Ag support: U.S. farmers must be able to compete internationally.

American farmers have reached a political and economic tipping point in the form of this year's federal budget. The best food supply in the world, the family farm and the future of American agriculture hang in the balance.

Included in the 2006 budget are across-the-board cuts in farm payments, payment limits on medium and large farms and mandatory crop insurance. This philosophical change in policy tilts the level playing field I worked to establish in the 2002 Farm Bill. These changes fail to recognize the unique circumstances faced by American farmers or the sheer importance of their products.

The deck is already stacked against the American farmer. On average, Japan subsidizes its farmers $3,960 an acre, the European Union $320 an acre and the United States $49 an acre. When American farmers export their products, they face a 62 percent tax levied by other countries trying to keep our competition out. And the scare tactics of other nations on genetically modified crops discourage the purchase of American products on the world market.

Taking American agriculture as an industry, it is responsible for 15 percent of gross domestic product and 25 million U.S. jobs. The harvest from our farms trickles through our entire society. A simple model is on display in every one of the farming towns that dot the Midwest. Mills, roads, rails, schools, produce markets, banks, seed and implement vendors, insurance companies, manufacturers, churches and city halls depend on the surrounding farmers and their fields.

Though they are beset by plagues of insects, disease, flooding, drought, soaring energy costs and sagging commodity prices in any given year, our farmers return to their fields again and again to plow, plant, grow and, hopefully, harvest.

The proposed budget for agriculture programs would yank the tablecloth from the American dinner table with disastrous results. Farm families could not grow our reliable supply of abundant food without federal assistance. Ranchers would suffer shortages of feed grain for their livestock. The sweat equity of our farmers would become the property of banks and sold at a loss.

It is not an implausible scenario, because America has been there as recently as the early 1980s. Even though it is a long way from budget proposal to budget reality, today's situation is urgent. Farmers count on level support payments to plan their finances years in advance. Action is already taking the place of diligence, however, as my colleagues in Congress and I set out to right this wrong.

Folks in Washington don't seem to understand the realities of farming in America today. Just because a farm is incorporated doesn't mean it is a huge corporate farm. Farms in southern Missouri are incorporated for tax purposes, to keep them in the family, and they are far from rich. Farm payments are a vital incentive to encourage conservation throughout the country. Payments keep most family farms afloat and prevent true multinational corporations from swallowing the land and making the farmer the employee, not the boss.

That is not the farming future I envision for America. Every August, I visit producers of all kinds in southern Missouri. These are good, hardworking people who rise with the sun and stop working long after the stars have come out. They live in farmhouses built by their grandparents and eat the food they grow. They plow, plant, grow and harvest for the benefit of us all. And they can compete in international markets because of well-funded programs and payments.

Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents Missouri's 8th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.