00:47.230]who have abused the system. [00:49.990]"This bill helps to clamp down on loopholes [00:52.500]that allowed people to receive benefits year after year [00:54.960]whether they were planting crops or not. [00:57.120]And it saves taxpayers hard-earned dollars [01:00.770]by making sure that we only support farmers [01:03.730]when disaster strikes or prices drop," the president said. [01:06.080]The new legislation expands programs [01:09.180]that protect farmers from bad weather or low crop prices. [01:14.650]It raises the lowest price growers will be paid for some crops. [01:20.300]And it offers a taxpayer-supported insurance program to farmers, [01:26.220]the program guarantees that their wages [01:29.520]do not drop much from year to year. [01:32.820]Dan Sumner is an economist with the University of California, Davis. [01:38.700]He told VOA on Skype that the new Farm Bill could cause problems. [01:44.870]"That's the kind of assurances that the U.S. government [01:48.870]is willing to provide that most farmers in the world, [01:51.590]in fact, don't have access to," he said. [01:53.040]He adds that with the help of the government, [01:56.220]American farmers can produce and export more crops, [02:00.730]but he warns that could hurt crop prices. [02:04.480]"That drives down world prices and it's a little tougher [02:08.500]for farmers in developing countries to compete with that," Sumner said. [02:11.210]U.S. government subsidies pushed down [02:13.720]world cotton prices in the early 2000s, [02:17.870]the United States lost an international trade dispute over those payments. [02:23.730]Dan Sumner says the new Farm Bill could re-open that dispute. [02:28.890]But groups representing growers say [02:32.450]trade rules do let governments [02:35.060]pay a limited amount of subsidies to farmers. [02:38.160]Dale Moore is the chief of policy at one of those groups [02:43.080]- the American Farm Bureau Federation. [02:46.000]"We're pretty confident that it would take an extremely bad situation [02:51.200]for us to even come close to violating those particular limits, [02:54.910]something the United States hasn't come close to in years," said Dale Moore. [02:58.170]Other changes in the Bill should help food aid [03:01.970]get to more needy people around the world. [03:05.080]Aid groups will be able to spend more of the assistance they receive [03:10.530]to buy food from markets near where it will be used, [03:15.050]earlier rules forced aid groups to buy food from American farmers. [03:20.810]Eric Munoz works for the aid group Oxfam America. [03:25.410]"Not only will that save money, [03:27.420]but it will help reach people faster. [03:29.970]The actual program of buying locally is a much quicker response [03:34.790]than buying food from the United States and shipping it," said Eric Munoz. [03:36.740]He told VOA on Skype that with the same amount of money, [03:41.200]help can now reach more hungry people. [03:44.750]And that's the Agriculture Report.