[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 117 (Tuesday, September 8, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9963-S9964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           AGRICULTURE CRISIS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have a number of things to complete and 
to discuss and debate in the coming 5 or 6 weeks before this Congress 
finishes its work. Many of them are very important. The work of the 
Appropriations Committee in getting the appropriations bills done on a 
timely basis is critically important. All of us understand that. I am 
here today to talk about one specific issue that must be addressed. It 
is an issue that must be addressed on an urgent basis by this Congress 
before it completes its work in the 105th Congress. The issue is the 
farm crisis that exists in rural America.

  I come from a rural State, the State of North Dakota, which is the 
size of 10 Massachusetts in landmass. It has 640,000 residents, and 40 
to 50 percent of our State's economy comes from agriculture, and our 
system of family farming. I have spoken on the floor at some length 
about the problems and challenges we face these days.
  In the last year, family farmers in our State suffered a 98-percent 
drop in net farm income. Yes, I said a 98-percent loss of their net 
income. Now, these are families who have elected, for a variety of 
reasons, to populate rural America. They own a farm. They raise 
livestock. They till the soil and produce grain. They produce America's 
foodstuffs. They take enormous risks, often with very few rewards. They 
live out in the country and they turn that yard light on at night, and 
that illuminates a family out there somewhere living on the land trying 
to make a living.
  What is happening these days in the Farm Belt is that grain prices 
have collapsed, and livestock prices are way down. These family farmers 
who have risked everything they have and invested it in their hopes and 
dreams in making this family farm work, are now all too often standing 
with tears in their eyes as their farm is being sold at an auction 
sale.
  This country will lose something important if it loses its family 
farmers. I suppose we could farm America from California to Maine with 
giant agrifactories. We could have big corporate farms and a farming 
system where nobody lives on the land and there are no yard lights 
because nobody is there at night. Do we want corporate agrifactories 
farming America? This country will have lost something very important 
in its culture and in its economy if we lose our family farmers. And, 
we will lose them if we don't decide as a Congress to take action soon.
  Congress needs to tell farmers that this nation wants to help them 
through these troubled time. We need to build a bridge across these 
price valleys, when grain prices, cattle prices and hog prices 
collapse. We want to help. But, if we don't do that soon, we won't have 
many farmers left.
  This isn't about Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and 
liberals; it is about values and whether we in this Congress believe 
that family farming contributes to this country. I consider myself a 
Jeffersonian kind of Democrat. A Jeffersonian Democrat is somebody who 
really believes in broad-based economic ownership in this country, and 
who believes that the political freedoms we enjoy in this country could 
not exist without economic freedom. Such freedom comes only with broad-
based economic ownership. It does not come with concentration, nor with 
big corporations, but with broad-based ownership in which the men and 
women of America are out there investing in farms and small businesses. 
Nowhere is that broad-based economic ownership more important and more 
apparent to the economic health of this country than on America's farms 
and ranches.
  I was in a Quonset building a couple of days ago in North Dakota. It 
was in the evening and there was a picnic out on the farmstead. Farmers 
from all around the county came. About 100 folks gathered there. This 
young fellow who owned this farm hadn't finished taking off his grain. 
He had been trying hard, but he hadn't gotten it all off the field yet. 
As we were in this Quonset hut at this picnic, the clouds began to form 
out in the west. First they were blue and then almost black. Those 
clouds came in as part of a vicious, vicious storm. It came with a 
vengeance with wind, hail, rain. Inside that Quonset, it sounded almost 
like war as the huge hailstones were hitting that steel roof, making a 
loud, echoing sound together with the pelting rain.
  I watched those farmers in that Quonset building look at those 
clouds. I started to understand what that storm meant when tears welled 
up in their eyes and they were shaking their heads. Some of these 
farmers knew that storm was probably wiping them out, destroying their 
crop, and probably destroying their hope to get something off of those 
fields and get it to the market and pay some bills.
  Those are the risks our farmers face. Two years ago, the Congress 
passed the farm bill. I didn't vote for it. I didn't think it was a 
good farm bill. In the last 2 years, wheat prices have dropped 57 
percent, right off the table. This is critical to us because wheat is 
the largest cash crop in North Dakota that the family farmers raise. In 
addition to wheat prices collapsing on us, we have also had the worst 
crop disease in the century. The most damaging is known as fusarium 
head blight or scab. So we have had crop diseases, together with the 
wet cycle that has fostered these diseases, a collapse in prices, and 
we have had auction sales all across the State. Family farmers are 
wondering whether they can continue. Their lenders are saying, ``I 
don't think you can continue because the farm bill Congress passed has 
decreasing support prices in the out years, and it doesn't look good. 
