DEADWOOD, S.D. — The U.S. Agriculture Department is proposing changes in farm programs to do a better job of helping farmers hurt by droughts, floods or other disasters, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told western governors Monday.

Current price support programs tend to help farmers when they grow the biggest crops, but give them too little help when they are unable to grow normal crops, Johanns said.

The department’s proposal would take into account farm revenue in determining payments to farmers, Johanns said during a discussion with 10 governors attending the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting in the historic gambling town of Deadwood in the northern Black Hills.

Johanns said farmers have told him ‘‘You pay me the most when I need you the least, and you pay me the least when I need you the most.’’

That’s because when farmers grow a bumper crop of corn, soybeans or wheat, prices tend to drop and farmers qualify for price-support payments, Johanns said. But a farmer with a crop failure cannot get those payments, he said.

‘‘We were paying out the largest amounts of money during some of the best years,’’ Johanns said.

The proposal would take into account price and yield to help farmers with reduced production, he said. ‘‘It kicks in when revenue drops.’’

Farmers now are left wondering each year whether Congress will approve some drought disaster relief, Johanns said. ‘‘There is nothing more unpredictable for farmers than wondering if disaster relief will come forward in a legislative package.’’

Johanns, a former member of the Western Governors’ Association when he was governor of Nebraska, spent about an hour discussing the 2007 Farm Bill with the governors. He said he hopes Congress will pass the measure by September.

Congress recently approved $3 billion in agricultural disaster relief as part of the measure to fund the war in Iraq. The measure would compensate farmers who have sustained at least a 35 percent loss in 2005, 2006 or before March of this year, and farmers would pick a year for which they want to be paid.

The Farm Bill also is being considered at a time when prices of corn and other commodities are now high, particularly because much of the corn crop is being used to make ethanol as a gasoline additive.

Johanns said the Farm Bill usually is seen as a subsidy measure for farmers, but nutrition programs make up 60 percent of the spending in the bill. Subsidy payments amount to 25 percent of the measure’s spending, he said.

Farmers in the Midwest and West are supporting the Agriculture Department’s proposal to cut farm subsidies to anyone making more than $200,000 a year in adjusted gross income, but southern farmers oppose the plan, Johanns said. The current income cap is $2.5 million.

The proposed Farm Bill also would provide more support to beginning farmers and conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to idle environmentally sensitive land, Johanns said.