03/02/06 Former congressman says end subsidies

Farm and Ranch March 2, 2006 A former Democratic Congressman from California, Cal Dooley, told the recent USDA's annual Outlook Forum that the U.S. should follow the example of Australia and New Zealand and move away from subsidizing agricultural commodities. Dooley, who is now the president and CEO of the Food Products Association, says current farm policy does nothing for the majority of farmers and rural residents. Dooley: "If you were starting with a clean slate I don't think that we would even consider a program that would subsidize only five crops be that corn, wheat, rice, cotton, and soybeans. That we would try and design a farm policy that was providing risk management tools to all of agriculture and not providing subsidies to what only constitutes about 30% of U.S. agriculture." Dooley also claims current farm policy subsidizes absentee landowners because benefits are capitalized into land values. He says that drives up the cost of production and prevents new producers from entering. Dooley says the existing system also encourages farmers to hope for lower prices. Dooley: "Because we have a farm program that unfortunately contributes to farmers getting higher gross revenues in years when prices can decline because the subsidy more than offsets the drop in revenue that you achieve from the marketplace." Dooley believes the U.S. should move in the direction of providing more risk management tools. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.