[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[July 23, 1998]
[Pages 1305-1312]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in a Teleconference With Rural Radio Stations on Agricultural 
Issues and Farming
July 23, 1998

[Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, acting as moderator of the 
teleconference, made brief opening remarks and introduced the 
President.]

    The President. Thank you very much, Secretary Glickman. And I want 
to thank you all

[[Page 1306]]

for giving me a chance to speak to people in rural America.
    Today, most of our fellow citizens are enjoying the dividends of the 
strongest American economy in a generation. We have the lowest 
unemployment rate in 28 years. We're about to have the first balanced 
budget and surplus in 29 years, with the highest homeownership in 
American history. But with the economic crisis in Asia hurting our farm 
exports, with crop prices squeezed by abundant world supplies, and with 
farms devastated by floods and fires and droughts, communities in parts 
of the South and Great Plains are withering; in Texas, almost three-
quarters of the cotton crop is lost; and in North Dakota, retired 
auctioneers are being pressed into duty just to handle all the families 
who are being forced to sell their farms.
    Secretary Glickman and I are joined in the Oval Office today by 
several young leaders of the FFA. They represent the future of American 
agriculture and they deserve a chance to have that future. As the former 
Governor of a State that depends heavily on farming, I know we must 
never turn our backs on farmers when Mother Nature or the world economy 
turns a callous eye.
    Our farm communities feed our Nation and much of the world. They 
also nourish the values on which our country was born and which have led 
us now for over 220 years, hard work and faith and family, devotion to 
community and to the land. We simply can't flourish if we let our rural 
roots shrivel and decline.
    For 5\1/2\ years, I've worked to expand opportunity for farm 
families, providing critical disaster assistance to ranchers who have 
lost livestock, purchasing surplus commodities for school lunches, 
working to diversify the sources of income in rural America, increasing 
our use of export credits by a third in the past year alone. But this 
year's farm crisis demands that we provide more help to farmers 
teetering on the edge.
    Last Saturday I directed Secretary Glickman to buy more than 80 
million bushels of wheat to help lift prices for American farmers while 
easing hunger in the developing world. Today, in addition to helping 
citizens in 11 Southern States beat by unrelenting heat, I'm announcing 
we will provide immediate disaster assistance for farmers throughout the 
State of Texas to help those whose crops and livestock have been ravaged 
by drought.
    Next week, I'll send Secretary Glickman to Texas and Oklahoma to 
talk with drought-stricken farmers and assess what other help they 
require. And once again, I urge Congress: We must provide the $500 
million in emergency assistance, sponsored by Senators Conrad, Dorgan, 
Daschle, and Harkin, for farmers and ranchers throughout the country who 
have been afflicted not only by drought but also by fires and floods and 
other disasters. They are our neighbors in need.
    With these measures, we can help farmers weather the current crisis. 
But to strengthen rural America for the long run, we have to do more. 
First, we have to revive the rural economy with exports. Today, products 
from one of every three acres planted in America are sold abroad. We 
have to continue to open new foreign markets and enforce our existing 
trade agreements. We must give the International Monetary Fund the 
resources it needs to strengthen and reform the Asian economies so that 
they will have the money to buy our farm products.
    Yesterday, unfortunately, the House of Representatives delayed this 
critical funding for the IMF. American farmers cannot afford to wait; 
they need help now. We should also be prepared to donate food generously 
to those around the world at risk of malnutrition or starvation. As a 
general principle, I believe commercial exports of food should not be 
used as a tool of foreign policy, except under the most compelling 
circumstances.
    A week ago, I signed the Agricultural Export Relief Act, enabling 
U.S. farmers to sell 300,000 tons of wheat to Pakistan the next day. I 
urge Congress to provide me authority to waive sanctions on food when it 
is in the national interest and to work with me to incorporate 
flexibility in sanctions policy more broadly.
    Second, we simply have to strengthen the farm safety net. We should 
expand eligibility for direct and guaranteed loans, improve crop 
insurance, which is not working for a lot of farmers today, and extend 
marketing loans when crop prices are too low.
    And we should give farmers more flexibility in planning when to 
receive Federal income support payments and in planting new crops when 
their primary crops fail. I proposed allowing our farmers to receive 
Federal income support payments--early--last spring. There is now some 
support for it apparently in the Congress; I hope very much it will pass 
soon.

