The simple progression of plow, plant, grow and harvest is fundamental to America’s rich agrarian history.  Yet our farmers have reached a political and economic tipping point in the form of this year’s federal budget.  The best food supply in the world, the family farm, and the future of American agriculture hang in the balance.

 

The 2006 budget proposes across-the-board cuts in subsidy payments to American farmers, payment limits on medium and large farms, and mandatory crop insurance.  These proposals represent a philosophical change in policy, tilting the playing field established in the 2002 Farm Bill.  More importantly, they fail to recognize the unique circumstances of American farmers and the sheer importance of their products.

 

The arguments against these cuts were laid out clearly by Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.  Mr. Stallman points out how the deck is already stacked against the American farmer.  On average, Japan subsidizes its farmers $3960 per acre, the European Union $320 per acre and the U.S. $49 per acre.  When American farmers export their products, they face a 62 percent tax levied by other countries trying to keep our competition out. And the scare tactics of other nations on genetically-modified crops discourage the purchase of American products on the world market.

 

Taking American agriculture as an industry, it is responsible for 15 percent of Gross Domestic Product and 25 million U.S. jobs.  The harvest from our farms trickles through our entire society; a simple model is on display in every one of the farming towns that dot the Midwest.  Schools, produce markets, banks, seed and implement vendors, insurance companies, manufacturers, churches and city halls are all linked by the surrounding farmers and their fields.

 

Though they are beset by plagues of insects, disease, flooding, drought, soaring energy costs, sagging commodity prices or all of the above in any given year, our farmers return to their fields again and again to plow, plant, grow and, hopefully, harvest.

 

The proposed budget for agriculture programs would yank the tablecloth from the American dinner table, with disastrous results.  Our reliable supply of abundant food would be impossible to grow on a farmer’s budget.  Equally hardworking ranchers would suffer shortages of feed grain for their livestock, and beef prices would undoubtedly rise.  The sweat equity of our farmers would become the property of banks, sold at a loss.

 

It is not an implausible scenario because America has been there, as recently as the early 1980's.  Even though it is a long way from budget proposal to budget reality, today’s situation is urgent.  Farmers count on level support payments to plan their finances years in advance.  Action is already taking the place of diligence, however, as my colleagues in Congress and I set out to right this wrong.

 

Folks in Washington don’t seem to understand the realities of farming in America today.  Just because a farm is incorporated doesn’t make it a huge corporate farm.  Farms in Southern Missouri are incorporated for tax purposes, to keep them in the family, and they are far from rich. Many rural retirees depend on subsidies for fixed income; they share support payments on their land with the tenants who farm it for them.  Farm payments are a vital incentive to encourage conservation throughout the country.  Finally, these payments keep most family farms afloat and prevent true, multi-national corporations from swallowing the land and making the farmer the employee, not the boss.

 

That is not the farming future I envision for America.  Every August, I visit producers of all
kinds in Southern Missouri.  These are good, hardworking people who rise with the sun and stop working long after the stars have come out.  They live in farmhouses built by their grandparents and eat the food they grow in their fields.  They plow, plant, grow and harvest for the benefit of us all, and they can compete in international markets because of well-funded programs and payments. 

 

By God, I am going to fight to keep it that way.