Copyright 2001 The Atlanta Constitution  
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
June 14, 2001 Thursday, Home Edition
SECTION: News; Pg. 3A

LENGTH: 574 words

HEADLINE: Peanut program's 'days are numbered';
Risk high as Congress shapes new farm bill

BYLINE: GEORGE EDMONSON

SOURCE: AJC

BODY:
Washington --- Two congressional critics of the federal peanut program introduced a bill Wednesday to phase it out.

Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays and Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski detailed their proposal to a House agriculture subcommittee hearing that also heard conflicting peanut proposals for the upcoming farm bill.

"I have long opposed the current peanut quota program," said Shays, who in the past tried unsuccessfully to eliminate it. "It's bad policy, a relic of the Depression."

Kanjorski labeled it an "archaic system" and added, "It's time to go."

Their bill has 40 other sponsors. Such support --- and the thin, three-vote margin that saved the peanut-quota system in a 1996 House vote --- was mentioned by several members of the subcommittee as they discussed the politics of peanuts.

"There is real strong opposition out there to the concept of this program," Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss acknowledged as he questioned Shays.

The two sparred over whether consumers bear extra costs because of the 60-year-old quota program, which limits production and guarantees a set price for participating farmers, basically $610 per ton now. Shays said he has asked the General Accounting Office to update a 1993 report on the impact of the peanut program and to examine the effects of recent trade agreements.

Democrat Sanford Bishop, the other Georgia representative on the panel, said he thinks it will be difficult to maintain the quota system.

"I think its days are numbered," Bishop said after the hearing.

The Agriculture Committee is aiming to produce the full farm bill by August; the current farm legislation expires next year.

Changes in trade policies are driving aspects of the peanut proposals. One of the two plans outlined Wednesday would end the quota system and use loans to help farmers compete with imports. The other proposal would maintain quotas, with modifications.

Subcommittee Chairman Terry Everett (R-Ala.), a part-time farmer whose crops include peanuts, urged the two sides to come together quickly.

A full crowd representing various segments of the peanut industry was on hand for the hearing and spilled into an auxiliary hearing room. Two of the witnesses were from Georgia, the leading U.S. peanut producer with 41 percent of the crop. Both witnesses supported ending the quota system.

Evans Plowden, general counsel for the American Peanut Shellers Association in Albany, told the subcommittee that supports were not the only reason U.S. peanut prices are higher than the world market.

"A highly complex set of legal and regulatory procedures . . . have developed over the decades which are no longer useful," Plowden said.

Ben Smith, of Tom's Foods in Columbus, spoke on behalf of the American Peanut Product Manufacturers. Smith urged Congress to "focus on removing the unnecessary costs of the current system of marketing peanuts in the United States."

Several subcommittee members raised the issue of funds available in the federal budget for farm programs.

Rep. Charles Stenholm (D-Texas) asked Everett whether the Bush administration had made its preferences known, but Everett indicated the White House had not.

Eva Clayton, a North Carolina Democrat and member of the Agriculture Committee, sat in on the hearing and said the peanut program faces "an uphill battle."

"We are in a different political environment," she said.

GRAPHIC: Photo:
Acknowledging "real strong opposition" to current supports, Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) questions a witness Wednesday during a House hearing on the federal peanut-quota program. / RICK McKAY / Washington Bureau

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 2001