Topeka ? U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts said Wednesday that he would push for quick action on a drought relief bill for farmers and for the rewriting of farm policy approved just this year.

Roberts said his annual tour of the state, completed this week, showed him that farmers face serious economic problems because of the drought and that the farm bill Congress approved won’t do much to help them.

Roberts is among four Republicans sponsoring $3 billion drought relief legislation. Democrats have their own $6 billion plan.

“We need to pass a bill in September,” Roberts said at a Statehouse news conference.

Roberts had the news conference to mark the end of his tour of the state’s 105 counties.

Roberts told reporters that he thought Congress should have taken another year in writing a new farm bill. In 1996, Roberts, as chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, was an architect of the farm bill.

This year’s farm bill increased price guarantees, or loan rates, for crops such as wheat and corn and revived a target-price program to provide supplemental payments when commodity prices are below certain levels. The bill also continues fixed annual payments that started with the market-oriented 1996 Freedom to Farm law.

Roberts said the new bill was flawed.