[[Page 1307]]

    Third, we must improve the infrastructure in rural communities. We 
have to preserve universal service and defend the vital E-rate 
initiative so that all rural homes can count on affordable telephone 
rates and rural schools, libraries, and health centers can tap into the 
promise of the Internet. We have to modernize rural schools and 
transportation systems, improve the quality of rural health with 
advanced telemedicine, cleaner drinking water, and safer food.
    These steps are in the best tradition of our Nation. Whenever 
disaster strikes, Americans join together to help see their neighbors 
through. That's what happened in Florida when brave men and women from 
across the country help put out the State's fires, and that's what we'll 
do throughout rural America to save our farmers from losing their homes 
and crops.
    At this moment of broad prosperity for our Nation, we are certainly 
able to and we clearly must help our neighbors on the farm throughout 
this current crisis so that we can strengthen our rural communities for 
the 21st century. Now, I'll be happy to take your questions.
    Secretary Glickman. Thank you, Mr. President. I get to be the role 
of moderator today, and our first question comes----
    The President. You sound kind of like a deejay.
    Secretary Glickman. That's right. You should hear me sing. But we 
won't do that here. Our first question comes from Shelly Beyer who is 
with the Brownfield Network out of Jefferson City, Missouri.
    Shelly, are you on?

[Ms. Beyer asked the President if he favored Congress taking steps on 
fast-track trading authority.]

    The President. Well, Shelly, fast track wouldn't actually help the 
farmers right now. I would support voting on fast track whenever we 
think we can pass it, but you know, we had a huge struggle to pass fast 
track earlier this year, and we failed. I believe it will pass early 
next year. I don't believe that any votes have changed.
    And keep in mind what fast track does. Fast track simply gives me 
the authority that previous Presidents have had to negotiate new trade 
agreements, tearing down trade barriers to American products in other 
countries
    By contrast, getting the funding for the International Monetary Fund 
will immediately create markets for American products. Let me just give 
you an example. About 40 to 50 percent of our grains are exported. Forty 
percent of our export market is in Asia. If you take all the Asian 
countries except for Japan and China, our exports are down 30 percent 
because of their economic problems. They're down 13 percent in Japan; 
they're down 6 percent in China.
    Now, if we could get the International Monetary Fund funding and 
those countries could get more money, then they'll immediately have more 
money to buy our food. So I think that the IMF funding will do more in 
the short run to boost American farm prices.
    Now, over the next year, we've got to get the fast-track authority 
so that we can continue to open more markets. We will also begin 
negotiations in the World Trade Organization to try to get every country 
that signed on to that to lower their agricultural tariffs and other 
barriers so that we can sell in more markets.
    So I agree that we need to do fast track. I am determined to get 
other countries to lower their agricultural barriers, but all that takes 
time. And if I had the fast-track authority tomorrow, it would still 
take time to open those markets and reach those agreements. We need to 
open the markets now. That's why the International Monetary Fund is more 
important, because it will flow cash into countries; they'll immediately 
have money, when they can immediately start to buy more food.

[Secretary Glickman introduced Gary Wergin of WHO Radio in Des Moines, 
IA, who asked the President why Democratic votes in Congress for fast-
track trade authority had been difficult to obtain.]

    The President. I believe that what happened was the Members got dug 
in before they saw the final bill, and I also think that there were more 
Republicans voting against it than the Speaker thought. This was one 
issue where, notwithstanding our well-publicized conflicts, Speaker 
Gingrich and I worked hand-in-glove, and we worked very, very hard.
    But the truth is that, for reasons that I wasn't privy to, by the 
time the bill was actually brought up in the House, the people who were 
against fast track had been working against it so hard, they'd gotten so 
many commitments, that when--even though the bill, on its merits, I 
think, was very much deserving of passing and met a lot of the concerns 
for labor rights,

[[Page 1308]]

for environmental concerns, and other things, we couldn't get the votes.
    The only point I want to make is, to the best of my knowledge, we 
have not changed either 10 Democratic votes or 10 Republican votes from 
no to yes. If we don't have those votes, why would we kill the Africa 
trade bill, which is good for us, or the Caribbean trade bill or, even 
more important by far, the International Monetary Fund, by tying all 
this stuff together? Why not pass what we can pass now, get the 
immediate benefits, and then work on passing fast track when the 
election is behind us?
    I think it's clear that it will pass early next year, because it's 
manifestly in the national interest, and because, frankly, then a lot of 
the Members of Congress who got committed against it early will be 
forced to look at what the actual details of the bill say and will feel 
freer to vote for it.

