By PHILIP BRASHER / AP Farm Writer / 10/12/99
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After getting sidetracked by disputes over health insurance, dairy policy and the Cuban trade embargo, Congress is finishing work on an $8.7 billion aid package for farmers hurt by bad weather and a second year of depressed commodity prices.
The money is in a $69 billion agricultural spending bill that the Senate could send to President Clinton this week. The Senate was expected to vote Tuesday to block a potential filibuster of the legislation by senators from Northeastern states.
They are unhappy that the bill fails to provide more money for growers hit by drought this year and doesn't allow New England states to continue fixing milk prices.
Work on the bill has been delayed several times, starting in late June when Senate Democrats tried to attach controls on HMOs. Last month, the bill was held up in a House-Senate conference for more than a week because Republican leaders refused to include provisions to allow sales of food and medicine to Cuba and overhaul the Agriculture Department's new milk-pricing regulations.
"The fact is that the time is late, we need to get some assistance out to rural America," said Tom Buis, a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union.
The House approved the measure Oct. 1.
The aid package includes $5.5 billion to double the annual "market transition" payments that farmers were to have gotten this year and $1.4 billion in disaster relief, including $200 million earmarked for livestock producers. Additional money is targeted for tobacco, soybean and peanut growers and to reduce premiums that farmers pay for crop insurance.
The legislation also would benefit some of the nation's largest and most profitable farms by increasing the maximum amount of crop subsidies one operation can get from $150,000 to $300,000. With the additional market transition payment, that means some farms could claim as much as $460,000 in government payments this year, not counting what they could get through various conservation programs.
Last year, about 550 farms nationwide claimed the maximum in crop subsidies.
Critics of the looser payment rules fear they will encourage the consolidation of farms and hasten the demise of smaller-scale operations. Big farms will use the extra cash to buy up land from neighbors, which will drive up land prices, said Chuck Hassebrook, program director of the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Neb.
"What is the purpose of these farm programs? Is it to help very wealthy, very large landowners get bigger and get richer? If it is then this all makes sense," Hassebrook said. However, he said, "I don't think that's what the public supports."
But farm organizations that pushed for raising subsidy limits say low commodity prices hurt big farms as well as small ones.
"Producers need to get their income from the marketplace, (but) the marketplace simply isn't providing it right now," said Steve Pringle, legislative director of the Texas Farm Bureau.:
