Advocate Summary

Issue:  US Farm Bill
Advocate:  National Farmers Union – Tom Buis
Date of Interview: 8/2/02

Basic Background
Well what we’ve were trying to achieve as an organization is that our federal farm policy gives farmers the opportunity to earn a decent living from all the hard work and effort that they put into growing the crops or raising livestock. Unfortunately, the government’s role in agriculture plays heavily on whether or not you are going to make money or get a return on your investment. So the federal farm policy is very important to the farmers and rancher’s livelihood. I think our main goal is to achieve 100 percent of the decent price out of the market place, not necessarily out of the government, which is important. In the last 6 to 7 years, a good chunk of the income has come from the government rather than the market place, it’s just sort of sustaining people, they’re just kind of holding on. It has been a very tenuous situation economically for rural America. So we’ve were doing Hill visits and meetings back home in member’s states, we have about 300,000 members in our organization and they get pretty actively engaged in communicating the challenges we face in rural America to elected members of congress and other federal policy makers in the administration. 

One of the real pluses in this farm bill, for the first time in two decades we were able to secure more funding for the federal farm bill, not just for the farm programs but for the farm bill. It covers a lot more than the farm programs, all of our nation’s nutrition programs are reauthorized, humanitarian assistance, you have trade, rural development, conservation, environment. Congress provided more money under the budget agreement for the farm bill, some of that increase went for federal farm subsidies but the bulk of it went for other programs, conservation, nutrition, in fact we reversed one of the 1995-1996, when they did welfare reform for food stamps and we got a change back this time for legal immigrants to receive food stamps whereas before they had been cut off. So a lot of different programs, all that didn’t go to farming. But if you look at the media, all of it went to farmers, which is not true. The challenge by other countries and the WTO for domestic policies won’t hold, it’s not a valid argument. We are within our spending limitation that are allowed for under the current WTO agreement and unless things get a lot worse we would not exceed those limits, if you exceed those limits then we open ourselves up to a valid challenge, most analysis says there is a slim chance we will exceed those limits.

Prior Activity on the Issue 
[Worked on the previous Farm Bill work on agriculture issues generally]

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
The Farmer’s Union we were sort of alone for a number of years in saying that we ought to have a new farm bill, that we should draft a new farm bill before the 1996 law expired, it isn’t due to expire till the end of the ’03 crop year, it’s a seven year bill. It failed miserably to achieve the goals it was designed for so we began a very public advocacy effort in 1998 to either change it or open it up and fix it.  So beginning in 1998 we brought in a lot of farmers and ranchers to Washington, we call them legislative fly-ins and we would have at least 2 per year and the size of them would range from two to three hundred people each year. Then in 2000 we had a “Rally for Rural America” and we had almost 5000 farmers in town. We had a huge rally on the mall, and we coupled that with visits to their members of congress and the white house, USDA et cetera. 

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
[The bill was voted on and signed into law]

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
Some members are better than others, there is a pretty big list, there are a lot of great champions and you’re always reluctant to list people for fear of making an omission, but in this farm bill, Senator Tom Daschle, Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Conrad from North Dakota, were probably the members that had more control over the outcome of the Senate farm bill, and those three with Senator Leahy from Vermont, those four were the Senate conferees for the Democrats. On the Republican side the conferees were Senator Lugar, Senator Cochran from Mississippi and Helms from North Carolina. But because the Senate is controlled by the Democratic party they had more sway in the final outcome then did the Republicans. On the House side you have Chairman Combest from Texas and ranking member Charles Stenholm, also from Texas who pretty much ran the show in the House. So the conference where they tried to work out the differences was dominated by those individuals. 

Targets of Direct Lobbying
We try to communicate with all members on all issues, some are more receptive than others, some you have philosophical differences with and arguments and some are from areas where we don’t have a large membership and then when you get down to drafting a bill, emphasis has to be placed on the committee of jurisdiction and in this case that was the House and Senate Agriculture Committees. 

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
[No specific members were mentioned but grassroots were employed.]

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
In the Rally for Rural America we were working with at least 20 other rural groups in order to make that happen. A lot depends on the specific issue whether you can work with other groups or not. When we’re all united behind a common cause it’s a pretty powerful advocacy group, other times we have different ideas on how to achieve the goals that we all think are important. So sometimes you can work with people sometimes you can’t. The actual eight to nine months that the farm bill was being drafted we worked very closely with a number of farm groups especially last year in order to get the farm bill moving forward because the Bush administration didn’t want a farm bill till the old one expired. A lot of the leadership on the Republican side in the Senate didn’t want to and us and the Farm Bureau and all the other major Commodity groups came together and continually expressing, both publicly and privately that we had to move forward on completing the farm bill, that it couldn’t wait. Ultimately the reason why the farm bill got rewritten before it expired was because of that pressure, that near unanimity. Now, not everyone was unanimous on what should be in it but they were united in our desire to see a new farm bill. 