[Secretary Glickman introduced Stewart Doan of the Arkansas Radio 
Network, who spoke from KARN in Little Rock, AR.]

    The President. Hello, Stewart. What's the temperature down there?
    Mr. Doan. Right about 100, sir. About the same as it was Saturday 
when you were out at Chenal.
    The President. I know. It was over 100 both days I was out there.

[Mr. Doan said that congressional leaders blamed much of the agriculture 
crisis on 1996 farm legislation. He asked if the President agreed and 
would support increasing the guaranteed minimum price for grain, 
soybeans, and cotton.]

    The President. Well, first of all, I think I would partly agree with 
what they say. I think that fundamental cause of the crisis today is a 
price crisis. It's a market crisis caused by a combination of things. 
You've got adequate--and more than adequate--world supplies. You've got 
a significant decline in the economic capacity of Asia to buy our food 
products. You've got a big drop in the currency values in other 
countries relative to the American dollar, which makes our food, 
relatively speaking, more expensive, which makes it even harder. And 
that's a big problem. And then in America, you've also got a disaster 
crisis. You've got some places where they have no price and no crop. 
Usually when farmers have no crop, at least the no crop they have has a 
high price, because the supply has dried up. But now, the worldwide 
supply is so big that they've got a double hit. So that's the 
fundamental problem.
    When I signed the '96 freedom to farm bill, I pointed out that it 
had a lot of good provisions in it, but it didn't have a real safety 
net. Let's remember what the good provisions were. Number one, it got 
the Government out of micromanaging planning decisions. Number two, it 
had terrific conservation provisions. Number three, it had good rural 
development provisions. And I had no choice but to sign it because, if I 
hadn't, we would have been back on the '49 farm law, which would have 
been even worse for the farmers. But I said in '96, the crop prices are 
not going to be high forever, and when they drop, we're going to regret 
not having an adequate safety net. So the first thing we have to do is 
to develop an adequate safety net.
    Now, let me just--you asked about the proposals by Senator Harkin 
and others; let me just run through some of the things that I have 
proposed, and then I'll answer your question about their proposal. First 
of all, Senators Dorgan and Conrad have a $500 million bill up there--
it's passed the Senate and I hope and believe will pass the House--which 
would improve and expand crop insurance; it would compensate farmers 
whose crop and pasture land is flooded; it would provide emergency feed 
assistance to livestock producers who are suffering from drought and 
allow us to use export enhancement funds that are left over in future 
years for food aid and other purposes. These things I think will be 
quite helpful.
    Now, in addition to that, I've asked the Congress to help strengthen 
the safety net by extending the term of marketing assistance loans, by 
allowing flexibility for farmers to receive advanced AMTA payments. I 
asked for that last April. The Speaker and other House Republicans are 
now saying, in the last week or so, they are open to that. That would 
have, I think, a lot of impact.
    And I, finally, asked for a provision that would improve credit 
ability and modify the one-strike policy for farmers who have had a debt 
write-down, and I've also proposed to let USDA guaranteed operating 
loans be used to refinance. So if we were to do all these things, I 
think we'd strengthen the safety net.

[[Page 1309]]

    Now, in principle, I think it's clear that the commodity loan cap is 
not working, and it needs to be modified. The question is, how should we 
modify it, and how are we going to pay for it within the context of the 
balanced budget? But in principle, I don't think there's any question 
that what Senator Harkin and Congressman Gephardt and others say is 
right, that the present cap is too low.
    And there are some people who think this system is fine the way it 
works, but I don't. I think what it will do is inevitably reduce the 
number of family farmers, even if it doesn't reduce the acreage being 
farmed. And I don't think that's a good thing for America. So I would 
like to see a system where farmers don't fail because of acts of God.

