LEGISLATIVE REPORT: AGRICULTURE TOUR 1999: LESSONS LEARNED, ACTION PLANNED

Recently I spent one hot and dry week in Southern Missouri traveling to many farms, ranches and agribusinesses that are the backbone of our local communities. Producers and business owners invited me and their farming friends and neighbors to meet in.the shade of their trees, barns and shops to share personal perspectives on the current agriculture crisis and their professional views on what our federal government can do to help them through these bad times.

Weather conditions have had varying degrees of impact on the diverse producers of Southern Missouri. But the historic-low commodity prices of the past two years has a disastrous impact on every one of our producers. Our family farms and ranches throughout Southern Missouri are in dire straits. Many producers have been driven to the edge of bankruptcy and some hog producers have already gone out of business. There is no denying the fact that our producers are suffering. I saw it in the faces of the dozens of farmers and ranchers who met with me during the agriculture tour. I heard it in their voices as they told me of their struggle to make ends meet while raising their livestock and gening out this year's crops.

Despite these desperate times on the farm and ranch, our producers are as proud and independent as ever. While the producers expressed appreciation for federal assistance through the bad times, their central message was loud and clear -- we don't want a hand out, we want a hand up. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the experiences of our farmers and ranchers, our current farm bill does not provide an adequate safety net. Because of this, emergency assistance is needed in the short term. Congress and the Administration must come to an agreement on the size of an emergency assistance package and on the mechanism to deliver this assistance to our producers in the most timely and efficient way possible.

In terms of preserving the long term security of our family farmers and ranchers, the producers I met with in Southern Missouri expressed broad agreement on four factors that must be addressed. First, we must revisit our farm bill to ensure that a real safety net will be there for our producers during future down-sums in the farm economy. Second, our federal Agriculture Department and Trade Representative must do more to help market U.S. agriculture overseas and opening up more foreign markets for our producers. This includes ending the Administration's use of food embargoes that have costs our producers more than $20 billion over the last five years in lost sales abroad. Third, we must look into the trend of increasing concentration in the agriculture markets, including commodity buyers, handlers and processors and railroad mergers. And fourth, we must provide regulatory relief to our producers and ensure that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working for our producers out on the farms and ranches and not for the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In fact, EPA regulations have increased farm production costs by as much as six times.

Many thoughts and ideas on addressing these and other issues were communicated directly to me by our local experts. the farmers, ranchers and agribusiness owners of Southern Missouri. And I am taking all of the thoughts, suggestions and concerns expressed by our agriculture community directly to the House leadership, members of the House Agriculture Committee and to the House-Senate negotiations on the agriculture appropriations and emergency assistance bill. I will take any and all steps necessary to educate my urban and suburban colleagues in the House on the importance of our agriculture community and to draw their attention to the problems that our farmers and ranchers face today.