Although he again spelled out his plans for risk management reforms, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman also said Tuesday that the Clinton Administration well could propose ways to help farmers facing continuing low prices.  He also said he would like to see the demise of milk price supports delayed two years, to 2002, to coincide with the expiration of the 1996 farm law.

"I believe you will find the administration making some proposals to deal with low prices," he said in an address to the Sparks Companies Inc. spring conference.  But "I don't see any movement to roll back" the 1996 farm law.  "I do think it's imperative that we plug its holes."

Glickman again enumerated changes he would like to see in risk management: more crop insurance options that would cover multi-year losses and insurance for livestock.  Crop insurance "will continue to be the centerpiece of the safety net," he said, but "we're looking at a broad range of risk management tools."

Those include allowing producers to plant fruits and  vegetables without penalty, extend the farm loan repayment schedule for marketing loans and help farmers finance on-farm storage facilities.

"Lurching from one emergency relief bill to the next, damage-control style, is not the most effective way to help our farmers," Glickman said.  The 1996 farm law "was perfectly suited to the bullish farm economy of 1996, (but) it offered little protection for when the going got tough.  Scaling back the government role is fine, as long as the market is providing for everyone -- as long as exports are moving and wheat is at $4 a bushel."

He scolded the European Union for refusing to import beef from cattle treated with hormones, a reluctance that "flies in the face of empirical science."  A World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel has ruled that the EU must change the practice by May 13, a deadline at which the EU is "balking," said Glickman.  If they don't meet the deadline, the United States is "prepared to retaliate by imposing duties on a number of European imports."

But it won't be enough just to get access to the EU markets, he added.  If EU consumers won't buy the products because they don't believe in their safety, "the battle waged over market access will have been for naught.  It's therefore incumbent upon us to launch a public information and consumer education effort."

"Difficult questions" remain on genetically modified organisms.  "They present very tricky ownership issues, for example," Glickman said.

Growing market concentration also is proving troublesome.  "With every new merger and consolidation, we move closer to a kind of agricultural Darwinism with survival of the fittest becoming survival of the biggest," he said.