[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 9004-9006]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     CONTINUING AGRICULTURE CRISIS

  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I rise today to again talk about the 
continuing agriculture crisis that is facing America's farmers. I spent 
this weekend in North Dakota. I spoke at the annual graduation of the 
North Dakota State School of Science and then at North Dakota State 
University's graduation on Saturday morning. On Friday, I went to an 
event we call Marketplace For Kids, which we hold every year, in which 
children from a large part of North Dakota come in and show the things 
they have been working on--inventions, creative ideas that they have 
had.
  In these three sets of events I ran into literally hundreds of North 
Dakota farm families. Without exception they told me, Senator, unless 
there is a Federal response and unless it comes quickly, literally 
thousands of us are going to be forced off the land this spring.
  This is a crisis as deep and as serious as any I have seen in my 13 
years now representing North Dakota in the Senate. We have had quite a 
string of crises: in 1988-1989, the worst drought since the 1930s; in 
1997, the worst flood in 500 years that devastated the town of Grand 
Forks, ND; and now this continuing agriculture crisis, as a result of, 
really, three factors. One is the collapse of farm prices. The second 
is incredibly bad weather over the last 5 years--overly wet conditions. 
In fact, as I flew over North Dakota, it looked like Lake Agassiz, 
which existed thousands of years ago, was reforming, because everywhere 
I looked, as I flew in a light plane over half of North Dakota, flying 
from east to west, all I saw was water everywhere. It was really 
stunning to see it. Then, of course, we have been hit by bad policy: A 
farm bill that has reductions in support from Government no matter what 
happens to farm prices, very steep reductions that are included in that 
policy; and, of course, a trade policy that left us vulnerable to 
incredible increases in imports from Canada traded on an unfair basis.
  This stew that is being cooked is increasingly hard to choke down for 
our farmers. This is a recent headline, April 4, in the Bismarck 
Tribune, my hometown newspaper. The headline is: ``Farm Families Forced 
To Cancel Health Insurance.'' In the story they talk about Clint 
Jacobs, a 30-year-old farmer, who raises 200 head of cattle near 
Amidon, ND. That is out in western North Dakota. He and his wife and 
their 1\1/2\-year-old daughter were paying $550 every 3 months for 
health insurance and they had $1,000 deductible. They had to drop their 
health insurance.
  This is a story that is repeated every day across North Dakota, and I 
am sure in other farm belt States as well, as we cope with the lowest 
prices in 52 years--the lowest prices in 52 years. These farm families, 
with incredibly hard-working, decent, honest people, are having to dump 
their health insurance in a bid to survive financially. This really is 
not right.
  As I traveled across my State this weekend, farm families came to me, 
bankers came to me with a very consistent message: You have to respond 
and you have to respond quickly, because this is a set of facts that is 
going to suck thousands of us down.
  This article I was referring to says that 26 out of 82 farmers and 
ranchers who were surveyed had dropped health insurance to make ends 
meet. The survey was done by the Lutheran Disaster Response of Lutheran 
Social Services in North Dakota. As one person said, if you have four 
or five bad years and you tighten the belt every time, health insurance 
gets to be one of the things that is cut.
  That is what is happening today in my State. Patients are skipping 
preventive care, such as checkups and mammograms. Some doctors and 
other health care providers are not getting paid.
  In a sidebar story by the Associated Press, their farm writer says: 
Facing a

[[Page 9005]]

