Despite the daunting amount of work that would entail, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad said a new law this year was imperative to respond to persistently low prices. It also would preempt any move to curtail farm funding because of the softening economy, he said.

Harkin said his goal was to gain committee approval of a bill yet this year. "It is up to the leadership in the Senate," the Iowa Democrat said during a committee meeting, to arrange a vote on the bill to keep it moving.

While Harkin hoped to draft the bill this week, an aide said it might be next week before the crop subsidy section of the bill would be ready for consideration in committee. Support was split among a half-dozen approaches.

They range from sharply higher crop supports to terminating all crop supports by 2006 and Harkin's proposal of raising crop supports somewhat and creating a formula to send additional subsidies to grain, cotton and soybean farmers whenever the value of a crop was below a target, set by law, for returns per acre.

"It's a process of working through" the disagreements, the aide said.

Eight senators on the 21-member committee, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, favored a new law this year. The others were Conrad, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, and Arkansas Republican Asa Hutchinson.

Four Republicans were willing to wait until next year, as the White House has urged. Views of the remaining nine committee members on the timing of the bill were not clear.

"It's just getting so bad farmers wonder if they can make it down the road," Baucus said, citing drought and low crop prices in his state. "I think we have a responsibility to pass a farm bill this year for our people."

Baucus, like Conrad, Daschle, Dayton and Wellstone, were counted among the "prairie populist" Democratic senators who favor an active federal role in supporting agriculture.

Kansas Republican Pat Roberts said Harkin's plan, while doubling conservation spending, would provide significantly less money for grain, cotton and soybean supports. He said the House bill would average $4.9 billion a year and Harkin, $3.8 billion.

"The commodity programs are the losers in the Senate bill," agreed Hutchinson, who supports a modified version of the House bill.

By Roberts' count, the House bill would boost conservation spending by $15.7 billion over 10 years and Harkin's five-year bill by the equivalent of $22.9 billion over 10 years.

During its meeting yesterday, the committee approved energy and forestry sections for the anticipated 10-part bill. It approved an agricultural credit section last week.

The energy section would require the government to buy bio-based products, such as ethanol or soy-based diesel fuel, whenever they are comparable in price, performance and availability to traditional products.

It would create grants to develop biofuels and renewable energy as well as funding research and development of carbon sequestration to capture "greenhouse" gases.

Harkin said renewable energy could be "a major cash crop."