59 



The Chairman. Thank you very much. We appreciate you bring- 

 ing us the views of the American Farm Bureau Federation and cer- 

 tainly your personal comments are very much appreciated. 



Mr. Mitchell. 



STATEMENT OF LARRY MITCHELL, ACTING NATIONAL 

 DIRECTOR, AMERICAN AGRICULTURE MOVEMENT, INC. 



Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, sir. 



Thank you, Mr. de la Garza and the members of the committee. I 

 appreciate the chance to appear before you today to discuss the 

 economic situation facing U.S. agriculture and how best Govern- 

 ment policies can respond to these situations. The economic situa- 

 tion in rural America is critical, as you know. There are isolated 

 spots of moderate prosperity, but they are few and far between. A 

 good indicator of how rural America perceives its own economic sit- 

 uation could be summed up in this past November's Presidential 

 election. 



People tend to vote their pocketbooks. According to Sharon 

 O'Malley, the Washington correspondent for the Texas Co-op 

 Power, concerns about economy and health care costs caused tradi- 

 tionally conservative rural Americans to vote Democratic this past 

 fall for the first time in nearly 30 years. In the Presidential elec- 

 tion, Bill Clinton received 43 percent of the rural vote to President 

 Bush's 38 percent and Ross Perot's 19 percent. 



Agriculture is the life breath of the rural economy. It has been 

 through some tough times over the past 10 years. We saw U.S. 

 farm policies abandon self-sufficiency in favor of selling more for 

 less overseas. The export-driven farm policy has been an all-or- 

 bust, all-the-eggs-in-one-basket scenario which has driven down 

 prices for farmers to historic lows in real dollars. 



We were told in the early 1980's that the reduction in these 

 prices would be paid back to farmers and made up of Federal 

 Treasury dollars in the form of deficiency payments, but those pay- 

 ments have been severely reduced with increased budget problems. 

 That export-driven policy has caused as many as 800,000 farmers to 

 leave the land in the last decade. Those who are left have been 

 forced to use up all available capital reserves and mortgage their 

 futures in order to survive financially. 



Now when natural disasters have come along — and they have 

 been brutally frequent lately — there is nothing left in the rainy 

 day accounts to cover the shortfalls. This committee has been very 

 helpful in obtaining Federal disaster aid for those situations, but 

 now we're experiencing appropriation problems where we have one 

 season's appropriations being spread or prorated over two seasons 

 and now maybe three seasons. Again, we can't really depend upon 

 the Federal taxpayer dollars to bail us out of these situations. 



In addition, the recession has not been kind to rural America. 

 The recession has resulted in lower demand for many of our prod- 

 ucts. The recession has also affected off-farm jobs that farmers and 

 their families have been forced to take in order to survive. After 

 all, net farm income today now includes about 60 percent or more 

 of off-farm sources. The results of these many economic problems 

 has resulted in economic carnage in the heartland. 



