I must say that Congress and the President presented us with a nice Christmas package with the passage and signing of a five-year farm bill.

Congress sent the bill to the President and immediately left town the week before Christmas. This really put the heat on the Chief Executive. His veto would have meant no farm bill at least until the first of February, since Congress will not return until January 21.

I believe an important factor in President Reagan's decision to sign the bill was that many farmers, including me, are already behind schedule for the 1986 crop. Waiting until February would have put us in an impossible situation.

USDA claims the new bill will cost $52 billion over the next three years.You will recall that the Budget Reconciliation Resolution passed in July called for spending only about $35 billion, and as late as September, the leadership was still calling for shaping the bill to that figure. But when the agriculture committees of the two houses got together, the picture changed quickly. The wheat and feed grain people insisted on increased rather than reduced spending and other members of Congress were unwilling to go home to their constituents and tell them they took less.

Some 'whittling' took place on the Senate floor and in the Conference Committee but, as you can see, the bill would exceed the target by 50 percent. Apparently, the nation is finally convinced that the farm sector is in serious trouble and is willing to spend big money to help.

Let's look at what the cotton section of the bill accomplishes. There are two major thrusts. One is toward income protection for producers. The target price indicates the gross income for growers who are not affected by payment limits. The target will be frozen at 81 cents for 1986 and then is reduced a total of 10 percent in small increments over the next four years.

That sounds pretty good until you consider that it's almost certain that we'll have to lay out 25 percent of our base acreage without pay this year, and the fixed costs on that land go right on, plus the cost of keeping it free of weeds. So nobody is going to make a killing. Many will just continue to hang on and some won't even be able to get financing to plant this spring.

Still, the bill does give at least as much protection as the cotton industry expected -- and in some cases more, as I will point out later.