Uncertain Harvest Farm Bill Ushers In New Era But Opinions Are Sharply Divided Over Merits Of Landmark Legislation

At the homey Dusty Cafe, farmer John Aune tips back his chair while being served by a waitress wearing a shirt that says “You kill it, we grill it.”

Aune is mulling over the new federal farm bill. It’s a law that’s supposed to change the way he and millions of other farmers do business, while relieving taxpayers from writing annual subsidy checks.

President Clinton on April 4 signed the Federal Agricultural Improvement Reform Act. Presidential hopeful Bob Dole hailed it as “good for taxpayers, good for the environment, good for America.”

Aune, a straight-shooting 55-year-old, has another description for it.

“Dumbest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, massaging tangled hair beneath his dust-covered cap. “They’re going to give us money when we don’t need it?”

Under the new law that kicks in May 20, farmers will receive a flat, declining sum through 2002 whether they grow a crop or not, and regardless of the price.

The timing of the much-delayed legislation couldn’t be better for farmers, or worse for image-minded politicians.

Wheat prices are at the highest levels in 20 years, and aren’t likely to recede much before harvest.

That means many Inland Northwest farmers could receive $5.00 a bushel for the wheat they produce, plus another 92 cents a bushel from the federal government.

And, because of the new law, they can plant more wheat than before - meaning even more money.

“They say we ought to save the money, but nobody will. If they want to give it to me, by golly, I’ll take it.”

Government officials say the payments will be too small for farmers to retire on FAIR, but there’s nothing to stop them.

“If you want to skip town and spend the next seven years in Florida, that’s fine,” says Steve Hoag, program specialist for the Farm Service Agency’s Washington State office in Spokane. “You might offend your neighbors or the county noxious weed board, but our office won’t get on your case.”

Farmers more likely will use the next seven years to retire debts, upgrade equipment and experiment with new management practices. Robert Goldsworthy Jr., a wheat and pea farmer outside of Oakesdale, Wash., believes Congress has given him this one chance to strengthen his farm financially before releasing him to the forces of the free market.

“This is a good way to break our dependency,” says Goldsworthy, who recently traded in a 1975 combine for a “newer” 1981 model at his 1,300-acre farm. “It may reduce our standard of living a little, but we can do it.”

With all that money going into farmers’ pockets, even Republican leaders say FAIR falls short of their goal to cut $13 billion from the farm program. After 14 months of political wrangling, the final law is expected to save an estimated $2 billion compared to the previous farm program. But the cost to taxpayers still totals $47 billion over seven years.

Also, broad regulatory relief promised farmers never materialized, and politicians have given themselves an escape clause to reinstate the old program if FAIR proves a failure.

But the worst problem for politicians is a sense that FAIR is “farm welfare.” Consider that under the law:

Farmers don’t have to plant anything to be paid for the next seven years.

Farmers this year will collect $5.6 billion at a time when crop prices are at a 20-year high and grain stocks a 50-year low.

Farmers in many cases are permitted to break contracts they signed to idle erodible land for 10 years.

Farmers will be reimbursed for subsidies they paid back last year under the old program when crop prices were too high to qualify for government checks.

Each farmer can collect up to $80,000 this year; $40,000 in subsequent years. That’s on top of what they earn from their crop.

In 2002, on the eve of when farmers are supposed to be weaned off subsidies with transitional payments, they’ll pocket $4 billion.

“The bottom line on the farm bill is that we just got screwed,” said Scott English, a congressional lobbyist for the Washington, D.C.-based Citizen’s Against Government Waste.

Since the Great Depression, farm programs have attempted to provide adequate and inexpensive food by controlling U.S. production on nearly 250 million acres. The price of sugar, peanuts and dairy products also were bolstered through complicated marketing orders and quotas that created barriers to new farmers and attempted to curb overproduction.

But taxpayers increasingly have grown suspicious of the need to support farmers, who account for less than 2 percent of the population.

FAIR, which was designed by Rep. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was supposed to be the remedy. It was supposed to let farmers plant whatever they want while reducing the federal budget.

But in a rush to get the bill to Clinton before spring planting, Congress created a most unusual entitlement.

“Farmers get seven years of welfare; Aid to Dependent Children recipients get five,” Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., declared during the final hours of floor debate on FAIR.

Roberts rejects the comparison and asks Americans to trust that the annual payments are a transition to help farmers adjust to a free market, to a time when they will no longer receive government assistance.

“It’s imperative that producers assume total responsibility for their economic futures,” Roberts said in response to Frank’s criticism. “In the years when prices are strong and the farmer receives a payment, it will be his personal responsibility to save that money for bad years.”

In the end, Robert’s idea of “freedom to farm the market” was lost in a sea of compromise. Grain farmers can switch to rice, corn, mint, canola, barley, hops, alfalfa, sugarbeets and non-vegetable seed crops, but are barred from growing hundreds of fruits or vegetables. The one exception: Palouse-grown peas and lentils.

That means irrigated farmers in Grant or Lincoln county can’t switch their wheat acreage to potatoes, which many have done in the past, and still receive their full FAIR payment.

“It (FAIR) is moving toward freeing up agriculture, but contains some very interesting continuations of previous programs,” says A. Desmond O’Rourke, director of the IMPACT Center at Washington State University and a proponent of a free-market system.

Planting options already were restricted by lack of moisture for most of the 12,000 dryland farmers and landlords in Washington and North Idaho who participate in the farm program.

“We plant wheat and we plant wheat. What else can you plant?” says Gretchen Borck, director of issues for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, one of three state wheat organizations that had opposed Freedom to Farm.

Under FAIR, Washington wheat farmers will collect an estimated $103 million from the government this year, $60 million to $65 million in subsequent years, according to the Farm Service Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That compares with the most recent five-year average of $78.6 million annually.

Opponents of FAIR say food production is too critical a thing to not provide a “safety net” of income for farmers when prices fall. Without these producers, the United States might suffer crop shortages and inflationary prices.

“Smaller farmers may go belly up and we’ll have a lot of huge megafarmers,” says Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who reluctantly voted for FAIR as a temporary measure. “They (megafarmers) may not be making sure that we have an adequate food supply.”

However, grain shortages occur under the current farm program. The Agriculture Department last week released an unnerving report that strong export demand likely will reduce grain supplies to 50-year low by June 1. That means enough corn for two weeks; enough wheat for 6.5 weeks.

Crop supplies are expected to rally in the coming year as farmers seed more acres to cash in on higher prices.

In addition, FAIR allows some farmers for the first time to break their 10-year Conservation Reserve Program contracts to grow a crop on the ground and collect FAIR payments. Currently there are 36.4 million acres enrolled in CRP, which idles highly erodible soil to reduce erosion and preserve farm land for future generations.

Such peculiar changes worry Goldsworthy. He fears taxpayers won’t understand the new law and will blame farmers for leaching off public coffers.

“I can understand that someone with a 9-to-5 job in the city won’t understand. We like to say we’ve got this special way of life, but they know we’re just a business like any other business,” says Goldsworthy, as his pet collie, Rush Limdog, strolls by. “But it’s a business that’s been dependent on the government for generations. Turning off the spigot cold turkey wouldn’t be right.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo