It’s hard to blame the cotton industry for feeling picked on.

Foreign governments, charities and even celebrities have blamed the subsidies received by U.S. cotton producers for contributing to poverty in Africa by depressing world prices.

Now, even when the industry gains traction, it comes up short. House and Senate farm bills that generally incorporated a 14-point wish list for the industry were approved last year, but those bills now face a presidential veto threat.

Just last week, House agriculture leaders trying to fend off a veto stripped a critical subsidy and a key storage payment provision from the farm bill approved by the House. The provisions were not included in a conference proposal tabled by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and ranking member Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) after talks with the administration.

Cotton producers had few if any good friends in the room, as farm state senators, including Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, were not a part of those talks.

This was quite a change from when the 2002 farm bill was written, when cotton interests had a major influence with the House Agriculture Committee. At that time, the committee was chaired by Rep. Larry Combest (R-Texas) and its ranking member was Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas), who come from a state with heavy cotton production.

Now, however, cotton’s supporters in the Senate seem determined to ensure the cotton provisions are included in any bill that comes out of a conference on the farm bill.

“We’ve been disappointed that the House package makes so much less of an investment in rural America and agriculture in general,” said Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), a member of the Senate conference committee.

Lincoln questioned why House members would agree to cut the program in order to meet administration demands that Congress approve a farm bill that costs less than the initial versions approved by the House and Senate: “I don’t know why the House wants to hitch its horse to the White House, because we certainly know the administration isn’t listening to rural America.”

At issue is a provision included in the bill approved by the House last summer that would have provided textile mills with a four-cent-per-pound payment for buying cotton. The payment, also included in the bill approved by the Senate, was not part of the framework released last week by Peterson and Goodlatte after lengthy talks with the administration.