[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22215-22217]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 CONTINUATION OF AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I speak on some legislation filed by 
distinguished Senators relative to S. 1673 this past Friday. I am 
honored to join with my distinguished colleagues in offering 
legislation to provide the maximum flexibility and stability our 
farmers need to make proper business decisions based on market 
conditions.
  I am mindful, of course, of agriculture's importance to our country's 
economy and to America's security. I might add that agriculture is the 
No. 1 industry in North Carolina. Our farmers rank third in the Nation 
behind California and Florida in agricultural diversification.
  It is with genuine appreciation that I join Senator Lincoln, Senator 
Hutchinson, and Senator Miller in working together in crafting this 
bill. The farm bill we are introducing will be helpful in our 
guaranteeing that American farmers will continue to provide the 
American people with the safe and adequate food supply that too many 
take for granted.
  The past several years have been a genuine challenge to farmers, 
whether their operations are large or small. Farmers and their families 
have long been the backbone of countless rural communities. Every day, 
farmers face new challenges by literally dozens of factors beyond their 
control, from weather to insect infestation, to overreaching 
regulations that unnecessarily increase the cost of production, to 
trade barriers imposed by other countries on our farm products.
  All these factors make it especially difficult for farmers to earn a 
profit when prices are at such historic lows as they are today. As 
farmers begin preparing for a new planting cycle, meeting with their 
bankers to plan the financial future of their businesses and their 
families and making difficult decisions relating to capital 
improvement, they also face the uncertainty that comes with 
congressional consideration of a new farm bill. Farmers are already 
reeling from a string of especially difficult years, and this bill that 
was offered on Friday provides a balanced and bipartisan approach to 
provide the stability needed to better compete on a global playing 
field while allowing farmers the flexibility they must have in order to 
adjust to the world market.
  I think the House of Representatives is to be commended for its 
leadership in so quickly passing a farm bill that is a positive step 
toward bringing stability and predictability to American agriculture. 
The bill we offered Friday in the Senate is built on the concepts 
adopted by the House which, by the way, developed its bill by 
soliciting the input of farmers and farm organizations throughout the 
country for the better part of 2 years.
  We believe this bill is particularly well crafted to clear all of the 
legislative hurdles necessary to present it to the President for his 
signature by the end of this year.
  Although we have had many important national issues to deal with 
during this historic time, we must not forget the needs of America's 
farmers.
  I appreciate the willingness of my colleagues to work together on a 
good piece of legislation, and I look forward to our continued 
cooperation with each other.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter endorsing the 
bill we introduced this past Friday be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                    North Carolina


                                       Farm Bureau Federation,

                                    Raleigh, NC, November 7, 2001.
     Hon. Jesse Helms,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Helms: The North Carolina Farm Bureau favors 
     farm policy philosophies that were adopted in the House 
     version (H.R. 2646) of the Farm Bill. We are also supporting 
     your efforts along with Senators Hutchinson and Lincoln to 
     draft a similar bill that includes a well-balanced funding 
     approach among all titles.
       All commodity groups were included in the writing of the 
     House Farm Bill. The bill outlines the ideals of farmers by 
     directly addressing farm programs while also making 
     significant investments and improvements in conservation, 
     rural development, export, research, and nutrition programs.
       A Farm Bill that reflects the House version will result in 
     a less contentious conference report. This hopefully should 
     allow for a new Farm Bill to be signed into law this year.
       Thank you for your hard work in offering a Farm Bill 
     proposal that helps address the challenges that our farmers 
     face today.
           Sincerely,
                                                  Larry B. Wooten,
                                                        President.

  The author of this letter, by the way, is the distinguished President 
of the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation, Larry Wooten.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senator as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I am proud to rise to thank my colleague 
from North Carolina, having had the pleasure of working with him and 
his staff on this issue. I thank him very much for the leadership he 
has provided the State of North Carolina and this great Nation and 
certainly this body. I have had a wonderful time working with him.
  I join my colleagues in introducing a bill of the utmost importance 
to our farmers. Since the passage of the Freedom to Farm bill in 1996, 
our farmers have toiled under clouds of uncertainty. Quite simply 
stated, our Nation needs a farm policy that works for working farmers. 
That is why, along with Senator Hutchinson, Senator Helms of North 
Carolina, Senator Miller of Georgia, Senators Breaux and Landrieu of 
Louisiana, and Senator Sessions of Alabama, I am proud to offer a new 
alternative.
  We have offered a farm bill that will ensure a strong safety net for 
America's farmers and ranchers. We have offered a farm bill that will 
increase investment in conservation programs by 80 percent. We have 
offered a farm bill that provides more effective support for 
disadvantaged working families through nutrition programs. We have 
offered a farm bill that will increase and improve our Nation's 
agricultural trade programs such as the Food Aid Program that sends 
food to the most needy of nations, many of which are aligned with us in 
our conflicts today against terrorism across the globe. We have offered 
a farm bill that will preserve and protect our Nation's forests and 
environment while investing in rural America.
  For too many years, while the American economy at large was posting 
astonishing and unprecedented gains, our agricultural producers have 
not benefited from our prosperity. It is not only our farmers who are 
suffering as a result of failed Government policy; the institutions of 
small-town and rural America--local banks and merchants, feed and 
supply stores, equipment dealers, even corner grocers and family-owned 
hardware stores--are all caught in the web of financial collapse in 
rural America.
  From a letter I received from a young farmer in northeast Arkansas a 
few months ago, he said his family's farm is nearing ``a point of no 
return,'' and if the crisis continues he will have to leave the land 
that his grandfather worked before him.
  Our family farmers are farming away their equity. They are farming 
away their heritage. Their Government has not provided them the safety 
net they need to be competitive in a global marketplace in order to 
continue to provide us, the American people and people across the 
globe, the safest, most affordable and most abundant food supply in the 
world.
  Here is a letter from a bank president in southeast Arkansas who 
notes that when he moved into his community in 1969, a new John Deere 
combine sold

