[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 129 (Thursday, September 24, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10881-S10883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE FAMILY FARM CRISIS
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are going to conference, I think, this
afternoon or tomorrow on the agriculture appropriations bill. I want to
make some comments so that those in this Chamber who believe what some
are proposing to go to conference with is adequate will understand it
is not adequate at all.
We have a farm crisis in our country that is as significant a crisis
as we have had since perhaps the 1930s. As you know, farm prices have
collapsed. The price of wheat has dropped nearly 60 percent. We have
farmers facing a serious, serious problem, many of whom will not be
able to continue farming next year.
That means that yard light someplace out in the country is going out,
that family farm is losing their money, their farm, their hope, their
dreams. This Congress has the capability to do something about it or it
has the capability to ignore it.
We have had two votes here in the Senate to increase price supports
to give family farmers some hope. Twice we have been turned back. We
are going to have a third vote. I am not sure when that is going to
happen. As soon as we have the opportunity to
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offer the emergency plan sent down by the President on Monday of this
week, we are going to have another vote. We have only lost by a handful
of votes.
The future of a lot of farm families will depend on that next vote.
Some have offered an alternative plan in recent days. I am told they
intend to put that in the agriculture appropriations conference in the
next day or so. I would say to them, it is not going to work. It is not
enough. It is offering a 4-foot rope to somebody drowning in 10 feet of
water. ``Well, thanks for the rope, but it doesn't help.''
This Congress has to decide that it is going to help family farmers
when prices collapse. If it does not build a bridge over price valleys,
we will not have family farmers left.
I have a letter from a young boy named Wyatt that I mentioned the
other day on the floor of the Senate. Wyatt is 15-years old, a
sophomore at Stanley High School in Stanley, ND. He comes from a family
farm. Wyatt said, after a long description of the problems his family
is having, ``My dad is a family farmer. And my dad can feed 180 people,
but he can't feed his family.'' It just breaks your heart to get
letters like Wyatt's, and so many others, who write to us talking about
what happens to them when prices collapse.
Our farmers in North Dakota lost 98 percent of their net farm income
in 1 year. Washed away was 98 percent of their income--gone. Just have
any neighborhood, any block, any community, any group of people think
to themselves, ``Where would I be if I lost 98 percent of my income?''
I know where I would be. I bet I know where you would be. That is what
farmers are facing right now in my State and all up and down the farm
belt.
People seem to think, ``You know, things will be just fine. Food
comes from the store. Butter comes from a carton. Milk comes from a
bottle.'' Things will not be just fine if this country loses its family
farms and America's farmers to big agrifactories from California to
Maine. I will tell you what will happen to food costs.
The way you get good, wholesome, safe food--the best in the world, at
the best possible price--is to have a network of family farmers farming
this country and putting food on our tables, at a price that gives them
a decent opportunity to earn a living.
We have had this kind of economic circumstance in our country
recently where I guess the farm belt is viewed as one giant economic
cow. Nobody is willing to feed it, but everybody wants to milk it from
every single direction. Well, the cow is about out of milk. The
question for this Congress is: Are you going to step up, when you pass
a farm bill that says, ``Let's have farmers operate in the free
market,'' but then in every direction the farmer turns, there is no
free market?
Want to market some cows? Guess what? Eighty-five percent of the
cattle slaughtered in this country is done by four firms--four. They
will tell a family farmer what they are going to pay them. If they do
not like it, tough luck.
Want to ship your wheat on a train? Well, there is one train that
comes through our State to haul that wheat. They will tell the farmer
what they are going to charge them. If the farmer does not like it,
tough luck.
Let me give you a little example about what farmers face on
transportation. Ship a carload of wheat from Bismarck, ND, to
Minneapolis; the railroad says that is $2,300--that is what it is going
to cost you to ship that wheat to Minneapolis. Ship the same wheat from
Minneapolis to Chicago--about the same distance--the railroad says that
is $1,000. So you ask the railroad, ``Why do you double-charge North
Dakota farmers?'' The answer is because there is competition between
Minneapolis and Chicago and there is none in North Dakota. So the
railroad says, ``We're able to double-charge farmers in North Dakota.''