[Secretary Glickman remarked that the Agriculture Department would 
continue to try to keep farm prices from dropping too low and allow 
farmers flexibility in marketing. He introduced Mike Hergert of the Red 
River Farm Network in Grand Forks, ND, who asked what farmers could 
expect regarding the crop insurance program.]

    The President. Well, first of all, we've expanded the size of the 
program, which I thought was important; it was way too small in '93 when 
I took office. We've more than doubled it, and we've expanded farmers' 
choices by creating new varieties of crop insurance, and we've 
introduced the concept of revenue insurance in a large majority of the 
grain-producing parts of the country.
    But I still think there are some other things that have to be done. 
I think that even though we've improved the program by offering coverage 
on preventive planning since '93 and increasingly based the coverage on 
farmers' individual yields, it's just not working for most farmers. And 
what we're trying to do now is to look at all the ways we can help our 
farmers get through tough times that we can pass in the Congress.
    Maybe Secretary Glickman would like to talk about this, but I must 
say, I've been waiting for someone to ask this question, because when I 
was home last weekend talking to the farmers, that's the only thing they 
said. They said, ``This crop insurance is a joke; it doesn't really help 
anybody.'' So maybe, Secretary Glickman, that's too blunt for me to say 
that our Government's crop insurance program is a joke, but maybe you 
should talk a little more about some of the things we're looking at to 
improve it.

[Secretary Glickman explained that under the current crop insurance 
system, farmers experiencing repeated disasters found that their 
premiums paid could be much greater than their benefits received. He 
commended the legislation sponsored by Senators Dorgan and Conrad.]

    The President. Mike, Senator Dorgan and Senator Conrad were just 
here with us in the Oval Office just a few minutes ago, and we were 
talking about this. I think the provision in their bill is going to 
pass. I believe it will. But I would just say to any of our listeners 
there, if you've got any ideas about what we can do with this program, 
this insurance program to make it fairer and more affordable and more 
functional or how it could be modified in some ways, I would urge you to 
directly contact Secretary Glickman or write to us here at the White 
House, because I am hearing from farmers all over the country that it's 
simply not working. And as Dan Glickman said, it's really not like 
buying car insurance or home insurance or something like that. It's 
almost like buying flood insurance in a 25-year flood plain where you 
just have no control over what's going to happen. But we have a national 
interest in seeing that land, which is highly productive, in North 
Dakota be planted.
    So I think the whole concept behind the requirement that it be, 
quote, ``actuarially sound'' misperceives the facts there. And I don't 
believe the Congress meant to say we don't want anybody planting in 
North Dakota anymore because they've had floods and disease and pests 
and everything. I don't believe that was the intent of the act of 
Congress. So I think this is one where an honest error was made, and we 
would like to correct it and if you've got any ideas, for goodness 
sakes, give them to us.

[Secretary Glickman introduced Bart Walker from WGNS in Murfreesboro, 
TN, who said that economic success in his area had driven up population, 
resulting in family farms being turned into subdivisions; while at the 
same time, most students majoring in agriculture at Middle Tennessee 
State University went into related fields rather than farming. Mr. 
Walker asked if there were plans for low interest loans that would 
enable and encourage students to take up farming.]

[[Page 1310]]

