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

 your contribution. 

 Mr. Rohland. 



STATEMENT OF CURT ROHLAND, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FAMILY 



FARM COALITION 



Mr. Rohland. Thank you very much. I, too, thank you for the 

 opportunity to speak today, Mr. Chairman. 



I am here representing the farmers of the National Family Farm 

 Coalition, a coalition of otherwise independent organizations from 

 around 30 States across the country. We appreciate the theme or 

 subject of this hearing today. That is, it strikes at the heart of 

 what must be addressed: The state of the rural economy. 



On a personal note, I might say that I began farming on my own 

 approximately 17 years ago. In fact, my first 4 years of farming 

 were the last 4 years of a Democratic administration until now. I 

 might say that even as a relatively young and inexperienced 

 farmer, those first 4 years were the best years in my farming life. 

 It has been more or less a misery ever since. 



For these last 12 years, and today, as the other speakers have 

 pointed out, with whom I concur in the statistical material they 

 have provided — and I will try not to repeat any of that — prices 

 have been on the decline. Dairy prices are again going down. Corn 

 farmers have had the lowest harvest price on record. Wheat farm- 

 ers are facing record low net farm income. We, the Nation's food 

 producers, are indeed troubled. 



Current programs and policies are certainly neither meeting the 

 needs of family farmers nor those of the citizens of our rural com- 

 munities and, as it has been pointed out, are not even meeting the 

 real needs of the American citizens whether as consumers or tax- 

 payers. They are paying too much for their groceries compared to 

 what we, the farmers, are getting for those groceries. They are 

 paying too much to keep a faulty food production system in exist- 

 ence through tax-paid subsidies. Neither are necessary if the situa- 

 tion were corrected. 



If the intended objectives of the current farm policies are to 

 produce an abundant crop without regard to the producers, then 

 they have succeeded with this year's 9 billion bushel corn crop. But 

 the benefits of our productivity as farmers are lost when our prices 

 continue to fall below the cost of production. And farmers must 

 constantly ask ourselves why we struggle to remain in a business 

 that is void of any financial reward. 



The only beneficiaries of this policy are the grain companies, the 

 processors, the food industry conglomerates who continue to reap 

 record profits both here and abroad, again through a faulty policy 

 and a false ideology or philosophy of what food production and 

 farming is all about. 



The real impact of both these trading practices and the implica- 

 tions of the 1990 farm bill here in 1993 cannot wait until 1994 on 

 the way to 1995, but can and must be addressed and reexamined 

 closely right now. 



Our time is short and so much of what needs to be said has been 

 said by the previous speakers. I would like to speak, perhaps both 



