B8 Sunday, Skptkmhkr 29, 1983
The pending farm bill provides no parity for the poor. Faced with the need to cut the federal deficit and deal with falling farm income, Congress is pursuing the easiest and least defensible solution. ItÛªs asking American consumers to pay more for food, and the burden will fall disproportionately on the poor and hungry. In 1981 and 1982, Congress cut over $3 billion from food assistance programs. Now it is voting to raise supermarket prices for milk, cheese, meat and bread.</br></br>For almost 50 years the federal government has attempted to increase farm income through a combination of programs that limit production and drive food prices up or that make direct payments to farmers when farm prices fall below a certain level. Direct payments tend to have less impact on retail food prices, but they can cost the taxpayer a lot of money. Therefore, it isnÛªt surprising that, in a time of huge budget deficits, a growing farm crisis and relatively stable food prices. Congress is tempted to adopt a farm program that shifts costs from the citizen as taxpayer to the citizen as consumer.</br></br>The House has already succumbed. It approved a dairy diversion program that will raise millc and cheese prices by $10 billion over the next four years and a sugar program that will cost consumers $140 million to $160 million a year. It is about to vote on a program of mandatory production controls on feed grains and wheat that would raise meat and bakery product prices by $15 billion over a four-year period and could raise the consumer price index for food by 1 percent a year.</br></br>Production-control advocates argue that food prices have been quite stable over the past few years, that Americans spend less of their disposable income for food than consumers in other developed nations and that the anticipated food-price increases generated by the farm bill are a reasonable trade-off for preserving the family farm.</br></br>They arenÛªt all wrong. Food prices went up 4 percent last year, and this yearÛªs increase is expected to be about the same. Our food prices are generally lower than those in other countries. I believe urban America has a stake in maintaining a healthy farm economy.