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
There was a whole coalition active on the humanitarian aid provisions, most of the religious communities, the rural Catholic charities on the farm group side there was the American Soybean Association and the Farmers Union most of the humanitarian groups like CARE, they all stuck together. There was a big coalition, we all pushed through increased funding for the international school lunch program for developing countries, a subsidized school lunch program. Learning is pretty closely associated with hunger, if students are hungry they are not as focused and learning is more difficult, and then in some countries because the kids are used to do subsistence farming and other things they’re not sent to school, in some countries only boys are sent to school, which is probably more frequent, and by having an international school lunch program in countries where hunger is a problem this is an incentive to come to school. It’s a good program, it’s worked extremely well in the United States, and its been expanded to school breakfast. Jim McGovern (D) from Massachusetts and Jo Ann Emerson (R) from Missouri, a Democrat and a Republican worked very hard on it. And in the Senate, Senator Harkin and Senator Leahy were big champions for it. The idea was thought through by former Senators Bob Dole and McGovern, who are kind of credited with being the founders of our US school lunch program. In most farm bills that have been around since the 1930s it’s generally been a rural-urban coalition that gets something passed because of the school lunch and food stamp program attracts urban members and the commodity policy attracts the rural members. We’re starting to see as shift in that coalition in the last few farm bills an emerging group that helps coalesce on one side or the other is the environmental community, but this farm bill we saw a lot of help out of the humanitarian and nutrition groups.  

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
There were a lot, we drafted a proposal, I can share our testimony with you that we presented before the House and Senate, but it was basically to get as much as we could from the market place, to provide an adequate safety net that is guaranteed so that we don’t have to come back to Congress on an emergency ad hoc basis every year, it’s a more sound policy to have something in place that provides some certainty to farmers, mandatory country of origin labeling for all our produce and agriculture protein market, meats et cetera, increasing commodity loan rates – which is what determines loan deficiency payments, raising that was a significant hurdle because the loan rates have not really been raised in federal farm policy in the last 25 years. Ensuring that farmer’s and rancher’s safety net was based on what they are doing today, what crops they are planting today, what their yields are today, and not based upon the past history, that they have been adjusted for in the past. If you are going to have a safety net, it is pretty much common sense that the safety net is reflective of what your operation is today, not what you did years ago. So that was important, updated yields updated basis. Certainly having a very strong rural development title which allows farmers to ban together in cooperative ventures to produce ethanol and biodiesel or livestock or whatever so that they can get more from the value added dollar, instead of just producing bulk commodity. The new energy title, we see a lot of our demand goes for domestic farm commodities in the arena of producing energy, such as ethanol, biodiesel, wind, solar, farmers have a big role to play in that. Conservation; increasing funding for existing conservation programs which would were oversubscribed and under-funded, which provide incentives for farmers to do things that benefit society as a whole such as cleaner air, cleaner water, stop soil erosion. Gosh I could go on for about a week on this stuff. We did pretty well on the farm bill, we got a lot of things we wanted. There was one issue that became very controversial and we were probably on the opposite side of most farm organizations but we wanted to target benefits to family sized operations. One of the public relations nightmares that agriculture has is that under the old farm bill, the ’96 act, a lot of non-farmers celebrities, entertainment people and major Fortune 500 corporations were receiving farm income assistance and they didn’t deserve it, really didn’t need it, it’s not based on need or any real sound public policy. So we encouraged targeting benefits to family farmers, and that would involve putting caps on the amount of payments that go to individuals as opposed to the sky’s the limit, we wanted to see defined limits. That ultimately got dropped from the bill but one component did last, and that’s the one that sort of sets a means test. It says if you don’t get 75 percent or more of your income from direct agriculture production you aren’t eligible for payments, so the Scotty Pipins and the Charles Schwabs and those folks would not be eligible for farm programs, and they shouldn’t be that’s not the role of the government. So that’s one change we got but we weren’t able to target all the benefits. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
[See above, not secondary arguments but multiple arguments]

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
We try to communicate with all members on all issues, some are more receptive than others, some you have philosophical differences with and arguments and some are from areas where we don’t have a large membership and then when you get down to drafting a bill, emphasis has to be placed on the committee of jurisdiction and in this case that was the House and Senate Agriculture Committees. 