Maybe you ought to get out now and save whatever little equity you 
can.'' That is the position farmers now find themselves in too often in 
rural America.
  So the question for us is what should we do about it? In July this 
Senate passed a bill that included $500 million in what is called an 
indemnification program. Senator Conrad and I authored that, along with 
Senator Craig and others. That bill is now going into conference 
committee with the House. We need to get that bill through to try to 
get some short-term help to family farmers. The indemnification program 
will have to be increased because of other disaster situations. The 
Texas cotton crop was devastated. Louisiana, Oklahoma, and other States 
now face an increasing crisis in family farming and in agriculture.
  In addition to that bill, it seems to me the Congress has a 
responsibility now to reach out to family farmers and say: ``We made a 
mistake a couple years ago. We need to build back some sort of price 
support program for you. We don't want to tell you when to plant, or 
how to plant, or what to plant. We don't want to do that. But we want 
to say that you matter and we care about family farmers, and we want to 
provide some basic kind of price bridge to get you over these price 
valleys.''
  We only have a couple of weeks to do that. I find it disturbing that 
in our economic system that almost everyone who touches something that 
a farmer grows or produces is making money with it. Farmers buy the 
seed and they buy the equipment to plant the seed. They put the 
fertilizer in the ground. They hope it doesn't hail, and that the 
insects don't come. They hope it doesn't rain too much. And, they hope 
it rains enough. Then maybe they get a crop. When they harvest the 
crop, they hope when they put it in the truck and drive it to the 
elevator, they will get a decent price for it. Any problem along the 
way may mean they are gone, broke, and out of business.
  Let's assume that farmer gets through the year and harvests the grain 
and gets a dismal price for it. That is what is happening right now. 
What happens to this harvest? Somebody puts it on a train and they put 
it on those tracks and down the tracks it goes. And guess what? The 
railroads are making money. Do you think they aren't making money off 
that wheat? The farmer who planted and harvested it didn't, but the 
railroads are making money, I suspect record profits. Then it goes to a 
miller. The millers are doing fine. They are making money. Then it goes 
to some plant someplace where

[[Page S9964]]

they are going to make breakfast food out of it. They take that kernel 
of wheat and put it into a plant and they puff it up. They make puffed 
wheat. They put it in a box and send it to a store and somebody buys 
the puffed wheat. They are making money off it. The people who move it, 
the people who puff it and crisp it, and the people who sell it in a 
store make money. Everyone makes money except the people who produced 
it. The family farmers don't make money from their harvests. They are 
going broke. What kind of a system is that?
  Speaking of disconnections in the system, let's look further at our 
food system. We have a system that doesn't make sense. As farmers go 
broke we have circumstances where halfway around the world today, we 
hear that old women are climbing trees in Sudan trying to find leaves 
to eat because they are on the abyss of starvation. Millions are 
starving.
  At the very same time an old woman is climbing a tree to get leaves 
to eat in Sudan, a farmer is loading a 2-ton truck to take to the 
country elevator, and when they get there, the elevator operator says, 
``We're sorry, this wheat isn't worth anything; the market has 
collapsed. This wheat doesn't have value.'' What kind of a 
disconnection is that? In the same world, halfway around the globe, 
people are starving and those who produce the best foodstuffs in the 
world are told it doesn't have value. There is something wrong with 
that picture as well.
  My hope is that in the coming 4 or 5 weeks, Republicans and Democrats 
will understand that it is our responsibility as a country to say to 
that this most important sector, the agriculture sector, matters. We 
need to especially tell our family farmers that they matter and that we 
are going to make a difference by passing a price support mechanism of 
some type that gives them a chance to survive.
  Let me add one final piece to this.
  In addition to saying that price supports will be available when 
prices collapse and we want family farmers to survive, this Congress 
also ought to do something to help family farmers survive by saying we 
will correct the problems in the trade agreements that we have 
negotiated over recent years that have been to the detriment of family 
farmers.
  Almost no one wants to hear my recitation of the trade problems 
because they have heard it so often.