So send a cow to market; you face a monopoly. Take your grain to the
railroad; you face a monopoly and get double-charged. Send a hog to
market; the same thing. Send your grain to a flour mill; the same
thing. And 50, 60, 70 percent of the milling, the slaughter, the
transportation--all controlled by a couple big corporations that then
tell family farmers, ``Yeah, you worked hard, you plowed this soil in
the spring, you planted the seed, you nurtured it, you put some
chemicals on it to keep the bugs away and the weeds out, put some
nitrogen in to make it grow, and then you harvested it--and, by the
way, when you are done, we're going to pay you half of what it's worth
and half of what it cost you to produce. And if you don't like it,
tough luck.'' Well, that does not work for this country. That is not
the way this country's economy should be allowed to work. It is not a
free market.
So let's assume a farmer would be able to find a benevolent
railroad--that is, of course, an oxymoron. Let's assume the farmer was
able to market up through a cattle market that was not controlled by
monopolies. Let's assume all of that worked--it does not--but let's
assume it all did. The only thing left that farmer would face is a
series of other countries, like Europe. The farmer then finds half of
his grain, or her grain, goes overseas to a foreign market where they
compete with other governments that subsidize the sale of their grain
into northern African markets and other places to the tune of 10 times
the United States.
People here say to farmers, ``Well, go compete in the free market.''
Yes, the farmer should compete against the big grain companies, against
the big chemical companies, against the big railroads, against the big
packing plants, and against European countries, and against the
Canadians. And if all of that were settled--if all of that were
settled--those farmers would still be told, ``Just compete in the free
market. And here's one more piece of the free market. We've signed you
up for some competition with a trade agreement that we've negotiated
with Canada.'' And my colleagues have heard me speak about this many
times. That trade agreement says to the Canadians, ``You just flood us
with your grain and your cattle and your hogs. You just run them over,
just bring them right on down. And we can't get our grain up, but you
just keep bringing your grain down here, undercut our price.'' That is
the kind of trade agreement we negotiated. We send incompetent
negotiators to negotiate bad agreements, and then we do not even
enforce them.
We had farmers gather at the Canadian border the other day. The
Canadians are good neighbors of ours, have been for a long while, but
the trade agreement with Canada is unfair and taking money right out of
the pockets of our farmers. And we have trade officials who do not seem
to want to do much about it.
So every direction you turn, we have these problems that press in on
our family farmers. We face the prospect of up to 20 percent of our
family farmers in North Dakota not being able to plant in the next
spring or the spring thereafter. You fly over my State and look out at
night from a small plane, look out that window and look at those yard
lights that shine down on a family trying to make a living out on the
land; and then see them turn off, one by one, because public policy
says to them, ``You don't matter anymore. This country doesn't need you
anymore.'' Ask yourself whether this country is going to be a better or
a weaker country when family farmers are gone.
They are talking about bringing the endangered species bill to the
floor of the Senate soon. I am thinking of enlisting family farmers. I
know it will list birds and butterflies, frogs, and flowers. I am the
first one to say I like birds, I like butterflies, and sign me up for
frogs and flowers, as well. I think they are good for our environment
and good to have around.
However, another endangered species in this country is Wyatt. He is a
young boy that comes from a family that will lose their farm, and there
won't be another family like Wyatt's out there. There is only one
family like Wyatt's. Does it matter if Wyatt and his folks and tens of
thousands of others are told, ``You are too small an operator, you
don't matter.''
I think this country will make a huge mistake. The reason I wanted to
speak for a moment now is we are fixing--I think tomorrow--to take a
pathetic little plan that has been offered that will maybe pole-vault
some farmers between now and December, just over the next election, but
won't do nearly enough to get those family farmers into the field next
spring and give them some hope that they can get a harvest next fall.
It is a pathetic little plan. It will be offered, perhaps, in
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the agriculture appropriations conference tomorrow, and then people
will wash their hands and say, ``We sure took care of that.''
No, they won't have taken care of anything. All they will have done
is nudged enough resources out of the scarce pot of money to get them
from here to December, to be able to say to farmers here is a little,
but it is not enough. We understand you won't make it.