dim agriculture forecast this year, farmers can now prepare for 
financial cutbacks. A Purdue University extension specialist who offers 
financial advice to struggling farmers in Indiana said families must 
determine what they can do without.
  That is exactly what is happening in North Dakota. Maybe there are 
some who are listening and saying that we have had to do that in our 
life, we have had to cut back when times are tough, we have had to 
consider what you can do without; so what.
  This is not a typical downturn. This goes far beyond what somebody 
can fairly plan for--the lowest prices in 52 years; 5 years of the 
worst weather on record; as a result, an outbreak of disease 
unprecedented in our State's history.
  In over 100 years, we have never seen an outbreak of disease like we 
are coping with now. Scab, a fungus that breaks out when there are 
overly wet conditions, dramatically reduced production, with prices, as 
I indicated, the lowest they have been in 52 years. What a double 
whammy. On top of it, to have a farm bill passed--and it does not 
matter what farm prices are--that is slashing Government support for 
producers at the very time our chief competitors are spending more.
  The Europeans, who are our chief competitors and who we were supposed 
to be convincing to cut their subsidies by cutting ours, did they 
decide to follow suit? Absolutely not. They have decided to spend more, 
and they are already spending $50 billion a year to support their 
farmers. We are spending $5 billion. That is not a fair fight.
  Our farmers are ready to take on anybody anytime anywhere. They are 
ready to compete. They are ready to take on the farmers of France and 
Germany and England, and all the rest, but they are not prepared to 
take on, in addition to the farmers from those countries, the 
governments of those countries. They are not prepared to take on the 
French Government, the German Government, and the British Government, 
as well as the farmers from those countries. That is not a fair fight.
  Yet, that is what we have said to our farmers: You go out there and 
you take on the French farmers and, while you are at it, take on the 
French Government as well. You go out there and compete against the 
German farmer, and while you are at it, take on the German Government 
as well.
  That is not a fair fight. We have to put tools in the hands of our 
farmers so they have a chance to fight back. If we do not, we will wake 
up sometime soon and find that tens of thousands of farm families have 
been forced off the land and have been destroyed financially. That is 
what is happening in my State each and every day. Good people, honest 
people are being destroyed. The question is, Are we going to stand and 
help them or are we going to stand by and do nothing? That is the 
choice that is before us. I hope we respond, and I hope we respond 
quickly.
  We need to immediately pass the emergency supplemental that is in the 
conference committee between the House and the Senate tomorrow. We need 
to pass that legislation because it provides an expansion of credit to 
get farmers into the fields, and we need to add to that package. We 
need to add $1.5 billion to keep the promise that we made last year in 
the disaster bill. We now know the farmers have signed up for the 
program that we have promised. We found we are $1.5 billion short of 
funding what we promised. We ought to keep the promise, and we ought to 
do it in this bill.
  In addition, we ought to provide the same supplemental benefit we 
provided last year to offset this dramatic decline in prices. That 
would be an AMTA supplemental, transition payments that were provided 
for in the last farm bill that are going down each and every year. Last 
year, because of the crisis, we provided a 50-percent supplement. We 
need to do that again this year. It will cost $2.8 billion.
  That is a total package approaching $5 billion. Last year, we passed 
a package of $6 billion. I would like to have that amount again this 
year, but the reality is that we are going to have to make do with the 
package like the one I have described, at least for now. But it needs 
to happen now. We should not wait because while we are waiting, 
literally thousands of people are being forced off the land and being 
financially destroyed, through no fault of their own, by being caught 
up in a circumstance of bad weather, bad prices, and bad policy. There 
is not much we can do about the prices, there is not much we can do 
about the weather, but we can do something about the policy. That is 
our responsibility. I hope we meet that responsibility and meet it this 
week.
  I want to show, before I leave this subject, some charts that 
appeared in the newspapers back home while I was there. It showed the 
net return per acre of wheat in North Dakota going back to 1986. You 
can see the kinds of returns that farmers were seeing per acre for 
planting wheat. Our State is a major wheat State, really one of the key 
breadbasket States in the Nation.
  As you can see, there were positive returns of over $30 an acre in 
1986 and 1987. Then we saw pretty tough times in 1988, 1989, and 1990, 
the drought years. We saw a substantial improvement in 1991, 1992, and 
1993. In 1994, we saw a steep slide; 1995, further erosion; 1996 was 
about the same as 1995, and then the bottom fell out in 1997, negative 
returns per acre approaching a $20 loss per acre. The more you planted, 
the worse off you were, and the same pattern was repeated in 1998.
  If we do not act, 1999 is going to be a whole lot worse and, 
literally, as I have indicated, thousands of farm families are going to 
be facing auction. I showed a cartoon that was in the biggest paper in 
my State several weeks ago. It showed a pole, and it had auction signs, 
9 or 10 different auction signs all pointing in different directions. 
Sitting on top of the pole was a buzzard. That is kind of the feeling 
in my State right now. The buzzards are swooping overhead waiting for 
another farm failure, waiting for another auction, waiting to see 
another farm family sold out, because that is what is happening all too 
frequently in my State these days.
  If it was not enough to have the dominant crop in negative return 
territory the last year, this is the pattern of raising cattle. You can 
see very much a similar pattern, only returns went negative earlier for 
cattle. In 1995 and 1996, they were negative, and they were barely in 
the black for 1997 and 1998.
  Two-thirds of the income in my State is crop income. So when crops 
are giving negative returns, and then you face on top of that livestock 
giving negative returns, it is impossible to make money--impossible to 
make money--again, not through any fault of these farm families. These 
are the hardest working, most honest people I know, but they are being 
devastated by events beyond their control.
  The financial collapse in Asia cost them their biggest customer. The 
financial collapse in Russia cost them a very big customer. Those 
events, working together, have created a nightmare for these farm 
families. Then on top of that, after you stack these natural disasters, 
you put the final coup de grace--the bad policy coming out of 
Washington--and it is pretty hard for a farm family to make it.
  It is pretty hard for them to take on the Europeans when those 
countries have decided that they are going to spend $50 billion a year 
to support their producers and we are spending $5 billion. We are being 
outspent, outgunned, 10-to-1. And why? Because the Europeans decided 
some time ago that it made sense to their countries to have people out 
across the land. They did not want to see everybody forced into the 
city. They did not think that made sense for their society.
  I hope very soon we will come to a similar conclusion in this country 
and will decide that it makes sense to have people out across the land, 
because if we do not respond, there will be precious few people out 
there; they will all be headed to the cities. The last thing we need in 
the Washington metroplex is more people: More crowding, more pollution, 
more hassle. That is exactly what is going to happen unless we respond.
  This is a good country, a generous country, and one that responds 
when

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people are in crisis. We are going to respond to the disasters in 
Oklahoma, in Kansas, in Tennessee, and the other States that have been 
affected. I believe we are going to respond in this crisis, as well, in 
the farm States of America, because they are on the brink of a total 
financial collapse. That is the seriousness of what is happening.
  Now is the time; this week is the time; on this supplemental is the 
time to respond, and to respond strongly, to give people the help they 
desperately need.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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