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The “smoking ruins” of the “Secret Farm Bill” aren’t a very fun place to be. Your tour of the site includes proposed cuts to conservation programs, reductions in federal nutrition programs, and problematic expansions of crop insurance, including the creation of a controversial new subsidy known as “shallow loss insurance” that would guarantee farmer income in the event of small drops in sky-high commodity prices. There’s also all that exhausting post-hype fallout raining down. Those motivated souls who paid attention to the Secret Farm Bill late last year are understandably reluctant to re-enter the area.

It’s time to ask: What are the chances that any of this will come to pass as scheduled this year? Certainly, legislators are hard at work. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), architect of the shallow loss program, is already out among agribusiness folks flogging the idea once again. Meanwhile, a confident Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Senate Agriculture Committee chair, said in a speech recently that she will have a bill ready for a vote in “the first half of this year.”

But here come the red flags. According to this report in the trade paper Hoosier Ag Today, a big-league insider, former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner, said out loud what it appears many are saying to themselves about a farm bill this year: “Don’t hold your breath.” Said Connor, “with Congress not working well together, I feel it will be very difficult to get any work done on the Farm Bill” before the election.