Nature of the Opposition
Senator Roberts from Kansas had a totally different approach then we had and led efforts to try to go a different path as did Senator Lugar from Indiana. In the House, the shaping of the House farm bill was much more controlled, the chairman of the House committee said this is how it’s going to be and that’s what they did, in the Senate it was a much more open debate. In fact the bill was debated on the Senate floor longer than any farm bill in history, more days, more hours, and took up more of the full Senate’s time, more amendments were offered, more discussion, more controversy. 

Agriculture is a very broad term, you have the farmers, you have the processors, and you have the retailers and you have a lot of other groups that have a stake in what’s in a farm bill and not everyone shares the same interests. What’s good for example for a farmer may not be good for a processor, because the processor wants to buy the farm commodities cheaper, the farmer obviously wants to sell them higher. So you have this inherent conflict there. So there were a lot of groups we were doing battle with over issues. On some of the livestock issues we were battling the National Cattleman’s Association and the National Pork Producers. One of the big issues in livestock is this growing concentration in the hands of a very few the whole processing and retailing business in agriculture. [see folder – there is a document on the consolidation of food retailing] And as competition dwindles that is less competition in the market place and that means lower prices for farmers. And more market control for those that buy our products or sell us the inputs. One of the big debates in the farm bill, a very controversial debate was a provision to ban packer ownership of livestock which meant that the people you were selling to, that the farmer or rancher was selling their livestock to, owned their own, that they could use to potentially and likely manipulate the market into lower prices when you wanted to sell yours so it was really a fairness competitiveness issue. The ban on packer ownership is included in the Senate bill, it ultimately got dropped in conference. The Pork Producers and the National Cattleman’s Association were on the opposite side and you’d have to ask them why. We had a lot of cattle groups and a lot of general farm organizations that were on the same side we were. Also included on the opposite side on that battle was the American meat institute, which represents the livestock processors interests.  They wanted to keep the status quo. If people have a good deal they want to keep it. You have to go back to the ’96 bill which was a huge fundamental shift in farm policy it was called Freedom to Farm, and the whole mantra was “we’re going to get the government out of farming.”  What they ended up doing was they got the price out of farming the price has dropped every year under the “Freedom to Farm” so the value of the products producers are producing diminished by almost one half. Now, that is a benefit to some people in agriculture, for example if you are an exporter and you are trying to sell more products, make more money the more quantity they move they like lower prices, it means they can move more. But if you are a farmer or rancher that meant that you were losing money year after year, not just losing the opportunity to make money you were actually producing that product below the cost of production. So did they want the status quo – sure. They didn’t necessarily get it, it sort of ended up somewhere in between. 

[Impediments – see “Ubiquitous Arguments and Evidence” - “significant hurdle” on raising loan deficiency payments]

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
[Each group had their own specific arguments supporting their interests]

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
[Each group had their own specific arguments supporting their interests]

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
[Each group had their own specific arguments supporting their interests]

Described as a Partisan Issue
Yes. 

Venue(s) of Activity
House and Senate Agriculture Committees

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
No action pending, the farm bill was voted on and signed into law.

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Opposed to the status quo of the ’96 farm bill on most provisions, generally working to increase support for farmers. 

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I’ve been here since 1998. I was born into a farm family. I farmed in a partnership with my brother for almost 20 years before coming to Washington and I still own a farm back in Indiana. I’ve been here since 1987, first came out to work for a member of Congress from Indiana on the Agriculture committee and later I worked for a member of the Senate, Senator Daschle and I was there five years and then came over here in 1998. 

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Both ways, we’ve been sort of at the forefront on this growing concentration in ag retail and processing industry and we initially commissioned a report at the university of Missouri by the way, Dr. William Heffernan. And that’s kind of been the industry benchmark on how concentrated these markets are. So in that situation we contracted it out. Our policy is generally, we are a federation of our states, and we’re known as a bottoms-up organization, our policy begins at the county and community level with meetings by our members and then it filters its way to the district and state, and finally to the national organization where policy is adopted at our national convention once a year, major policy. We did do some researching and outsourcing on the farm bill. One of the requirements by the House agriculture committee chairmen, he said anyone who was testifying had to have objective economic analysis on the impact on any affected parties on any proposal you wanted to make. We worked with some economists at the University of Tennessee doing that, and that was outsourced.  

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Five

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
We have 11 people here in the office but only about 5 of them actually lobby or advocate. The rest do research, communications, and administration. 

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
None mentioned.

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Individuals 

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
300,000

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous