[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13024]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, today we passed an appropriations 
bill for agriculture. Let me first spend a second giving my impressions 
of the predicament that American agriculture is now facing.
  On a level playing field, American agriculture could compete 
favorably with most any other country in the world on most any of the 
commodities that we produce. Part of the challenge in our Federal 
agricultural policy is the fact that other countries subsidize their 
farmers much more than we subsidize our farmers in this country. So, 
for example, Europe subsidizes five times as much as we do, and the 
consequences are that the additional production from those farmers and 
in those countries that are heavily subsidized often take what would 
otherwise be our markets to sell our particular agricultural products. 
Farmers today face some of the lowest commodity prices they have seen 
in the last 15, 20, 25 years, depending on the particular commodity.
  So as we try to develop agricultural policy in the next several weeks 
for what is going to partially determine the destiny and, in many 
cases, the survival or bankruptcy or going out of business of many 
farmers in the United States, we need to look at how we spend Federal 
taxpayer dollars to most effectively, number one, assure that the 
agricultural industry that we want to keep in America stays here and is 
able to survive; number two, that still the marketplace and those 
individual farmers that are efficient and productive tend to have the 
kind of incomes that are going to allow them and their families to stay 
on that family farm operation.
  One of the amendments I had today on the agricultural appropriations 
bill was an amendment that would put a payment limitation on farmers. 
We are now seeing a situation where our farm programs, our Federal farm 
policy, since we started it in 1934, has tended to favor the large 
farmers. The result is that those large farmers, with the additional 
advantage of Government payments, ended up trying to buy out the 
smaller farms and became even larger. If there is some merit in having 
a Federal agricultural policy that helps the traditional family farm 
survive without giving, then it is going to be a situation that does 
not give an additional advantage to the huge, large farmer.
  Some farmers in the loan program, the price support program for 
commodities that we have as part of our Federal farm policy, still 
continue to favor that large farmer. The average farm size in the 
United States is about 420 acres. To exceed the current limits in law 
of not more than $75,000 per farmer in this loan, minimum price 
protection policy that we have, we see a lot of farmers now that have 
gone way over the average of 420 acres. We have 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 
80,000 acre farms.

                              {time}  1915

  Because we have no limit on the price support of those farmers, then 
some of these farms are taking in $1 million, or some of these farmers 
are taking in $1 million-plus in farm payments.
  As we face the predicament of trying to be as frugal and as well-
managed as we can on the available resources in this country, we need 
to look at the kind of policy that does not continue to favor those 
large farmers, and putting a real limit on how much taxpayers should be 
paying to any farmer should be part of that consideration.
  I am disappointed that my amendment today was ruled out of order, but 
it is an issue as we start developing new farm legislation that we have 
to deal with in terms of assuring not only that we have the kind of 
agricultural production in this country that is not going to put us at 
a security disadvantage, and I use the comparison of oil.
  In concluding, Mr. Speaker, we are now dependent almost 40 percent on 
imported energy from petroleum products. We have seen the power of OPEC 
in raising their prices and making us pay the higher price.
  That same thing could happen to agriculture, so the decisions we make 
in agricultural policy are extremely important. Favoring the 
traditional family farm and not favoring the huge farm corporations 
must be part of our agricultural agenda.

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