Commission Explores Ways To Aid Small Farms

Farmers need help to flourish in the next century, two key farm groups said this week.

But the National Commission on Small Farms and the National Grange laid out different paths to success.

The commission, set up last summer by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, proposes a federal program to train and assist farmers. It also would study ways to make small farms more profitable and competitive, and expand markets.

Glickman said the commission asked farmers, researchers, bankers and rural residents about the challenges facing today’s small farmers.

The panel’s report has more than 100 recommendations to improve the Agriculture Department’s service. Those changes would “help give small farmers a real opportunity to compete and succeed in a new, rapidly changing world.”

The National Grange wants to broaden international markets and eliminate capital gains and estate taxes.

At a separate news conference, Grange President Kermit W. Richardson announced his organization’s “Blueprint for Rural America,” a 10-point plan for the future.

Eliminating estate taxes would allow farms to be kept in families without any tax penalties. U.S. trade negotiators need “fast track” authorization to promote American farm products in international markets, Richardson said.

Keeping tobacco a viable U.S. crop and protecting farmers’ property rights also are part of the plan. Farmers’ rights need to be balanced against the views of environmentalists, he said, adding, “Both sides have to be at the table.”

Some parts of the plan are only indirectly connected to farming. The Grange wants highway trust funds to be spent on rural roads, highways and bridge improvements, electrical utilities deregulated to assure equal treatment for urban and rural areas, rural schools renovated and equality in health care in rural areas.

, DataTimes