  We send negotiators to go to negotiate with Canada, and we have an 
$11 billion trade deficit with Canada. They finish the negotiations, 
bring the treaty back to Congress, Congress passes the treaty, and the 
trade deficit doubles. They send negotiators to go negotiate with 
Mexico. That is done. They send it to Congress, and Congress approves 
it--not with my vote--and a surplus turns into a big deficit. They send 
negotiators to go out and negotiate a GATT agreement. The same thing: 
Record trade deficits.
  Mr. President, there is something wrong.
  Mr. President, there is something dreadfully wrong when our family 
farmers and other producers in this country--but especially family 
farmers--are told: ``You compete in the open market. It is a global 
economy. You go compete.'' And our negotiators somehow fail to suit up. 
I don't think it should be necessary for our negotiators to wear a 
jersey reminding them for whom they are negotiating. But, somehow they 
should be reminded. Maybe we ought to have our negotiators wear a 
jersey like they wear in the Olympics that says ``USA'' just so they 
understand whom they represent. Maybe the next time they bring a trade 
treaty back to the U.S. Senate they can bring one back that serves our 
economic interest. We need trade agreements that are not driven by 
foreign policy, but instead are guided by hard-nosed economic policy 
that represents our economic interests.
  Now we are told that in the next week or so we are going to have 
fast-track trade authority brought to the floor of the Senate. Good 
luck. This fast track is going to do more of the same trade stuff that 
got us into this trouble. Not with my vote. I intend to stand here and 
object to every single thing that is asked and every single thing that 
is requested to get fast track to the floor of the Senate. I am only 
one person. I probably can't stop it. But I can sure slow it down some. 
I fully intend to do that.
  I have something to say to those folks who are so all-fired anxious 
to bring fast-track trade authority back to the floor of the Senate 
based on the package already reported out of the Senate Finance 
Committee. If you are so anxious to talk about trade, why don't you 
figure out how to deal with the problems created in our previous trade 
agreements. Before you start trying to figure out how you send people 
over to do new trade treaties with other countries, fix a few of the 
problems. Fix the problems with Canada. Tell our farmers why a flood of 
Canadian grain can come across in this direction, and a pickup truck 
with a few kernels gets stopped at the Canadian border, and they have 
to sweep the few kernels off because you can't take a few kernels of 
wheat into Canada. Tell our farmers how that is free trade. It is not. 
Fix those trade agreements before you come to us talking about more 
fast-track trade agreements.
  I just want to say this to the majority leader and others. If you 
think this place is going to move quickly, trying to bring fast track 
to the floor of the Senate is a sure fire way of slowing down the 
proceedings of the Senate. I guarantee it. Fast track will not solve 
the farm crisis. It is the farm crisis that has to be our priority in 
the remaining few weeks of this session.
  I hope very much that we can agree on a bipartisan basis on the need 
and the urgency to address the farm crisis. I hope that we can do that 
on a bipartisan basis. Farmers don't get up in the morning or go to bed 
at night as Republicans or Democrats. They don't care with respect to 
their long-term economic survival whether it is a Republican or a 
Democratic plan. They care about whether it is a plan that works. They 
need a plan that says to them that we care about them and their future.
  I hope that all of us who come from farm country and who represent 
rural America can join together and decide to do something meaningful, 
something real, and something that really does help family farmers 
before we adjourn this 105th Congress.
  I wanted to make those comments because in the next week or so I 
expect there will be amendments offered once again on the floor of the 
Senate dealing with farm price supports that need to be passed. I will 
also be involved in the Appropriations Committee in conference with the 
House to move forward with the $500 million indemnification program 
which Senator Conrad and I and others authored and that we have already 
passed through the Senate. And we may be working on other issues as 
well, including the trade issue that I just described.
  Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Washington for allowing 
me to make some interim comments. I noticed I wasn't interrupted. I 
guess that means no one showed up to offer an amendment on his Interior 
bill.
  Let me also say that I am a member of the Appropriations Committee 
and a member of the subcommittee. I very much respect his leadership. I 
think he does an excellent job with this piece of legislation. I say 
that because tomorrow I intend to offer an amendment that I hope he 
will perhaps accept. But I thank him again for allowing me the time to 
interrupt the legislation on the floor.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I make a point of order that a 
quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll to determine the 
presence of a quorum.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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