| WASHINGTON--Government assistance to farmers and ranchers
reached a record high of $28 billion in the fiscal year just ended, with
almost half of all farm income now coming from American taxpayers,
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman reported Monday.
Federal aid to farmers came to $7.8 billion in 1996 and was $16.6
billion last year.
Had the government aid not been provided, net farm income would have
dropped from $51 billion nationally four years ago to $32.1 billion this
year, he said.
"I've no doubt that without the government, tens of thousands of
farmers would have been forced out of business," Glickman told
reporters at a briefing in his office. "There would have been chaos
in American farming."
Farm income minus federal assistance is at its lowest point since 1984,
when the plight of the family farmer became a national issue, attracting
singer Willie Nelson and other celebrities to it as a social cause.
Glickman explained that, while the federal aid amounts to only about 10
percent of farmers' gross income, it comes to 42 percent of what they net
after expenses.
He attributed the rise in financial need to competition from high
international crop production and the resulting depressed prices, as well
as droughts in the South and Southwest, floods in the Northern Plains and
destructive wildfires in the West.
Glickman said the federal assistance went mostly to farmers growing
what the department calls "program crops" -- wheat, corn, cotton
and rice.
He complained that federal efforts to encourage farmers to diversify
their production led in many cases to growers merely switching from one
"program crop" to another.
The dramatic rise in federal aid came just four years after passage of
the Republican-sponsored "Freedom to Farm Act," which was
designed to streamline the Agriculture Department and its programs and
diminish American farmers' dependence on federal handouts.
Glickman recommended that the law and the nation's farm policy be
changed in the next administration to better cope with the financial
realities of American farming.
"I remain concerned that the 1996 farm bill has left our farmers
without an adequate safety net in tough times," he said. "This
year, Congress and the administration worked together to strengthen crop
insurance, an increasingly important tool for farmers forced to contend
with often difficult conditions beyond their control. We also worked
together to provide significant additional emergency assistance. We need
to do more." |