The day before a possible vote in the Senate on stiffer limits on federal payments to farmers, the Environmental Working Group released research that showed individual operations collected millions of dollars each in 2004.

It was “a very tactical move, a very successful move,” Brad Lubben said Wednesday.

But Lubben, a farm policy specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it remains to be seen if the latest in the nonprofit group’s periodic updates on farm payments will shift more money toward its desired conservation goal.

“The Environmental Working Group and many other groups want more money for conservation and they’re working for more money for conservation,” he said. “But they were always losing the battle.”

Wednesday’s report is “one way to change the tone of the battle.”

But so far, both the House and Senate are planning sizable cuts in conservation spending as they try to agree on at least $3 billion in cuts in the agricultural budget over the next five years.

And the House shows no sign of giving in to a possible move toward smaller farmer payments.

Much of the resistance comes from Southern states, said Tom Osborne, Nebraska’s 3rd District representative and a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

“My perception is that a fairly high percentage of those in cotton and rice farming tend to have rather large operations and multiple entities,” Osborne said. “That’s kind of the way they do business.”

“Multiple entities” allow farming operations more room to maneuver in staying under any caps on individual farm payments.

No matter what the Environmental Working Group wants, said Lubben, its report contains “some pretty personal numbers, for sure.”

And any farmer “can go in there and find out what all his neighbors get in payments. And it doesn’t tend to bode good will.”