March 7, 2000

Producers at the first in a series of House Agriculture Committee field hearings called for higher price supports and a "flexible fallow" that would reward farmers with higher supports the more acreage they left idle, REUTERS reported

Some witnesses also advocated an end to limits on subsidy payments. Last year, Congress temporarily increased payment limits so that a farmer organized into three entities – as permitted by law – can receive up to $460,000 in federal benefits for the 1999 crops. The witnesses were saying, in effect, that this is not enough.

Congress repealed the authority for production controls in 1996. At the time, most producer groups supported the repeal, reasoning that competing countries tended to offset the effect of U.S. supply cutbacks by increasing their own output. The "flexible fallow" advocated by yesterday’s witnesses would reverse the current full production policy, and would be similar to the 1983 payment-in-kind program in that farmers could choose their own level of idle acreage.

Historically, Texas and Oklahoma producers have been more sympathetic to production controls than growers in the Midwest and West.