    The President. Yes. We actually have a program that provides low 
interest loans for first-time farmers, as well as a program in the 
Department of Agriculture that gives kind of technical support and 
assistance for new farmers. And one of the things that I've asked 
Secretary Glickman to do is to assess the adequacy of that program and 
to look at some of the things that we're doing in nonfarm communities, 
setting up community financial institutions that make extra loans and 
things of that kind to see if they might be relevant to first-time 
farmers.
    As I said at the beginning of our interview here, I got the national 
officers of the FFA here with me. And these young farmers are the future 
of America. The average farmer is about 59 years old in America today, 
and I'm very concerned about that in places where, like in Murfreesboro 
where you're doing very well economically, if a farmer chooses to sell 
his or her land to a developer, and you subdivide it, well, there's 
nothing I can do about it and probably nothing you would want to do 
about it. You don't remove the right to do that if that's what the 
market is dictating. But I think where young people want to farm and are 
able to farm, if they can get the credit, they ought to be able to get 
the loans at affordable terms and at good repayment terms.
    One of the things that we've done for college loans since I've been 
here, that I think might have some applicability to first-time farmer 
loans I want to look at, is to structure the repayment in a way that's 
tied directly to income. So for example, if a young person wants to go 
to college and then take a job as a schoolteacher, and another would go 
to college and take a job as a stockbroker, and they borrow the same 
exact amount of money to get out of college, but the stockbroker has an 
income of 3 times the schoolteacher's, under the new provisions of our 
college loan program, the schoolteacher can pay back the money with a 
ceiling on it as a percentage of his or her income. So if a young person 
wants to go into some sort of public service--to be a police officer, a 
nurse, a schoolteacher, a social worker, something like that--they can 
do that.
    Well, if you think about the early years of farming and how meager 
the income might be, there may be something we can do to structure the 
same sort of loan program for first-time farmers. So we're looking at a 
lot of other options. But we do have--to go back to your first 
question--we actually do have a program in the Department for first-time 
farmers to provide for loans and for technical assistance to help them 
get started.

[Secretary Glickman noted that the Agriculture Department's outreach 
office provided technical assistance to first-time farmers. He then 
introduced Bill Ray of the Agrinet Farm Radio Network in Kill Devil 
Hills, NC, who welcomed listeners to the Outer Banks.]

    The President.  That's near Kitty Hawk, isn't it?
    Mr. Ray. That's exactly right.
    The President. I went there once, about 26 years ago. It's 
beautiful.
    Mr. Ray.  Well, a lot of folks would like to have you back, Mr. 
President.
    The President. Thank you.

[Mr. Ray asked what long-range plans the President recommended to help 
food producers all across the country.]

    The President. Well, over the long haul, I believe that the 
provisions of the '96 bill--let me just say what I think we ought to 
keep. I've said what I think is wrong about it; let me say what I think 
we ought to keep. I think it would be better if we could avoid having 
the Government go back to micromanaging the farmers' planting decisions. 
I think letting the farmers make the decisions about what crops they're 
going to plant is the right thing to do; I think we ought to keep the 
strong conservation provisions of the farm bill of '96; and finally, I'd 
like to keep and even strengthen the rural development provisions of the 
farm bill.
    One of the things that we haven't talked about is there are a lot of 
people who live in agricultural communities who farm, who--either they--
either the farmer or the farmer's spouse gets a significant income from 
other kinds of work. And so what I would like to see is--I'd like to see 
us do more on rural development, because the more we can diversify the 
economies of these small towns, the more people can afford to farm, 
because they'll have a salaried income coming in, too, which will help 
them to deal with the problems of the bad years. So I think those are 
the good things to keep.
    I think that we should redouble our efforts in agricultural 
research. Secretary Glickman mentioned this. I hope that we can get the

[[Page 1311]]

actual dollar figure I recommended for ag research funded in this year's 
budget, because we get such a huge return from ag research.
    The second thing I'd like to say is I think, if we can get an 
adequate farm safety net in this present structure and then we can 
continue to open farm markets and get fair treatment with the fast-track 
legislation, with the new agricultural negotiations we're going to have 
through the World Trade Organization, with the funding for the 
International Monetary Fund, then I think the future for our farmers 
actually looks quite good.
    If you look at the all the new things that are coming out of 
agricultural research, if you look at all the new applications of farm 
products that are being developed, and if you look at the growth of 
world population and the projected agricultural production in other 
parts of the world, I would say that the next 30 years for our farmers 
will probably be very, very good if we can continue to invest in 
research and stay ahead of the curve, and if we can continue to open new 
markets, and if we're smart enough and honest enough to recognize that 
we're always going to have bad years, we're always going to have acts of 
God, we're always going to have things like this go wrong, especially 
when there's some evidence that there is a lot of change in our climate 
that's warming the Earth's climate and leading to more disruption. So 
let's put in an adequate safety net, pay for it, deal with it, and say 
it's an investment in America's future. I think if we just do those 
things, our farmers are going to do quite well.

[Secretary Glickman introduced Tony Purcell from the Texas State News 
Network.]

