[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 58 (Tuesday, April 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4215-S4216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICA'S FAMILY FARMERS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know there has been discussion about the 
agenda here in the Senate, what the Senate will take up, what it will 
consider, what it will debate in the coming days and weeks and months. 
I hear very little discussion about the need to respond to the farm 
crisis in the rural parts of our country.
  I have, on half dozen occasions now, brought to the floor of the 
Senate a chart that shows our entire country with those counties 
blocked out in red that are losing population. What it shows is a large 
part of the middle of our country is being depopulated. We have a 
serious and abiding farm crisis. That depopulation in the middle part 
of America stems in large part from a farm economy that means family 
farmers are not making a living and all too often are having to leave 
the farm.
  We keep hearing that it is a global economy. If it is a global 
economy, then why on earth do we have so many people hungry in the rest 
of the world? We are told 500 to 600 million people go to bed with an 
ache in their belly every night because they did not have enough to 
eat. Then in the same global economy, with so many hungry people, a 
farmer somewhere in Cando, ND, or Regent, ND, today loads up a 
truckload of wheat and takes it to the county elevator and is told that 
the food has no value. That is not a global economy that seems to work, 
in my judgment.
  This chart shows what is happening in the heartland of our country. 
Most of it is because of the urgency of the economic crisis facing 
family farmers. These red counties are the counties which have lost 
more than 10 percent of their population. Many of them have lost far 
more. My home county [Hettinger] is right up in here. It has lost 
almost half of its population in the last 25 years.
  The middle part of America is being depopulated. We have a farm 
program that doesn't work. We have natural disasters that affect these 
family farmers. We have crop diseases. A GAO study I just released last 
week shows that in North Dakota a crop disease called scab or vomitoxin 
has cost our farmers $200 million a year in lost income. They say 750 
farmers have lost their farms because of just that one crop disease, 
the worst crop disease in a century in my home State.
  Natural disasters, crop diseases; how about trade? How about telling 
our family farmers to compete in the global economy with the Europeans 
subsidizing their farmers in multiples of what we are while we try to 
help our farmers open foreign markets. You compete in the international 
marketplace with one hand tied behind your back. Or how about 
international trade that says, why don't we have the Canadians dump 
tens of thousands of semi-truckloads of their grain, their durum wheat 
and their spring wheat into our marketplace in conditions of unfair 
trade, driving down our prices. That is all right, and we will sit by 
and do nothing about it.
  That is not a fair circumstance for our farmers. Japan, China; how 
many in this Chamber know that currently the tariff on American beef 
going into Japan is 45 percent, a 45-percent tariff? If we imposed that 
on anybody, we would be considered a massive failure. China says maybe 
they will decrease their tariff on American beef going into China. It 
is now 42.5 percent.
  Our farmers deserve better trade policies than they are getting from 
this Government of ours. Our Government cannot do much about natural 
disasters except respond to them with a helping hand at a time when 
people need help. It can do something about trade policy that is unfair 
to our producers. And certainly, this administration and this Congress, 
especially this Congress, ought to do something about a farm bill that 
shortchanges American farmers.
  The current farm bill we have is a wonderful bill if you are Cargill 
or Continental or some large grain trading company. If you are one of 
the behemoths, one of the giant agrifactories in America, you have to 
like the current circumstance. You have low prices at which you can buy 
the grain. Then you can put it in your plant, apply some air to it, and 
you can puff it up. Now you can call it puffed wheat and put it on the 
grocery store shelf. And while you are paying less for the grain, you 
can increase your prices. That is exactly what is happening, and that 
is exactly what was announced last week.
  Grain prices for family farmers are collapsed. Cereal manufacturers 
are saying, we want to increase cereal prices 2.5 percent. You talk 
about a disconnection. You talk about short-circuiting the economic 
system. That is a short-circuit.
  The question for this Congress is, Do we care? I do. Do enough others 
care to want to save family farmers? Or is America's food production 
destined to go to the giant agrifactories that farm America from 
California to Maine with nary a person in sight--no farm lights, no 
yard lights out there illuminating where a family lives and does its 
work--because there won't be families on the farm?

  Or does this country, does this Congress, as many other countries, 
believe that a broad network of family producers on America's farms and 
ranches represents the best economic system? Do we believe in the 
Jeffersonian model that Thomas Jefferson talked about: That which keeps 
America free is broad-based economic ownership, because economic 
freedom relates to political freedom?
  Do we really believe in broad-based economic ownership? If so, let's 
start to manifest that belief in farm policy. Let's decide that current 
farm policy is a bankrupt policy. The bill that was passed, the current 
farm bill that was passed that pulls the rug out from under family 
farmers says, when prices collapsed, do not bank on us for help--when 
that bill was passed, without my vote in this Congress, there was 
feasting and rejoicing and celebrating here in this town by the largest 
agribusinesses because they thought they had just won the lottery. What 
a wonderful deal for them.
  Someday we will have lower grain prices, they thought, and we will 
buy this grain from family farmers cheap, and then eventually the 
family farmers will be gone. They will take over the farms and farm all 
of our country. They will put that grain in plants and will make 
substantial money off of it. That is exactly what happened at the 
expense of family farmers.
  The question before this Congress is: Are we going to have the will 
to do what is necessary to repair the hole in the safety net for family 
farmers? Do we care whether there are family farmers left in our 
country?
  Wheat prices have fallen 53 percent. Let me show a chart which 
demonstrates what has happened to wheat prices. I ask any American, I 
ask any Member of the Senate, how would you

