[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14544-14545]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            THE FARM CRISIS

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, coming from an 
agricultural State, I just want to, as I think Richard Nixon would say, 
make one thing ``perfectly clear'' about agriculture.
  Senator Dorgan is right on the mark when he makes the point. It is 
sort of an inside thing, but it is very important to the outsiders, 
especially to farmers, and not just to farmers but to those of us who 
come from farm States. If yesterday the majority leader had been 
successful on the cloture vote, we would not have been able to bring 
this amendment to the floor on this ag bill that calls for an 
additional $6.5 billion of assistance.
  Let me just say that this ag appropriations bill that just funds 
existing USDA programs will not do the job. Let me also say, in my 
State of Minnesota, and I will not talk about a lot of statistics that 
I could talk about farm income having dropped 40 percent over the last 
several years. I could talk about this last decade where farmers have 
been wondering why they see a 35-percent drop in price, and yet the 
consumer price goes up while the farm-retail spread grows wider and 
wider between what farmers make and consumers pay. We want to know what 
is going on. Let me just tell you, in my State there are a lot of 
broken lives and a lot of broken dreams and a lot of broken families.
  Let me also just simply say that time is not neutral; time moves on. 
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. If we do not get this 
additional assistance to farmers, much of it directly related to income 
loss because of record low prices, then a lot of farmers are not going 
to be able to live to farm another day.
  We have to get this assistance to farmers. It has to be in this ag 
appropriations bill. I will tell you something. I do not even like 
coming out here and fighting for additional bailout for farmers or 
additional credit assistance, because most of the farmers in North 
Carolina and Minnesota, and around the country, are not interested in 
bailout money. They are interested in being able to get a decent price. 
That's what they are interested in.
  Let me go on. Let me say, again, this appropriations bill will be an 
appropriations bill that will really help. This amendment calls for 
this additional $6.5 billion in assistance.
  Second point: I do not know what the press conference was about here 
in Washington. I was back home with a lot of farmers. There were a lot 
of people from all around the State who came

[[Page 14545]]

together for a gathering at the capital. But I will tell you this. I 
hope that some of the folks who held the press conference also talked 
about how we can make sure that family farms have a future several 
years from now. I think we have to speak the truth. And the truth of 
the matter is, this Freedom to Farm bill of 1996 is a freedom to fail 
bill.
  The fundamental crisis is a crisis of price. Right now our corn 
growers get $1.75 at the local elevator; our wheat growers get $3.13 
for wheat. This is nowhere near the cost of production. They cannot 
cash flow. They cannot make a living. Unless we fix this freedom to 
fail bill and we go back to some sort of leverage for farmers in the 
marketplace, some kind of safety net which will give them a decent 
income, some sort of price stability, our family farmers do not have 
any future. That is what this is all about.
  I am not interested in semantics. If people want to say, I am still 
for the Freedom to Farm bill, I don't care. But I will say this. The 
flexibility in that legislation to farm a whole lot of different crops 
does not do any good if there are record low prices for all of them. So 
let's get the assistance to people so they can survive.
  But let's get beyond the short run, and let's be honest with one 
another. Let's fix that Freedom to Farm, or freedom to fail, bill, and 
let's make sure there is some price stability and there is some farm 
income out there; otherwise, our family farmers have no future.
  Finally, if there was a press conference yesterday, I sure as heck 
hope there was some focus on the distortions in the market. I would 
like to join all my Republican colleagues in calling for putting free 
enterprise back into the food industry. I would like to join with all 
of my Republican colleagues in being a true Adam Smith apostle and 
calling for a market economy. I would like to join with all my 
Republican colleagues, in other words, in calling for some antitrust 
action.
  How in the world can our family farmers make it when you have four 
large firms, the packers dominating the livestock farmers, the grain 
companies dominating the grain farmers? There has to be some fair 
competition. Everywhere our family farmers turn, whether it is from 
whom they buy or to whom they sell, we do not have the competition.
  Let's really be on the side of these family farmers and insist on 
some competition. Let's have the courage to take on some of these 
conglomerates that have muscled their way to the dinner table 
exercising their raw political power over our producers and over our 
consumers, and, I say to the Chair, who is my friend, I think over the 
taxpayers as well.
  So I am all for a focus on family farmers. This is a crisis all in 
capital letters. I hope we will have some action. But I want to make it 
crystal clear, I think these are the issues that are at stake.

                          ____________________