| 9/4/2003 US Policy Fueling Crisis in Ag Industry Worldwide, Report Finds - 9/4 AgOnline Daryll Ray, director of the UT Agricultural Policy Analysis Center and a Correspondent on Agriculture Online, co-authored the paper with colleagues Daniel De La Torre Ugarte and Kelly Tiller. The paper "Rethinking US Agricultural Policy" will be presented at the World Trade Organization's Ministerial meeting in Cancun on September 11. The study, sponsored by Oxfam America, says US farm policy has abandoned market stabilization tools in favor of production and trade liberalization with disastrous results. Because crop agriculture does not quickly self-correct like other industries, the economists say eliminating supply management tools in recent US farm legislation has led to record-low farm prices and record-high government payments of nearly $20 billion per year to American crop farmers. The cheap-grain policy, they say, has benefited multinational agribusiness firms, large livestock operators, and importers — not crop farmers, who now sell grain below their cost of production. "Foreign competitors charge America with dumping excess US production on world markets for less than the cost of production which, in turn, ratchets up the cost of competitors' farm programs and damages the ag economies of developing countries. The outcome of this 'race to the bottom' is certain: all farmers around the world will lose," the economists wrote in the executive summary of the report. The report goes on to say that since 1996, when the Freedom to Farm legislation was enacted, world prices for America’s four chief farm exports (corn, wheat, soybeans and cotton) are down more than 40%. Blueprint of a workable alternativ e The economists offer a farmer-oriented strategy for improvement. They recommend legislation that includes a combination of acreage diversion through short-term acreage set asides and longer-term acreage reserves; a farmer-owned food security reserve; and diversion of acreage away from traditional, tradable crops and toward non-food, non-tradable crops like switchgrass. If this strategy were followed, they predict, using a computer model, that total cropland planted to the eight major US crops would drop by 14 million acres in the first year, while prices for the major commodities would increase subtantially - by 23% for soybeans and 30% for corn. Net farm income would rise as government payments fall by more than $10 billion per year, they say. Such farmer-friendly policies will limit future asset consolidation, reinvigorate farmer investment in agriculture and eliminate global concerns about commodity dumping, they say. "This is not a farm bill proposal," says Ray. "It's an analysis and a discussion of one possible solution to the serious problems facing farm families and their communities worldwide." Read the report: http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html Related Link: http://www.agriculture.com |
This
website is best viewed in Internet
Explorer or
Netscape Navigator versions
4.0 and
above. All content contained herein is subject to copyright law.
Click here to unsubscribe
above. All content contained herein is subject to copyright law.
Click here to unsubscribe