    The President. What's the temperature down there?
    Mr. Purcell. We're pushing 100 degrees right now for the 19th day in 
a row.
    The President. Well, I'm surprised you're not shorted out. I'm glad 
we can hear each other.

[Mr. Purcell thanked the President for providing emergency disaster 
funding for areas suffering losses from the heat wave and asked about 
relief for agricultural businesses affected.]

    The President. Depending on the dimensions, there are standards in 
the Federal law for my disaster declarations, but normally, when a 
disaster declaration affects an entire State in agricultural losses, 
then small businesses that are affected by it and communities that are 
affected by it are also eligible for other kinds of assistance. And I'll 
tell you what I will do. I'll have our people do some research on it and 
get back to you directly on it.
    But let me also just say, there's one thing in this bill that's 
coming up that I think could be quite helpful. I've mentioned this 
several times, the bill by Senators Conrad and Dorgan that's got $500 
million more in emergency assistance. A lot of the problems in Texas are 
livestock problems, even though you've lost most of your cotton crop and 
had a lot of other problems.
    We had a program which permitted the Federal Government, in times of 
disaster for people with their livestock, to buy up surplus feed and 
give it to the livestock farmers. That was suspended in 1996 in the farm 
bill until 2002. Under our provision, under this emergency provision, 
we'd get some of that back, and we could get some feed down there to 
those livestock folks that I think would be very, very helpful. So 
that's another thing we're trying to do for the farmers. But I believe 
that there is some community and small business assistance that can 
flow, too. If Secretary Glickman can answer the question now, fine; if 
not, I'll have somebody directly contact you later today.

[Secretary Glickman mentioned various USDA and FEMA disaster assistance 
programs and said he would visit Texas and Oklahoma in the coming week 
to see the damage firsthand and determine what else could be done.]

    The President. But if I could, to go back to your question about the 
nonagricultural losses related to the agricultural crisis--as Secretary 
Glickman said, some of our emergency programs were funded through the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency. And we have--obviously, you have a 
Governor's emergency management person there who works with us on that.
    Then, we also have some programs funded through the Small Business 
Administration, some programs funded through the Commerce Department, 
some programs funded through the Housing and Urban Development 
Department. We'll just have to do an inventory. And I would urge all of 
the people who are listening to us through your network there to make 
sure that their mayors or Members of Congress or State officials have 
access to Secretary Glickman when he comes down there and give him as 
complete

[[Page 1312]]

a picture as you can of what the problems are. And, obviously, we'll do 
our best to bring to bear whatever resources we can legally provide to 
help you deal with the terrible difficulties you are in.

    Today I announced that we were going to give $100 million to Texas 
and 10 other States just to help with utility bills, with air-
conditioning, with fans, with other things, for all these people who 
don't have adequate cooling. We've had 100 deaths now between--basically 
between Dallas on the west and then across Arkansas and north Louisiana 
and then to Tennessee and north Alabama and Mississippi and all in 
through that 11-State area, all the way over to the East Coast, because 
of the record heat. And I'm hoping that we can help you with that as 
well and save some more lives.

[Secretary Glickman noted the program was out of time and invited the 
President to make closing comments.]

    The President. Well, I would just like to say, first of all, that 
I'm very concerned about the problems that are being faced up and down 
and North and West and East and South in the farm belt. They're 
significant, and they're different from place to place in our country. 
We're doing our best to respond. I'm trying to listen to your elected 
representatives here. I'm trying to move the system here as quickly as I 
can. I hope you will urge your representatives to vote for the Conrad-
Dorgan bill to get some more emergency assistance out there. I hope 
you'll support us in building a more permanent, adequate farm safety net 
and in building new markets for our farm products.

    But if you have any more ideas, I would urge you to get in touch 
with the Secretary of Agriculture or with me. We did this interview in 
part just to reach out and show our concern to farmers and to rural 
America and to ask for your ideas. If you have any ideas about anything 
else we can do, if there's something we're overlooking, we want to get 
on it; we want to be responsive. We know that it's not the best of times 
for a lot of our farmers, and we want to be there for you. America is 
doing very well as a whole, and we think you should be part of that.

    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 3:12 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, the President referred to the Future Farmers of 
America (FFA); and the Agricultural Market Transition Act (AMTA), part 
of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, Public 
Law 104-127.