[[Page 22216]]

for about $15,000. Today, a comparable model sells for about $220,000. 
Fuel for that combine was 15 cents per gallon in 1969, he writes, but 
today a gallon of diesel fuel costs about $1.05. He goes on to note 
that while farmers could expect to receive $3 for a bushel of rice 33 
years ago, today he only gets $2.70 for that same bushel.
  As the costs continue to skyrocket--the input of resources demanded 
of farmers to be put into their crops--the return on these investments 
continues to fall below the levels they were paid over 40 years ago.
  Here is a letter from a young woman in east Arkansas who works a 60-
acre rice and soybean farm with her husband and child. Her husband is 
so depressed because of his lack of ability to be able to provide for 
his family he needs counseling and medication and she can't let her 
child participate in afterschool sports because of the additional costs 
that are entailed.
  She writes that where she and her family once felt pride in their 
sense of independence and self-sufficiency, today they feel only shame 
because they have to rely on loans and supplemental income payments to 
survive.
  These stories are not unusual. In many rural areas, they are becoming 
the norm.
  We cannot afford to let our farmers continue to suffer this way. They 
can't wait another year; their problems are real and they are here 
today. Our bill will address their problems. Our bill will restore them 
to a better economic future. Our bill will restore to them their hope 
so they can build a better future for their children and for the rest 
of the children in this great Nation.
  I am proud to be a coauthor of this bill, and I am proud to say I 
will take my stand to fight for its passage for the men and women who 
toil day in and day out as agricultural producers in this great land. 
We owe them no less.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MILLER. Mr. President, I am pleased to have joined with my 
colleagues to introduce a bipartisan farm bill--a farm bill that will 
secure American agriculture into the 21st century.
  For the past 4 years, our farmers have experienced an agricultural 
crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. As they say 
where I come from, it's been ``hell on a holiday.''
  It has been particularly cruel because until the recent recession 
came along, our suffering farmers had watched the rest of our economy 
thrive with tremendous growth and prosperity.
  The way we distribute disaster assistance cannot continue. Our 
farmers cannot wait any longer. The time for a new farm bill is now.
  Our bill maintains the freedom for producers to plant the crops that 
best reflect market conditions. It provides an adequate safety net 
during economic and weather disasters, and it allows an 80-percent 
increase in conservation spending. Let me repeat that: It provides an 
80-percent increase in conservation spending. That is nearly double 
what it is now. In past farm bills that would be unheard of.
  The bill also makes dramatic and needed improvements in nutrition 
programs, trade promotion programs, and forestry incentives. It also--
and this is very important--provides greater funding for our nation's 
research institutions such as the University of Georgia.
  I have heard from members of the administration and members of the 
Agriculture Committee that we must take this first farm bill of the new 
century in a new policy direction. I do not disagree. I believe that is 
true. Along those lines, I respectfully point out that our bill 
includes the most dramatic farm policy change in nearly 70 years. That 
favorite whipping boy of all farm subsidies, the peanut program, has 
been turned on its head.
  Perhaps, a little history is in order, because where we are 
advocating going compared to where we have been is as different as 
night and day.
  During the Great Depression, when the South I grew up in was that 
``one-third'' of a nation, President Roosevelt spoke about, the peanut 
quota system was established for poor farmers.
  Quotas eventually became based on poundage and were set each year on 
the projected needs of domestic manufacturers.
  As years went by, they began to be rented sometimes from landowner to 
farmer. Whether you agree with the policy or not, the peanut quota 
became a commodity in our neck of the woods.
  The quota was passed down in families from generation to generation, 
and sold much as Coca-Cola or some other stock owned by our city 
cousins.
  This policy, again rightly or wrongly, had seen little change since 
the early days of the Depression. Many families came to rely on quota 
support as their only source of retirement. It was their 401k.
  And then NAFTA and GATT were passed and the peanut farmers' world was 
turned upside down. Because then, in the name of globalization, our 
trade protections for peanuts were lowered, imports were increased, and 
as a result quotas were gradually reduced.
  Many peanut farmers across the country, seeing firsthand that what 
was good for the goose was not always good for the gander, and 
realizing what the future would hold if the current policy remained, 
decided to follow a new path. A way of life for more than three 
generations was, to use a phrase we understand very well, ``gone with 
the wind.''
  This policy was so entrenched, because it had lasted so long, that 
this change has been difficult. It has not been easy to accept. Where I 
come from, a small problem that can be easily solved is known as ``a 
short horse--soon curried.'' Well, this was a big horse, and it has 
taken a long time not only to curry but to break it.
  For months, I, along with many others, called for the peanut 
community to unite and face reality--to get them to accept the fact 
that the peanut quota system as their daddies and granddaddies knew it, 
was gone, to understand that the people in Washington won't support it, 
and NAFTA and GATT are here to stay.
  So, we, their representatives in Congress, urged them to accept this 
change and work to develop a new, comprehensive policy that would allow 
peanut farmers to be competitive in world markets and that would 
compensate those affected by the change. After a lot of discussion, I 
think that is exactly what we have crafted.
  There are never many people happy at a shotgun marriage, and that is 
what this is. To make such a drastic reform took careful bridge-
building to get across these troubled waters. We needed a transition. 
Anything else would have been unfair and not the American way.
  We are willing to face the bad along with the good of fair and open 
trade. But we also want to maintain a peanut industry that will survive 
for future generations of peanut farm families.
  The peanut program in this bill will be a tough row to hoe, but it is 
fair and the peanut community can say, ``We are now like everyone 
else.''
  There is another important point that I wish to make, and it is an 
issue that strikes at the heart of the entire agricultural industry.
  I recently met with a large group of Georgia agriculture leaders, and 
the message they expressed to me was one of great distress and crisis.
  In this time of the lowest interest rates we have seen in years, in 
this time of generous credit, there are banks all over rural Georgia 
that will no longer finance a farmer on the basis of future crops or 
equipment value. It is not that they do not want to help their friend 
and neighbor, but it is simply too big a risk. The loan officer 
reluctantly points out that commodity prices are just too low, and they 
do not see much of a chance for the farmer to repay the loan, no matter 
how hard he and his family might work, not under our present trade 
policy.
  They also point out that the agricultural economy is so distressed 
that equipment purchased by farmers for thousands of dollars only a 
short time ago now has little value because no other farmer can afford 
to buy it.
  The current recession did not bring this on, nor did the events of 
September 11. Mother Nature and poor market conditions did, and it 
shows

