”Government interference in agriculture hasn`t held down food prices and it hasn`t increased farmers` income. They are worse off, we`re worse off and the government costs about $7 billion more than it did or should. Farm income in constant dollars was almost twice as great in 1974 as it is now. When will we learn?”
The words are Ronald Reagan`s. They were uttered in 1979. They are true today. In fact, they are an understatement.
In President Reagan`s first term, the government has been paying two and three times $7 billion more than it should to support farmers, who are producing huge, useless surpluses in the face of market prices ranging down to 1948 levels.
The government is likely to add even more generous amounts to the farm dole in the remainder of Mr. Reagan`s second term. The House has just passed a five-year farm bill that is expected to put a $141 billion price tag on the continuation of what now seem to be eternal farm support and relief programs. True, the House bill constitutes a ”freeze” in which major expansions of federal agriculture programs were held back. The measure imposes penalties on farmers who add to the surpluses by growing crops on highly erodible land. It provides food assistance for the needy and should restrain export prices enough to make some improvement in U.S. agricultural sales abroad.
But it`s no bargain. The erosion-control program involves bribing farmers not to injure endangered topsoil. Some truly obnoxious subsidies, such as those for tobacco and honey, are maintained. And there`s doubt about how realistic the ”freeze” might be.
According to the Agriculture Department, the legislation is based on false economic considerations and assumptions. The measure could end up increasing the cost of commodity support programs from $42 billion to $50 billion. The bill`s backers claim it would cut them by $8 billion.
The bill is now before a Senate in which a disproportionate amount of power is wielded by farm state legislators such as Majority Leader Robert Dole. Already the Senate has produced farm legislation that could run costs up to $20 billion higher than administration goals.
As things stand, cash subsidies for corn, sorghum, wheat, rice, wool, cotton and other products reached a record $5.8 billion for the six months ending in June. This compares with $4 billion paid out in all of last year and $4.1 billion in all of 1983.
With net farm income expected to be between $23 billion and $27 billion in 1985, this means about 20 percent of the profit farmers make this year will come in the form of payments from taxpayers. Imagine a country in which all business was treated so generously.
Lawmakers defend the farm bill as a means of buying time for the farmers
–keeping them in business–while government straightens out its financial mess and attempts to lower the deficits that have wreaked so much havoc with farm credit interest rates. You don`t lower deficits by adding to them. For the taxpayers, time has run out. The national debt has been doubled. Interest on it is expected to total $143 billion next year.
If Mr. Reagan means what he said in 1979 and has continued to say since he became president, he will stop buying time and make the farmers and their representatives in Congress for once face reality. He will veto this farm bill.