There are some of us in this Chamber who are not willing to stand for
that and are not willing to let that be the last word on the fight for
the family farmers' future in the 105th Congress. I don't mean to sound
challenging--yes, I do, now that I think about it. Of course I do. It
is unforgivable in my judgment when we have people coming to the floor
of the Senate and the House and there are hundreds of millions of
dollars here and billions of dollars there and they have appetites for
everything and everything is important, for us to go home and decide it
is not important to save family farmers. I do want to challenge that.
In my judgment, that is a goofy set of priorities for this country.
Thomas Jefferson said 200 years ago that those who live on that land
and produce that food are the best Americans, the first Americans. He
wasn't necessarily saying that nobody else is any good, I am sure.
Thomas Jefferson believed in everyone's worth and he believed in broad-
based economic ownership. Part of what makes this country so strong is
the opportunities for people around the country to engage in broad-
based ownership of America's economy and resources. No one represents
that more than families living on the farm trying to make a decent
living.
I hope in the next 2 weeks we will have the opportunity to convince
the leadership of this Congress that family farmers matter and the
submission on Monday by President Clinton of an emergency plan to
respond to this farm crisis is the right step for this Congress to
take. If Congress does not stand for family farmers, if it fails to
take the step the President has requested, if it decides that this
doesn't matter somehow, then we will have made a very fatal error.
The Senator from Kentucky stood on this floor month after month this
year in very tough circumstances when we were debating the tobacco
bill. He said he understood the public policy issues of tobacco, but he
said I want the Congress to understand the public policy issues of
family farmers out there raising tobacco, as well. Their interests need
to be heard. I know he did that and I watched the passion with which he
did that. He feels very strongly about the interests of those family
farmers. I feel as strongly about his farmers as I do about mine and
all of the farmers up and down that farm belt.
I just want to say to those who think they will shortcut this issue
and they will ram some pathetic plan home tomorrow, take a deep breath,
because you are in for a heck of a fight in the coming weeks if you
think that is how you will solve the problem.
I yield the floor.
Mr. FORD. Mr. President, let me compliment and thank my friend from
North Dakota. No one has worked harder or spoken more eloquently in
support of the small family farm than the Senator from North Dakota.
How well I understand what he is going through.
We heard on this floor yesterday afternoon that we are getting ready
to spend money for ``emergencies,'' but we ought to give a tax break.
What is an emergency? Farmers, the Senator said. We should have known
there would be a drought or there would be too much water. We ought to
have put money in the budget for it.
``Emergency'' is something that is on occasion. We cannot anticipate
an emergency. We can't do that. But a tax break is in perpetuity. It
goes on forever. Emergency is one time.
So we try to cover up by accelerating the payments under Freedom to
Farm. I voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement, one of
seven in this body. It is awfully hard to get a Senator with something
on his mind, with a philosophy that never looks in the future. The
future is now at hand on that vote on the North American Free Trade
Agreement when we are being flooded not only with farm products but
wool and everything else relating to our people trying to make suits,
pants and so forth in the textile business. It is driving our people
out of this country.
The Senator is absolutely correct, we need that safety net for our
farmers.
I have sat on too many front porches of farm families. I have been in
the kitchen with the farmer and his wife and family. I understand what
they are going through. They can't compete.
One of the finest men I know was in my office yesterday taking a load
of hogs to the slaughter house. He got $3,500 for hogs that a year ago
would have brought $7,000. What did he get? Nothing. We don't have any
compassion for him; we don't have any reason to try to help him keep
that farm. He put everything into that load of hogs. What does he get
back? He couldn't even pay for the feed.
So we say ``compete.'' Competition is like dialing a new bank at
home. The tape says if you want so and so, push 1; if you want so and
so, push 2; if you want so and so, push 3. You keep on pushing the
phone and finally people throw the phone out the door. They want to
talk to a human being, but we call another State to talk about local
loan problems or financial problems.
We are getting into an intolerable situation. I hope the Senator
never lets his vote die as it relates to the family farm. I compliment
the Senator for what he is trying to do.
I understand we have been debating the aviation bill, but he has an
amendment that talks sense. The commodity we have so little of here is
common sense. Common sense, I think, if it prevails, the Senator might
win a couple of amendments in the not-too-distant future.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
10 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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