"Loserville"?

We refer, of course, to California's Central Valley, home to perhaps the country's biggest concentration of farm bill losers: the fruit and vegetable growers who have been by-passed by farm bill investments for decades.

Maybe that's about to change.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns isn't heading all the way out to Modesto for an 8 a.m. meeting Wednesday so he can deliver disappointing news to the produce crowd about the farm bill proposal he will have announced here in Washington the day before.

We're betting that this, one of his first stops in farm country to explain the administration's farm bill ideas, is intended to be a pep rally aimed at the ag producers he must have on his side if his ideas for reforming subsidy programs are to make any political headway. And he'll need the Modesto-based House Ag Subcommittee Chairman on his side, too.

If we're right, his visit should give a big boost to the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance and the legislation they've put forward, the EAT Healthy America Act introduced last year.

We're pumped because that bill called for a dramatic, long overdue increase in funding for conservation programs for which all farmers can qualify, even if they don't grow the five favored commodity crops. Conservation investments are the best way to make the distribution of farm aid fairer, less costly, better for trade, and WTO compliant.

Here, hot off the Web, is reporter Mike Doyle's report from the Fresno Bee ("Ag Secretary holds farm-bill talk in Valley"):

WASHINGTON – The big farm bill debate kicks off in the San Joaquin Valley this week, with the local appearance of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

In a potentially telling choice, Johanns is bringing the Bush administration’s farm-bill campaign to the Stanislaus County Agriculture Center in Modesto.

We read the trip as an indication that Wednesday's announcement will be welcome news to the ranks of farm bill losers nationwide. Here's more from Doyle:

Already, Johanns has hinted that fruits and vegetables will be given more consideration than in years past.

“We heard a lot from the specialty crop area,” Johanns acknowledged last year. “They get basically nothing out of the farm bill. But the interesting thing is that in terms of value the specialty crops are of equivalent value to the program crops these days.”