Glickman Calls Farm Relief 'Sheer Damage Control’

May 26, 2000

The third package of farmer assistance in as many years, included in the just-finalized crop insurance reform and farm assistance bill, represents "sheer damage control," not "carefully crafted policy," says Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. In an address to a Farm Credit Administration symposium, he again called for counter-cyclical supplemental farm payments and a national farm policy "that embraces more than just the row-crop producers of the heartland."

Glickman has vigorously opposed, to no avail, adding farm assistance payments to the transition payments authorized by the 1996 farm law, as the latest legislation again would do. "While I commend Congress for acting early in the year and not waiting until fall to come through with an aid package, I’m troubled by indications that Congress will distribute the money using the same formula that guided the emergency bills of the last two years."

In the long term, he added, emergency assistance is "unsustainable, because it has no philosophical underpinning. It’s sheer damage control rather than a carefully crafted policy. What we need to do is address the deficiencies of the 1996 farm law which worked well during a bullish farm economy but which dismantled the safety net that catches our farmers’ fall when commodity prices slump and global financial markets collapse."

Farm policy now, he continued, is regional and "overlooks the growing diversity of American agriculture." To maintain broad support for farm programs, "we need to build a coalition that’s larger than just one regional bloc."

Policy must address more fundamental questions such as how to preserve the "agrarian tradition" with more rural economic opportunity, "whether it’s in farming, retail, tourism or Internet start-ups."