[[Page S4216]]

feel if this was what was happening to your paycheck? How well would 
you do if this was what your income looked like? That is what the 
income looks like on our farms.
  On America's farms, they see Depression-era prices in constant 
dollars, but their expenses keep going up. Try to buy a tractor or a 
combine, fertilizer, seed, fuel, at today's prices. See if you get a 
bargain. But then sell the grain that comes from the sweat and the 
labor, from driving the tractor, planting the seeds in the spring, 
tending that crop through the year and at harvesting in the fall. Try 
to sell that crop, and see what they tell you. Then it is not so much a 
circumstance where they say, well, times have changed and things cost 
more. They say, your product that you worked so hard to create is worth 
less, worth less or worthless.
  This country can do better than that. If we don't do better than 
that, we won't have any farmers left.
  We need to decide that by the Memorial Day break or by the July 4 
break at the very latest, we need to do something to repair this safety 
net. The first step is obvious. I just spoke over in the Appropriations 
Committee hearing. We have an emergency bill which provides for the 
first spring planting loans. That emergency bill was passed many weeks 
ago here in the Senate and now, of course, awaits action on the Kosovo 
emergency question. But the climate doesn't wait. The spring doesn't 
wait. Spring planting is needed to move ahead now. Yet the loans that 
many farmers need to get into the field for the spring, to buy the fuel 
and buy the seed, those loans are not available because we haven't 
passed that emergency supplemental dealing with those emergency loans.
  That is the first step. That ought to be done immediately.
  The second step is, between now and the Memorial Day break or the 
July 4 break, we ought to do something to put in place a fair price 
plan for family farmers. We ought to have the good sense to do that. 
There is nothing wrong with making a U-turn when you discover where you 
are headed is the wrong direction. The current farm bill is the wrong 
direction. It seemed right at the time for a lot of folks who voted for 
it. As I said, I didn't. For those who voted for it when farm prices 
were better, it seemed like it was the right thing to do. But it was 
the wrong thing to do.
  Now that farm prices have collapsed, the question is, Do we have a 
safety net left in this country for family farmers to try to get them 
across those price valleys? The answer is no. But we can repair and 
provide a safety net for family farmers if this Congress and this 
country believes it is important to have a broad-based network of 
family farm ownership across this country. I believe that very 
strongly, and I hope my colleagues who support family farming will feel 
the same way.
  Now, Mr. President, last week, when I came to the floor of the 
Senate, I held up a newspaper that I got on an airplane in Minneapolis. 
This paper said: ``Cargill Profits From Decline in Farm Prices; 53 
percent jump in earnings.'' I don't know Cargill. It is a big 
agrifactory. ``Cargill Profits From Decline in Farm Prices.'' As do all 
of the big economic interests. This was in the same newspaper: 
``General Mills to Boost Cereal Prices 2.5 Percent.'' There is a 
decline in farm prices, farm prices have collapsed, but cereal 
manufacturers are going to increase the price of breakfast food 2.5 
percent.
  I think the consumers and farmers are both victimized, and they have 
a right to ask what on Earth is going on in this country. Farmers are 
being shortchanged and consumers are being overcharged. What on Earth 
is happening and when is somebody going to do something about it?
  On the same day in that newspaper, these two stories tell of the sad, 
sad events that now confront our family farmers: collapsed prices and a 
circumstance where all of those who take their product and use it, turn 
it into cereal for store shelves, those who haul it, those who trade 
it, and those who add value to that product are making record profits, 
increasing prices, and are doing fine. But family farmers, of course, 
are going broke.
  This Congress must decide, and decide quickly. I and others will be 
coming to the floor repeatedly to ask this question: Why is it when 
people talk about family values they only refer to cultural values? Why 
is the family not valued as an economic unit in this country? Why 
aren't family economics important? The family farm, the family 
business--that is an economic unit that is important to this country, 
and our public policy ought to reflect that. It is long past the time 
when Congress ought to address this farm crisis in a serious and 
thoughtful way.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Chair recognizes the Senator 
from Alaska.
  (The remarks of Mr. Murkowski, Mr. Hagel, and Mr. Grams pertaining to 
the introduction of S. 882 are located in today's Record under 
``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.

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