[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 91 (Friday, July 10, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7927-S7929]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             SUDAN'S FAMINE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in the Washington Post this week there was 
an article entitled ``Sudan's Famine Overwhelms Aid Effort.'' I want to 
read a couple of sentences from this article, because I was struck by 
the concurrence of what I read about what is happening in Sudan and 
what I know is

[[Page S7928]]

happening in North Dakota and in much of the farm belt.

       As the gate is about to close for the night on the feeding 
     center here, near-lifeless bodies start turning up 
     everywhere. Three have collapsed just outside the reed walls 
     of the compound, human skeletons so thin they look two-
     dimensional against the ground.
       Three, then four, then five, then, somehow, eight others 
     have been carried inside and laid among the swarm of gaunt 
     people still strong enough to beckon medical workers who have 
     spent the day ministering to the hundreds gathered outside 
     this place that has food.
       The workers move from body to body, feeling for a pulse, 
     crumbling high-calorie biscuits into palms, pouring sugar 
     water from gourd to mouth. The impossibly sunken cheeks of a 
     man too weak to hold his head up by himself fall deeper into 
     his face as he slurps. . . .
       Four months after aid agencies issued warnings of impending 
     famine in southern Sudan--and two months after they marshaled 
     public opinion in the name of heading it off--starvation has 
     arrived regardless. Across a vast region unsettled by civil 
     war and erratic weather, the United Nations now says, 1.2 
     million people are at risk of death from hunger.

  They are living on the leaves of trees. I heard a fellow who visited 
Sudan describe old women climbing trees to forage leaves to eat. When I 
think that halfway around the world people are dying of starvation, and 
people are climbing trees to eat leaves on trees, I can t help but 
think that on the other side of the world that our family farmers who 
produce food in the most abundant quantity anywhere on the Earth are 
being told that their production has no merit, and no value.
  The price of farm commodities collapses, and family farmers are told, 
``Well, that's the breaks. That is the way things are. You produce it, 
and it should be worth $4.50 or $5 to cover the cost of production, and 
then you go put it on a truck and drive it to an elevator, and it is 
worth $3. Somehow the market doesn't value it. Your crop doesn't have 
worth, and doesn't have merit.''
  I think to myself that there is something kind of Byzantine about a 
world in which that happens. Just detach yourself from the globe for a 
moment and look at a globe sitting out here with people on this side 
starving and people on this side who are operating family farms going 
broke because they are told their food doesn't have value. Gosh.
  This is not true with military equipment. Military equipment always 
has value. They ship it all around the world every day in every way, 
and there is plenty of money to finance it. The poorest countries in 
the world can buy military equipment. The poorest countries in the 
world can afford apparently the best jet planes, tanks, guns, and 
shells. But when it comes to food, the people who need it are starving, 
and the people who produce it--our family farmers--are told it doesn't 
have worth and they can go broke.
  Let me describe what is happening in our part of the world. I might 
say that I served for almost 10 years on the Hunger Committee in the 
U.S. House of Representatives. I am well familiar with the famine that 
occurred in Ethiopia. I am well familiar with past famines in Sudan and 
other parts of the world where millions have died of starvation. This 
is happening on a planet where, in some parts of the earth we produce 
food in great abundant quantity and those who produce it are told it 
has too little value.
  We have family farmers today who have invested everything, their 
lives, 10, 20, 30 years into running a family farm far out in the 
country, with the yard light on at night, raising their family, sending 
their kids to school, getting up early to do the chores, working all 
day, doing chores at night, and discover when they check their books 
and records that they are losing money and losing their farms.
  Here is what happened to the price of wheat in the last couple of 
years. Wheat prices have fallen 53 percent since the current farm law 
was passed. Prices have collapsed like a down escalator, and yet some 
people say, ``Gee, everything is working just fine.'' In fact, I heard 
some people say the farm program is working just fine. It is not 
working just fine.
  The price of wheat is collapsing. On top of this, in our State we 
have the worst crop disease in a century. This is a crop disease that 
is pervasive. It is called fusarium head blight, commonly called scab. 
Farmers are hit by collapsed prices and crop diseases that are 
devastating. So we have, it seems to me, a twin failure here on this 
globe of ours. We have people who don't have anything to eat and are 
starving and dying in the streets in Sudan. Then we have families who 
are failing in the Farm Belt who have risked everything they have to 
run a family farm and are told, when they truck that wheat and barley 
that makes the foodstuffs that can be life-saving to others, that 
somehow this has no value. At least, they are told its value is so 
diminished that you can't make a decent living growing this grain.
  Let me show you what has happened to these family farmers in my 
State. In 1 year, there has been a 98-percent reduction in net income 
for family farmers. That's right, 98 percent. Go to any neighborhood, 
any street, anyplace in this country and ask anybody how will you 
handle it, how will you fare, what will your life be like, if somebody 
takes away 98 percent of your income? This describes a serious economic 
emergency.
  In my State, these red counties which make up a third of our 
counties, have been declared disaster counties every single year for 5 
years--every year. Not just occasionally, every year. Incidentally, 
North Dakota is 10 times the size of Massachusetts in land mass. Those 
family farmers are trying to run a farm out here and trying to raise a 
crop they can plant and harvest. They have discovered that you cannot 
do it when you have these excessive wet cycles and pervasive crop 
disease so they don't get much of a crop. Then if they do get a crop, 
they send it to the market and it is underpriced because the price has 
collapsed.
  The reason I make this point is we have family farmers in North 
Dakota--and in other parts of the Farm Belt, but especially in North 
Dakota--who are suffering terribly. We need to do something about that.
  Do we need to respond to the Sudan with respect to food aid, 
substantially increased quantities of Food for Peace, title II and 
title III and others? Yes, we do. It is this country's obligation to do 
that. We ought to do it. Doing so, however, also obligates us, it seems 
to me, to do something to help those family farmers in our Farm Belt 
who are losing their hopes and their dreams.

