[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15448-15449]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE FARM CRISIS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me turn to an additional issue I 
believe Congress and the President must consider in the month of July. 
It deals with the urgent farm crisis that exists in farm country across 
America.
  If there was a massive earthquake, a series of tornadoes, fires, or 
floods across the Midwest, we would see Congress, the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency, virtually everyone involved through the Federal 
agencies responding immediately. The President would likely fly out and 
view it. Congress would send emergency help. Federal agents would be 
there en masse setting up offices to help.
  Yet in farm country we have a crisis that is just as real, not as 
dangerous to human health or human life as a tornado or a flood, 
perhaps, but just as real and just as dramatic as natural disasters.
  The chart here shows what has happened to the price of wheat since 
1996. You can see what has happened to the price of wheat. We have 
mostly wheat farmers up in our part of the country. The price of wheat 
has collapsed like a lead weight. Ask yourself: If your income 
collapsed, if a Senator's income collapsed like that, do you think 
there would be howls of protest? Do you think that would be an 
emergency? How about the minimum wage, if it went down like this? How 
about if the stock market looked like this? Do you think there would be 
a problem in this country? Of course, there would.
  This is a huge problem in the farm belt. Family farmers are finding 
themselves on the precipice of going broke in record numbers. I had a 
call this morning from a family farmer who nearly choked up on the 
phone saying: I don't think my son and I can continue. We can't 
continue when prices have collapsed. We don't have the income to 
continue family farming.
  For them it is a dream, a lifestyle, a way of life. It is not just a 
business.
  This Congress, while prices have collapsed, largely is content to 
sort of meander around and talk as if it were theory. It is not theory. 
It is a crisis.
  This chart shows what is happening across the farm belt. The red 
indicates the counties that have lost more than 10 percent of their 
population, 1980-1998. Take a look at the red. What does that show? The 
middle part of America is being depopulated, especially now with prices 
collapsing, people moving out and not in.
  The question is, ``What are we going to do about that?'' Congress has 
a responsibility to do something about it and so does this President. 
This Congress passed the Freedom to Farm bill. The presumption of 
Freedom to Farm is, we will reduce support prices and you rely on the 
marketplace. If the marketplace has collapsed prices, there has to be a 
safety net. If you don't have a safety net, you won't have family 
farmers left.
  Freedom to Farm hasn't worked, and this Congress needs to understand 
that and do something about it. The President also has a 
responsibility. He signed the Freedom to Farm bill. He complained a 
little about it when he signed it, but he signed it and said: We will 
make some improvements.
  The Freedom to Farm bill hasn't worked. Our trade policies are 
bankrupt and not working. Concentration of agricultural industries 
means that farmers face monopolies in every direction. All of these 
combined together are conspiring to leave this country without family 
farmers in its future, and that will be, in my judgment, a massive 
failure for America.
  In the month of July, in the coming 4 weeks, the President has a 
responsibility, in my judgment, to come to Congress with a bold 
approach in dealing with this issue. Congress has a responsibility to 
deal with it, as well, in a bold manner.
  I know some in Congress say: We don't intend to do anything until the 
President sends us something. They didn't have that reticence about 
adding $6 billion to the defense bill. When the emergency bill came up 
for defense, they said: We don't care what the President said. We think 
he should have $6 billion more.
  This is a joint responsibility. The Congress needs to act and the 
President needs to act. We need to do it together, and it needs to be 
done now. Not later, now. If we don't take action soon, we won't have 
family farmers left. We won't have to worry about an emergency family 
farm bill because there won't be family farmers around to respond to.
  Again, if there was an earthquake or a flood or fire or tornado or 
perhaps even some hog disease, as Will Rogers used to say, you'd have 
all the Federal agents coming out to talk about the hog disease. They 
would want to know, ``what is happening here and will it spread to 
other hogs?''
  One way to get attention, it seems to me, is for Congress and the 
President to decide that this is a farm crisis. It is in my part of the 
country, with the collapse in prices and the natural disaster that has 
kept about 3 million acres from being planted in North Dakota because 
it was too wet. The floods and the worst crop disease in this century, 
all piled on top of family farmers' shoulders at a time when prices are 
collapsed. To add to their burden, we have a trade agreement that 
allows the Europeans to spend 10 times as much

[[Page 15449]]

on their farm program as we do and undercuts prices on sales to foreign 
governments. We let them do that in excess of ours--we won't even use 
our export program for reasons I don't understand--at a time of 
mounting burdens on family farmers in a way that is fundamentally 
unfair.
  We had better decide as a country that family farming matters to our 
future. If we don't, they won't be around. When they are not around, 
corporations will farm our country coast to coast. The price of food 
will go up and this country will have lost something and every small 
town will have lost something important.
  This is not just about farmers. It is about small towns and Main 
Streets and boarded-up business and economies that are empty shells in 
a lot of our small communities.
  My message is very simple: We have a responsibility this month. We 
have a responsibility now, all of us, and so does the President, to 
have a meeting. I want the White House to have a meeting on this with 
Republicans and Democrats. I want us to come together with an emergency 
package that responds to the farm crisis, does it boldly, does it in a 
way that helps real family farmers, and does it in a way that gives 
family farmers some hope that their future is a future in which they 
can make a decent living raising America's food supply.
  If I might make one additional point: We have to rely on foreign 
markets as well. We produce more food than we consume in this country. 
Yet I heard last week that the amount of imported food in this country 
has doubled in the last 7 years.
  We had protests at the Canadian border last weekend. It is unfair the 
level of imports coming from Canada. The thing I don't understand, 
however, is the grain market, all these folks that worship at the altar 
of the marketplace in the grain market. The grain market says to our 
farmers: Your food that you produce has no value. Yet all the testimony 
we hear from all around the world, Sudan included, tells us that old 
women are climbing trees foraging for leaves to eat because there is 
nothing to eat. We know that a substantial portion of the world's 
population goes to bed at night with an ache in their belly because of 
hunger.
  It makes no sense for us to be told that our food has no value when 
people go to bed hungry each night. I want the White House and the 
Congress together to boldly respond to this issue in the coming weeks. 
This 4-week period is critical. We must put this on the agenda in a 
bipartisan way and do so boldly.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.

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