Copyright 2001 The Omaha World-Herald Company Omaha
World Herald (Nebraska)
December 23, 2001, Sunday SUNRISE
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 8B;
LENGTH: 637 words
HEADLINE: A
welcome farm bill delay
BYLINE: 1
BODY: A
new federal farm law, as Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel has said, could do with a
good deal more thought and study than it seems to have received so far.
Democrats had unsuccessfully pushed for passage this month
of a farm bill drafted by the Senate Agriculture Committee,
whose chairman is Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
Hagel and
Iowa's other senator, Republican Charles Grassley, contend that the Harkin bill
has numerous flaws, including a payment structure tilted in favor of large
agricultural operations. Hagel says it threatens the sensible system set up by
Bob Kerrey and others to substitute crop insurance for politically negotiated
disaster payments. The senator also contends that proposed subsidies would run
America afoul of international trade commitments.
Others have raised concern about the Harkin measure, including the
American Meat Institute. It claims that a provision forbidding the ownership of
livestock by food processors is out of step with the realities of the market and
would cause a drop in the prices that stockmen receive.
For Democrats, there is obvious eagerness to be the party pulling the
plug on "Freedom to Farm" - a Republican program based on the idea that
government subsidies could be phased out by next year if farmers aggressively
pursued a global market for their products. Trouble was, global demand sagged
just as the philosophy was being implemented.
Freedom
to Farm might have been the wrong idea for the times, but at least it was an
idea. At least it was based on a philosophy. If the current debate is driven by
anything visionary on either side, it has yet to become apparent. Rather, the
tone from Washington seems mostly to ring of partisan wrangling over what
producers, and which parts of the country, will get the most money.
Federal farm involvement accelerated in the 1930s in order
to bring down price-destroying overproduction and prevent the social and
economic collapse of rural America. That, too, was an idea, a philosophy. But
this year, new questions flow from using the old forms and the old habits in
changing circumstances.
What is the purpose, indeed the
morality, of subsidizing surplus production? Does the government have a
responsibility to stabilize the rural population? Should federal payments reward
efficiency? Or punish inefficiency? Or vice versa?
Should the bigger payments go to larger producers as a way of most
efficiently buying down surplus production? If so, and if the larger producers
are investor-owned factory farms, what does this have to do with saving the
family farm if that indeed should be a goal? What is the role of conservation
payments - a vehicle for improving farm income without dictating crop decisions?
What voice should environmental organizations have in the relationship between
agriculture and government?
Why did Democrats add the
producers of commodities that until now have been outside the farm program? Is
there a shortage of lentils in the nation that needs to be addressed with a
subsidy program? What is the philosophical basis for adding honey producers? Are
they having trouble surviving financially, and if so, is there a better economic
model for producing honey?
Our concerns may not be the
same as Hagel's. But certainly we would welcome a longer, more studious look at
what is happening. From all appearances, the bill that stalled in the Senate
last week could be figuratively described as a means of throwing handful after
handful of money at various producers. At some point, the non-farming majority
in this country is going to ask why this one industry needs so much help. For
the sake of agriculture in the Midlands, we hope the Harkins of the world have
an answer that holds together philosophically.
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