Harold Shaulis spent Monday telling people how dairy farms operate at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

But Shaulis, a dairy farmer from Somerset, couldn't tell them what sort of profit margin his farm runs on. Most dairy farmers couldn't, he said. Neither could the banks that have to decide whether to loan a farmer money for more cows or equipment.

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That's because of how the federal milk pricing formula is currently set up.

"Price support doesn't really tell you if you're making a profit on your milk," Shaulis said. "It's not how much you make or how much you spend, it's what you get to keep."

Last year, the Senate passed a bill that would have overhauled many elements of federal agriculture. It would have ended most of the direct subsidy payments to farmers and replaced them with an enhanced crop-insurance program. That insurance would also have been widely available to fruit and vegetable growers for the first time. The bill, which would have been in place for five years, would have also ended the government's current dairy pricing programs and replaced it with an insurance program for dairy farmers.

Proponents say the new farm bill would cost taxpayers less, while generating more efficient benefits for agriculture.

That bill died in the final days of the last session, as Congress scrambled to pass a fiscal cliff compromise. Instead, Congress extended the old farm bill for eight months. That kept milk prices from potentially rising and continued crop insurance through the upcoming growing season.

The short-term fix means Pennsylvania farmers aren't getting what they -- like most Americans -- say they want from Congress: stability and predictability. And it's costing them money.

For dairy farmers, the extension meant another eight months of Milk Insurance Loss Contracts. That program is designed to protect dairy farmers, but Shaulis said it pays farmers 40-43 cents on the dollar when milk prices plummet, while obscuring the true nature of the market. Since few dairy farmers know what their actual cash flow would be without the program, Shaulis said it's very difficult to predict future income. That makes the sort of infrastructure investments necessary to maintain or grow business very risky. Sometimes too risky.

The new farm bill would replace the MILC program with an insurance program that would guarantee an income floor, tied to the policy the farmer purchased. When milk prices are strong, there would be no need to tap the policy. When they are weak, farmers would be made whole.

That would have made a big difference in 2009, Shaulis said, when milk prices were very low. Under the MILC program, farmers lost an average of $1,000 per cow. The money that did come in kept some farms from total failure, but many didn't make it.

Simply knowing their minimum cash flow for the year, Shaulis said farmers would be able to better plan.

"Right now, if you look at your income and your expenses, it's up and down, up and down, all over the place," Shaulis said. "This would take out those lows."

Farmers of all kinds are living with this uncertainty, said Mark O'Neill, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. At the U.S. Farm Bureau conference last year, O'Neill said, farmers strongly supported the overhaul even though it means less direct money from the government.

"They understand going forward there is going to be cuts in the farm bill, there would have to be concessions," O'Neill said. "This bill would have been a way to do what's good for the country and good for the economy and still protect farmers."

Blake McCleary, a cattle farmer from Biglerville, said his feed prices have doubled in the last four years, from $200 a ton to $400. He keeps about 30 beef cows. The instability hurts him, but really damages larger operations.

The new farm bill would also extend crop insurance to more vegetable growers.

That could help, said Bill Troxell, the Executive Secretary of the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association. But the bigger obstacle many of the state's smaller growers face is new regulations that are geared to insure safety on the large-scale growing operations where much of the nation's fruits and vegetables are grown.

Most small growers can't afford to install the sort of machinery that those regulations require, Troxell said.

-- This post has been updated to correct incorrect information provided by the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.