66 



but certainly someone had made that decision away from the needs 

 of that sector of agriculture. This may well happen to us here when 

 other agencies of Government bypass agriculture and the Congress 

 and impose on us some of the problems that we now face. 



We will work at it, I assure you. 



Mr. Eckel, you mentioned that you wished you were back on the 

 land. There is an old Spanish saying in my area, "If you go on the 

 land and you don't feel the vibration inside of you, then you don't 

 belong and it's not going to work for you." Those are the ones that 

 we want to keep on the land. Certainly, Government has some re- 

 sponsibility to see that those people are kept on the land. 



Mr. Roberts. 



Mr. Roberts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I want to associate myself with your remarks, but more especial- 

 ly I want to thank the witnesses for persevering here on a long 

 afternoon and for your patience and perseverance. 



Mr. Eckel, I want to compliment you on a very fine statement. 



Mr. Chairman, my staff has brought to my attention a letter that 

 I wrote to President Bush about a year ago, warning that "Federal 

 redtape and overregulation are hurting ag profits and will threaten 

 America's ability to defeat a hungry world by the end of the centu- 



ry." 



I pointed out at that particular time that the cost of Federal reg- 

 ulation hit a high of $5,800 per household in 1977, was cut to $4,100 

 in 1988, and then we lost control and the cost is climbing again to 

 $4,300 this year, $4,500 by 1996. Mr. Eckel mentioned many of the 

 things that I mentioned to President Bush such as wetlands, pesti- 

 cides, endangered species, USDA, redtape, and bureaucracy as 

 problem areas for the Nation's farmers and ranchers. 



I went on, but I am not going to read the whole thing. I wanted 

 the panel to know in regard to really trying to get a hold of the 

 regulatory overkill, which is a real cost to the producers. You have 

 a yield that you expect and a price. Obviously your cost factor is 

 another part of that equation. 



As a consequence of Mr. Stenholm and myself traveling to six 

 States to try to improve the farm program and make it more 

 farmer friendly, the chairman instructed us on this committee to 

 take a good hard look in regard to the oversight responsibility we 

 have in terms of the legislation we passed a decade ago. We made 

 mention to years past as a yardstick. That farm bill was 25 pages 

 long. It was 750 pages long in 1990 with 4,000 report pages full of 

 mandates. 



The chairman, in a fit of responsibility, accountability, honesty, 

 and candor, has warned all of us on the committee that what we 

 would like to do is to legislate, but there is a cost to that. 



So as we go down the road here in this session, part of our re- 

 sponsibility here will be that we will work for rural development, 

 but we want to prevent rural dismantlement from the mandates 

 that are coming down from the Federal Government. I am not 

 saying, by any means, that I am opposed to the Federal Govern- 

 ment. They have a very important role to play. 



Thank you for your perspective, Mr. Eckel. 



Again, I want to thank all the people on the panel. 



