November 13, 2001

Miller Urges Passage of Bipartisan Farm Bill

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) today delivered the following statement on the floor of the Senate:

"Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleagues to introduce a bipartisan farm bill. A farm bill that will secure American agriculture into the 21st Century. For the past four years our farmers have experienced an agriculture crisis unlike anything seen since the great Depression. As they say where I come from its 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% increase in conservation spending. Let me repeat that: It provides an 80% increase in conservation spending. That's 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 -- it also provides greater funding for our nation's research institutions such as the University of Georgia.

"Mr. President, 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 would not disagree. I believe that is true and along those lines, I would 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 what we're advocating going compared to where we've been in as different as night and day.

"During the Great Depression, when the South was that "one-third" of a nation President Roosevelt spoke about (and the South I grew up in), 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 like Coca-cola or some other kind of 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." Because this policy was so entrenched, because it had lasted so long, 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's 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 grand daddies 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. And, after a lot of discussion, I think that's exactly what we've come up with.

"Now, Mr. President there's never many people happy at a shot gun marriage and that's 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're 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."

"Mr. President, there's another important point I wish to make and it's an issue that strikes at the heart of the entire agriculture industry. I recently met with a large group of Georgia agriculture leaders and the message they expressed to me is one of great distress and crisis.

"In this time of the lowest interest rates we've 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's not that they don't want to help their friend and neighbor, but it's simply too big a risk. The loan officer reluctantly points out that commodity prices are just too low and they don't 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 agriculture 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 11th. Mother Nature and poor market conditions did, and it shows that our farmers must have a stronger safety net.

"In addition, the disasters over the past four years have exhausted many a 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 the 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.

"And then, when the family farm is put on an auction block and it goes for pennies on the dollar, what do we say to them then? That's something that can't be figured out by the fixers over lunch at the Palm.

"We're going to be talking this week about a stimulus package. And we've got proposals on stimuli coming out our ears. It's creme de la creme that can be conceived by those high paid lobbyists, pushing and pulling, paying and pimping and promising to get their clients the best breaks and the most generous incentives.

"I've learned a long time ago, Mr. President, that when it comes to how legislation is written, especially, I think, up here in Washington - that it's kinda 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'm afraid that both stimulus bills have a lot of questionable fingerprints on them. And we don't 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'm speaking on today also has fingerprints. Fingerprints from callused hands -- the hands of the workers who feed us and cloth us. People who, like the family dog, we just take for granted.

"Do I speak too harshly? I'm 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 what we've always done. And we cannot continue to provide disaster assistance each and every year. But there's got to be a transition, some "weaning time" as it's called 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 family 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."

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