JACKSON - U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, the next chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said progress has been made in weaning farmers from government subsidies.
However, Cochran, R-Miss., said it is unlikely subsidies will disappear.
"We have been reducing the program, changing them so they are more market-oriented so that farmers get more from the market than they do from government supports," Cochran said.
Cochran spoke this week with The Associated Press in Jackson.
Farm groups kept Congress this year from imposing new limits on the crop subsidies that individual farms can collect, despite big votes in the House and the Senate endorsing the caps. The issue is not going away.
While the caps were left out of the new farm bill, advocates say they will try to attach them to other legislation, possibly the appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department.
At issue is a program created two years ago that allows farmers to bypass the normal limits on subsidies by borrowing money against their crops and repaying the loans at below cost.
From last October through March, farms collected $1.5 billion through the program.
Most of the funds go to rice and cotton growers in California and some southern states. Individuals with vast holdings in the Midwest and Plains states also have used it to collect sums of $500,000 or more since the program was created.
The final version of the farm bill set an overall limit on subsidies but left intact the language that allows unlimited amounts of money under the loan program.
Critics of subsidy caps say they penalize efficient, productive farms and are especially unfair to cotton and rice, which cost much more to grow than corn, wheat and soybeans, the other major commodities the government subsidizes.
Cochran said the critics should consider that the United States provides lower average subsidies for its farmers than other countries that subsidize agriculture.
"I think the number was 21 percent of the farm income that is earned by an American farmer is provided by government support payments. The lowest countries are New Zealand and Australia at 1 percent and 4 percent, respectively," Cochran said.
Cochran said the average among European countries is around 45 percent.
"The point I'm making is the U.S. does not inordinately subsidize our farmers compared with other countries that have government support programs," Cochran said.
Q: Both Congress and the state of Mississippi passed labeling laws that require catfish, for example, to be labeled American or from a foreign country. Some meat packers and some producers are concerned about the expense even though it is voluntary on the federal level for a couple of years. They seem to want Congress to repeal it or make it permanently voluntary. Any thoughts on what Congress might do?
A. The key is that we don't want the labeling to misrepresent what the product is. That was the main focus of our effort.
Under international trade rules, I think we have an opportunity to discuss grievances before the World Trade Organization. I hope we can resolve this in a way that it doesn't damage U.S. relations.
I'm in favor of us trying to work in harmony with some of our foreign friends to resolve issues like this without having to resort to punitive discriminatory legislation.
I don't know how all of this is going to work out. I know the Mississippi farm raised catfish industry has spent $50 million developing an image that is favorable in grocery stores and in the homes of American families. Now to have another competitor come in and take advantage of those investments and take market share away in a misleading way is unfortunate.
Q: There is still some concern among farmers about drought relief. Farmers want a bigger pile of money but they don't want it as part of the farm bill. Is there any way you can come up with something outside the farm bill?
A: The crop insurance programs are in place that provide some assistance to those farmers. Not every farmer who had a disaster is going to be uncompensated because of existing programs. We do have to pay attention to those who may have special situations that need to be addressed and give the Department of Agriculture authority to respond.
Now, how much money is going to be available is another question.
My staff is working to try to reduce the appropriations bill that we will pass, hopefully in January, to fund the Department of Agriculture.
We're looking for ways to cut the size of that bill by several hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it's about $600 million.
We have gone over individual accounts looking for ways that we could defer spending for another year or consult with the department on ways to save money without doing anybody any real serious harm.
Q: Some programs will be reduced in the appropriations?
A: We've got a wide range of programs in that bill - WIC, school lunches, food stamps, a lot of the new farm programs are funded in the bill. Soil and water conservation and all the nutrition programs are funded in there as well as the
Food and Drug Administration.
I'm not going speculate which ones are going to end up being cut but there will be some programs cuts in the bill that funds the Department of Agriculture and other agencies to meet the goal of getting the bill down to a level that the president can sign.
None of them are programs I want to cut. We have to go back because of our deficit problem. We don't want to contribute to eroding our economic good health with a huge budget deficit.
Some of it is mandatory funding. One way we can save some money is to change from mandatory to discretionary in some of those accounts. That's under consideration.
Q: The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization. With the budget being as tight as it is do you see any increase?
A: I am hopeful we can have a generous program in food assistance for children, certainly in the free and reduced price lunches for schools and breakfast programs.
I do think there are ways we can reduce the cost to the government of some of these programs by improving efficiencies … looking at ways to standardize some of the systems used to distribute the foods to these programs to the beneficiaries…
I can't predict that we are going to increase the funding at time when we're trying to find ways to make more efficient use of government funds.
I'm not predicting that we'll see a decrease. I'm hoping that we'll see a more efficiently managed and operated program.
Copyright 2002, Associated Press. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
