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Mr. Penny. You also spoke in your testimony about the need to 

 conform U.S. farm policy with our export objectives. Do you want 

 to outline your farm bill for me? 



Ms. Brookins. Oh, my farm bill. I don't think you are ready for 

 my farm bill, Mr. Chairman. I really do believe we need to get 

 away from per unit price supports as the way to support farming 

 in this country. It was a quick fix in 1933 to transfer income to 

 farmers in a way that ag economists could easily do, because they 

 could go out and hand out a check per unit. 



I think it is time to really look at a more creative approach which 

 would be an insurance-type of program in which we would be in- 

 suring gross receipts — especially as we go to flex acres and you 

 begin to have program crop producers then being able to make 

 money off of nonprogram crops while they are still getting the 

 other. Then you are going to be pushing the balloon out in that 

 area where the nonprogram crop producer is saying, just a minute, 

 my market was a good market and now, all of a sudden, I have 

 these people growing my crops and therefore I need support. 



So I think we really have to look at it as a whole farm and whole 

 farmer approach. And I would suggest we seriously look at, at least 

 have a commission set up or a pilot program set up to look at a 

 more comprehensive insurance approach to gross receipts for farm 

 product sales. That is my view. 



Importantly, too, I think we can't look at the ideas we have in 

 the past that if we cut production in this country, that we are going 

 to raise prices, because we are part of this globalized market. And 

 certainly we have learned our hard lessons of that. 



So I think we have to be very careful in terms of our year-to-year 

 targeting of cutting acreage because prices have gone down or crops 

 have gone up. And I think we have to get away from this year-to- 

 year mentality of trying to target production in a fixed way. It 

 didn't work in Russia and it is not working very well here either. 



Mr. Penny. I suggested earlier today that while it may create the 

 problem that you alluded to, and that is demands by other com- 

 modity groups, that they be afforded some protection if flex acres 

 are used to grow alternate crops, but my question of the earlier 

 panel was what about the notion of increasing the flex acres to cor- 

 respond to that share of our total production in corn or wheat that 

 goes into the export market? 



That is a halfway step, it is not sort of an income-based or a total 

 farm-based approach as you suggested, but it does more directly 

 link our domestic subsidy policy to the world market. 



Is there any potential for that? 



Ms. Brookins. I think it could be a useful interim step if it is 

 applied in a way that makes sense in terms of the market. I like 

 the idea and I think that you could link into that and begin to 

 phase in an insurance-type program which would provide some 

 type of risk management — allow the producer to take out some in- 

 surance not on income but on his gross receipts from his farm prod- 

 uct sales. 



And I think the key that we have to be looking at as we move 

 forward, 1995 moving toward the year 2000, we need to be rec- 

 ognizing there are going to be budget cuts and there needs — yet we 