       ``This is the worst plant disease epidemic that the United 
     States has faced with any major crop in this country.'' Brian 
     Steffenson of North Dakota State University said that last 
     week. That is just one part of the price collapse and crop 
     disease that has put us in a devastating situation.
       Steffenson also said, ``North Dakota's barley industry is 
     hanging on by a thread, even though it is typically the 
     leader in feed and malting barley production in the nation.''

  Farmers not only face disease and low prices, but also have a problem 
of selling into highly concentrated markets. Family farmers are trying 
to figure out how they market their commodity effectively. If they are 
raising beef, four packers control 87 percent. If they raise pork, its 
four packers that control 60 percent. Four firms control 55 percent of 
broilers. If they have sheep, four packers control 73 percent of sheep 
slaughter.
  Grain facilities at our ports are controlled by four firms which have 
59 percent. In flour milling, four firms control 62 percent. In wet 
corn milling, four firms control 74 percent. You get the picture. One 
farmer out there against that kind of market power that puts downward 
pressure on all these prices.
  My point is this: We have a responsibility in this Congress to care 
about economic injury to important industries in this country, and none 
is more important, in my judgment, than family farming. Family farming 
is, and always has been, since Thomas Jefferson so described it as the 
most important enterprise in this country. Family farming is still 
important in this country, and we must make a commitment to deal with 
the economic injury to people who are out there, threatened with the 
loss of their livelihoods and the loss of their homes and dreams on 
their family farms.
  In the coming week we intend to meet with the President. In the 
coming weeks we intend to come to the Congress and ask Republicans and 
Democrats, conservatives and liberals, all of them, to join us to say: 
We are not only profamily, we are profamily farming, and during times 
of emergencies we want to reach out and help. A country

[[Page S7929]]

that can provide foreign aid can also provide some farm aid in times of 
trouble, and we have not had a time of trouble anywhere close to this 
for many, many decades.
  Just this morning one of the industry leaders in North Dakota 
indicated that he thinks we are headed towards a period that is about 
as bad as the 1930s on the family farm. We have an obligation to 
respond. I will ask the cooperation of the majority leader, the 
minority leader, and all people of good will here in this Congress who 
care, as I do, about the enterprise of family farming and the fortunes 
of those families in rural America. I hope we can pass a piece of 
legislation in the next several weeks to respond to this emergency.
  I thank the Senator from Mississippi for his indulgence.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The distinguished majority leader is 
recognized.

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