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(AAM 03 FEB 93 page #2) 



Thank you. Chairman de la Garza and members of this 

 committee. I appreciate the chance to appear before you 

 today to discuss the economic situation facing U.S. 

 agriculture and how best government policy can respond to 

 these situations. My name is Larry Mitchell. I was a full- 

 time farmer in Texas until 1988, and am currently the acting 

 national director of the American Agriculture Movement, Inc. 



The economic situation in rural America is critical. 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 situation could be summed up in 

 this past November's Presidential election. People tend to 

 vote their pocketbooks. According to Sharon O'Malley, 

 Washington correspondent for the Texas Co-op Power, concerns 

 about the economy and health care costs caused traditionally 

 conservative rural Americans to vote Democratic this past 

 fall for the first time in nearly 30 years. In the 

 presidential election Bill Clinton received 43% of the rural 

 vote to Bush's 38% and Perot's 19%. 



Agriculture, the life breath of the rural economy, has 

 been through some tough times the past ten years. We saw 

 U.S. farm policy 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 situation 

 which has driven prices paid to farmers to historic lows in 