[[Page 22217]]

that our farmers must have a stronger safety net.
  In addition, disasters over the past 4 years have exhausted many life 
savings and left no collateral on which to finance anything. Those who 
say we ought to wait to pass a new farm bill ought to have to walk a 
mile in those farmers' shoes. They ought to have to be the ones on the 
farm who work from daylight to dark and from can to can't. They ought 
to have to be sitting at that kitchen table after supper when the kids 
are in bed and hear the discussion about having to give up a farm that 
has been in the family for generations. Then, when the family farm is 
put up on an auction block and it goes for pennies on the dollar, what 
do we say to them then? That is something we can't figure out over 
lunch at the Palm.
  We are going to be talking this week about a stimulus package. We 
have proposals on stimuli coming out of our ears. It is creme de la 
creme that can be conceived only by those highly paid lobbyists, 
pushing and pulling, paying and pimping, and promising to get their 
clients the best breaks and the most generous incentives.
  I learned a long time ago that when it comes to how legislation is 
written--especially here in Washington--it is kind of like that country 
music song by Freddie Hart about his girlfriend: ``If fingerprints 
showed up on skin, I wonder whose I would find on you.''
  I am afraid both stimulus bills have a lot of questionable 
fingerprints on them, and we do not need the FBI to figure out whose 
they are. Their names, addresses, and their interests are in the top 
contributor list of both parties.
  The legislation I am speaking on today also has fingerprints: 
Fingerprints from callused hands--the hands of the workers who feed us 
and clothe us, people who, like the family dog, we just take for 
granted.
  Do I speak too harshly? I am sorry, but because I am not blind to 
what I see, I cannot be bland in what I say. Of course, we cannot 
continue to do things as we have always done, and we cannot continue to 
provide disaster assistance each and every year. But there has to be a 
transition, some ``weaning time,'' as it is called down on the farm.
  Mr. President, this farm bill sets a new policy, a sea change in 
conservation and peanuts. It addresses the critical needs facing 
America's farmers. It was written by Senators from both sides of the 
aisle. I hope that same bipartisan support will pass a new farm policy 
this year.

                          ____________________