The federal government has named 1,369 counties across 31 states including Ohio disaster areas because of the drought and farmers are in limbo waiting for Congress to pass a farm bill by the Sept. 30 deadline.

The holdup: a coalition including those on the left of the political spectrum is concerned that the bill being considered doesn’t do enough for providing food to the poor, while those on the right are concerned it spends too much.

A bill passed the Senate in June, and a House committee approved a bill earlier this month. The full House has yet to take up the legislation.

“We need farm bills and farm legislation in times of catastrophe,” said Roger Wise, a northwest Ohio farmer who is president of the Ohio Farmers Union. Wise said he’s not crazy about the Senate bill or the House bill, but “the critical thing is we have a farm bill.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has urged the federal government to declare an emergency for all Ohio farmers.

State Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Erica Pitchford said it’s possible only certain counties will receive that declaration. Most of the counties on the western edge of the state have been upgraded to “severe drought,” while the rest of the state is in “moderate drought,” according to the National Climatic Data Center.

All of Preble and Darke counties, most of Butler, western Montgomery, and the southwest corner of Miami counties are listed as being in “severe drought.”

Jim Zumbrink, a farmer from Rossburg in Darke County, expects his corn crop will be paltry this fall. He said he’s always a year behind in marketing, and will bring last year’s grain to market this year. But “next year we won’t have anything to market. And that’s when it will really hurt me.”

He said he’d be okay with an extension. He would not be okay, he said, with the farm bill expiring.

“Something’s better than nothing,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kent Campbell, who farms corn, wheat and soybeans on more than 500 acres in northeast Greene County, said his crops are doing well thanks to some timely rains that farmers a few counties away didn’t get. But he said farmers have to make multiyear plans.

“Life on the farm has been great the past few years,” Campbell said. “The price of grain is probably at an all-time high across the board. At these levels, if you have a normal yield, we don’t need any government support whatsoever. But, if you look at Indiana or areas to the north where the crops are burnt up, you need that safety net to be able to maintain (your operation).”

But the farm bill is not just about farming, and Ohio lawmakers are among those expressing concern about the bill. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, voted against the bill in the Senate because of concerns about recent years’ increases to the food stamp program, which is the biggest expense in the bill. In the House, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, has expressed concern about the cost of the food stamp program and others, such as Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Lakeville, worry that it unfairly benefits southern farmers at the expense of Midwest farmers.

“I’m supportive of a farm bill,” said Portman, “I’m just not supportive of one that doesn’t make any reforms or changes to 80 percent of the spending, which is on the food stamp program.”

The farm bill passed by the Senate would cut $4 billion from food stamp funding over multiple years, while the House bill proposes $16 billion in cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. spent $78 billion on food stamps in 2011, up from $30 billion in 2007.

Jordan said he opposes that level of spending on food stamps and nutrition programs.

“One in seven Americans are on food stamps,” he said. “One in seven think it’s okay for someone else in the country to be responsible for them being fed, which is bad for our culture, bad.”

Jordan also said he objects to the “interference of government in the marketplace” in the current federal agriculture program. He said he supports basic crop insurance, however.

The House is scheduled to be on summer recess from Aug. 4 through Sept. 10. If its going to pass a long-term measure, it must be done with enough time for the House and Senate time to iron out differences before Sept. 30. Late last week the House signaled that it will try this week to pass a one-year extension of the 2008 measure – a decision that still leaves many unanswered questions, such as what will happen to the provisions in the current farm bill that have already expired.

Yvonne Lesicko, senior director of legislative and regulatory policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau said passage of the bill is “critical.”

“Our members need certainty,” she said. “They need to be able to plan for the future.”

But, she acknowledges, it’s “completely unclear” whether that will happen.

“Just like any business, our farmers make their decisions very far-sighted,” she said. “They’re making decisions now that will impact what they’re doing in a year or two years.”

Lane Osswald, a farmer in Eldorado in Preble County, said the cost of producing a crop has skyrocketed during the last decade, meaning the risk is much larger than it was when he first started farming 14 years ago.

“A little bit of peace of mind in a very risky business is what the government program gives to us right now,” he said.

Chris Bruynis, an assistant professor with Ohio State University Extension, said only about 75 percent of crop acres are insured through that program, with some farmers taking their chances.

“I drove by fields two days ago that are dead and laying flat on the ground, not a kernel on a stalk of corn,” Bruynis said. “This is a big enough disaster that it could bankrupt some folks. Even though the government has said, ‘We’re not going to make an ad hoc disaster payment,’ there’s speculation that they might provide some relief for those farmers that didn’t insure.”

Several key senators – as well as Wise, who farms 800 acres of corn, beans and wheat near Fremont, Ohio, said a one-year extension will not suffice.

Gibbs, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said he expects Congress will pass a one-year extension of the bill, as well as some supplemental measures to ensure that time doesn’t run out.

Wise worries that an extension would remove the urgency of passing a long-term measure.

“It runs into an issue just like the debt ceiling and others, where you tend to wait until the last minute, and then in the meantime, there’s uncertainty for farmers and uncertainty for consumers,” he said.