[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

[[Page S10882]]

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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