Glickman Won’t Meet With Farmers Agriculture Secretary Doesn’t Plan A Forum On Conservation Reserve Program Controversy

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Tuesday, July 22, 1997): Correction Misleading headline: Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman will meet with farm leaders when he visits Eastern Washington on Thursday. A headline on a Saturday story incorrectly implied otherwise.

Eastern Washington farmers wondering whether to leave their fields at harvest time to talk to the nation’s top farm official can keep cutting wheat.

There’s no place for them on Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman’s schedule next week to talk about a controversial conservation program.

A preliminary plan of Glickman’s visit on Thursday has no time for the average farmer to ask questions about the Conservation Reserve Program.

He will meet with “commodity and farm groups (approximately 45-50 people),” the schedule says. “It’s probably not going to be a public forum,” said Mike Mandere, a program specialist in the state office of the USDA. “He will just meet with farming leadership.”

That surprised a spokeswoman for Sen. Slade Gorton, one of four members of the Washington congressional delegation who met with Glickman last month to discuss problems with the conservation program.

Washington had the least amount of land approved for the program, which pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of production. Land in Oregon and Idaho was enrolled in the program but similar land in Washington was not.

Gorton understood Glickman was coming to Washington to help restore confidence in the program, Cynthia Bergman said.

“You can only do that by meeting with the farmers,” Bergman said.

Other members of Congress who were at the June 26 meeting with Glickman were traveling back to the state and unavailable for comment Friday.

But Sen. Patty Murray has said it was important for Glickman to come to the state to hear concerns directly from farmers.

Rep. George Nethercutt has charged that USDA officials made a mistake in evaluating Washington land, leading to thousands of eligible acres being left out of the program. Earlier this month, he persuaded a House committee to eliminate funding for the salaries of two officials that he said were responsible for the mistake.

Last week, Glickman wrote a letter to sympathetic Democrats denying that any mistake was made.

In that letter, he mentioned the visit as one of the examples of his willingness to address concerns about the program.

He said he “will travel to Washington state … to meet with affected landowners and learn more about their concerns.”

The preliminary agenda calls for Glickman to spend about 20 minutes visiting a CRP site about 20 miles outside of Pasco, then travel to another location for a 45-minute meeting with representatives of commodity and farm groups.

Later in the day, he will meet for about 50 minutes with representatives of several Native American groups, including the Yakima Indian Nation, to discuss general concerns. The visit to Eastern Washington is scheduled for slightly less than five hours.

, DataTimes