Stick with 'freedom to farm,' U.S. analysts say
Date: 28-Jan-00
Country: USA
Congress has enacted more than $15 billion in emergency farm aid to
offset bad weather and low prices since late 1998. Another bail-out was
likely this year, lawmakers say.
As part of budget plans due Feb. 7, President Bill Clinton was expected
to propose farm-law changes so aid automatically increases during hard
times.
"We believe...Congress should hold a steady course," professors Don
Paarlberg and David Orden told a federal commission that will suggest
the shape of U.S. farm policy in coming years. Ohio State University
economist Luther Tweeten also urged retention of 1996 reforms.
"That trend (reducing the federal role) needs to continue," Tweeten told
commission members.
All three supported a targeting of federal payments to small and
medium-size operations as a way to preserve family farms.
"But how are you going to do it?" asked commission leader Barry
Flinchbaugh. He said farmers could divide their land into smaller
parcels to collect aid calculated per-farm instead of the current
supports based on volume of production.
"Freedom to Farm" eliminated most controls on what farmers grow in
exchange for the first-ever limit on farm supports, set at a few billion
dollars a year.
The economists said there should be no return to:
- land idling schemes to limit crop output.
- unduly high crop supports.
- supports tied to production of a specific crop.
- conservation programmes used to control crop output.
- government stockpiling of large, market-depressing amounts of grain.
Paarlberg, of Wellesley College, said the "decoupling" of farm subsidies
could make it easier to limit the size of payments to farmers, which now
can exceed $100,000 a year.
Commission member Leland Swenson, president of the activist National
Farmers Union, said the academics were relying too much on free-market
theory.
"The government isn't out of any other sector of the economy," Swenson
said, citing the influence of interest rates, labour laws and military
spending. "The economics (of farming) do not bode well to survive
today."
The 1999 corn and soybean crops were expected to fetch the lowest
average price in two decades.
Another commission member, Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm
Bureau Federation, said in an interview that other perspectives would be
heard before the commission writes its report. The AFBF favours
so-called counter-cyclical aid that would put more federal money in
farmers' hands when prices fall.
During its two-day session, the commission was to hear from critics of
"Freedom to Farm," former California agriculture director Ann Veneman
and former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy.
