Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Publishing Society Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)
April 29, 2002, Monday
SECTION: USA; Pg. 01
LENGTH: 861
words
HEADLINE: Grudgingly, farmers take more
aid
BYLINE: Laurent Belsie Staff writer of The
Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: SPRINGFIELD,
ILL.
HIGHLIGHT: The farm bill crafted Friday in Congress offers record subsidies, but
few fixes for an ailing agricultural economy.
BODY: Spring is the most hopeful season in
agriculture. American farmers move into their fields to fertilize and plant. But
this year, hope seems in short supply.
Instead, a
general gloom has set in across the Midwest. Low crop prices, increasing
workloads, growing dependence on farm subsidies, and an uncertain future have
created the general ennui. Rarely have farmers endured hard times for so long
and with so little prospect for improvement.
In
Washington, congressional leaders have agreed on a mammoth farm
bill that - with a 70 percent increase in agricultural spending - should
help producers' pocketbooks a little, but does nothing for their self-esteem.
Many farmers dislike the huge subsidies that prop up the agricultural economy.
In coming years, however, they may have to lean even more heavily on federal
largesse.
"I used to look forward to going out"
and planting, says Robert Reed, a farmer from Nebo, Ill. But "I think the joy
has gone out of farming." That may explain why on a sunny April day ideal for
field work, he sits instead in a windowless room of the county Farm Bureau
office here in Springfield. Over sandwiches and Doritos, he and a handful of
Illinois producers are preparing testimony for the state natural resources
department. They hope to ease state limits on deer-hunting so they can rent out
their farms to sport hunters.
It's one way
farmers are diversifying out of agriculture in order - ironically - to stay on
the farm.
Don Stephen, a Monticello, Ill., farmer
who runs a hunting preserve on the side, says the preserve "is the difference
between me going to town and finding a $ 10-an-hour job or being able to stay in
my [farming] business."
Indeed, almost everywhere
one looks in farming today, the future looks unpromising. Crop prices have
scraped bottom for so long no one sees much prospect for a rebound. Here in
Illinois, farmers are marking the 45th straight month of low corn and soybean
prices, notes Darrel Good, an agricultural extension economist at the University
of Illinois at Urbana. "This is the longest period of low prices since the
1960s."
Kept in the black by subsidy
The low prices, in turn, have made farmers unusually
dependent on government subsidies. "Unfortunately, in the past three years, all
the profit has come from government payments," says Jim Gay, a Rockport, Ill.,
farmer. "And I think everyone's depressed about this situation."
Farmers' self-esteem took another blow last fall,
when an environmental group launched a website showing exactly how much federal
largesse each producer was receiving. The Environmental Working Group wanted to
publicize how unequal the system was, since the top 10 percent of producers were
getting two-thirds of the subsidies. Farmers and rural businessmen flocked to
the site to find out exactly how much money their neighbors were getting.
"You just couldn't avoid checking," says Mr. Gay,
who admits he was embarrassed at the publication of his own subsidies. But "in
some respects, they are helping us to reevaluate where we are."
The prognosis: Not good. As families have seen farm
income fall, some have taken jobs in town. Others have expanded their
agricultural operations in the hope that more volume would make ends meet.
But the work has taken an emotional toll. There's
"less time for family, less time to enjoy the intrinsic values of farming," says
Paul Lasley, a sociology professor at Iowa State University in Ames.
In the 1980s, the last time agriculture lurched into
crisis, many farmers did anything they could to stay on the farm. This time,
farmers and agricultural observers find that producers are more likely to change
careers.
When he surveyed Iowa farmers two years
ago, only 12 percent thought the farm economy would improve in the next five
years. "The 2000 findings were the most pessimistic that we've ever seen" of the
1980s, he says.
More federal spending
On Friday, congressional conferees reached a
compromise farm bill from rival versions already passed by the
House and Senate. It would raise federal farm spending by $ 73.5 billion over 10
years. The deal, which still needs formal House and Senate approval, includes
slight increases in corn and wheat subsidies, a national program to help
dairymen, and record spending on farm conservation programs. But conservation,
in particular, cuts both ways.
Once seen as
stewards of the land who would feed a hungry world, farmers have increasingly
come under attack for everything from hog odors to fertilizer runoff that
pollutes the rivers.
"This is the first time in
the history of this continent that agriculture isn't seen as a public good,"
says Fred Kirschenmann, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable
Agriculture at Iowa State University.
The trick
for policymakers will be to restructure agriculture, he adds, so it can provide
for rural families while meeting the needs and values of the 21st century.