VOL. 31 No. 6
Congress staying late to pass ag legislation
Conference committee works on Farm Bilk Farm Credit aid packages up for final vote
BY JAMES H. EVERHART
WASHINGTON - The U.S.
Congress is scheduled to put in
some late nights and work right
through the weekend to pass vital
farm legislation before it adjourns
for the year.
A 61-member Conference
Committee was burning the
midnight oil this week to resolve
the wide differences between the
House and Senate versions of the
1985 Farm Bill.
Meanwhile, Congressional
leadership was maneuvering to put
the emergency Farm Credit
rescue package on the President’s
desk in almost record time.
The Farm Bill package con-
1,500 expected for
Mid-Atlantic No-till
TIMONIUM - They're not
expecting a new record, but
organizers of the Mid-Atlantic No-
Till Conference anticipate up
wards of 1,500 growers to attend
the annual event Wednesday at the
John F. Marten
PTA to hold first tobacco auction in 40 years
BY JACK HURLEY
INTERCOURSE - Tobacco
buyers representing companies in
North Carolina, Tennessee and
Virginia will be attending Penn
sylvania’s first tobacco auction in
40 years on Monday, according to
Pennsylvania Tobacco Auction,
Inc., general manager Eric
Probst.
The event will take place at the
sale barn owned by Martin Auc
tioneers, Inc., located two miles
east of Intercourse on Route 340.
The sale gets underway at 9 a.m.
and will continue until all tobacco
has been sold, said Probst.
According to PTA’s manager,
327,000 pounds of Maryland Type
609 cigarette tobacco has been
consigned for Monday’s sale. For
Wednesday’s sale, 342,000 pounds
will go across the auction block,
and at least 310,000 pounds have
been committed for Friday’s sale.
Four Sections
tinued its snail’s pace through the
legislative process, on the other
hand, as the Conference Com
mittee hammered out compromise
planks.
Capitol insiders reported that the
leadership may have already
worked out informal deals on the
key planks, to smooth the way for
passage.
Included in the compromise was
the controversial House dairy
proposal, reportedly accepted by
the conference, despite the paid
diversion, whole-herd buyout and
cost-of-production pricing system
that the Reagan Administration
has vehemently opposed in the
past.
jjfijyiiuidState Fairground here.
"There's still some corn and
soybeans to be harvested,”
remarked University of Maryland
press specialist T. Milton Nelson,
Who is publicity chairman for the
event. If the day looks favorable
for harvesting, he added, at
tendance might be reduced.
Registration for the event, also
may have been affected by several
smaller no-till meetings, which
have been launched this year in
Delaware and Allentown.
However, the Mid-Atlantic event,
currently in its 12th year, remains
the “grandaddy” of them all,
Nelson added.
The featured speaker for the
event, John F. Marten of West
Lafayette, IN., may find his
subject changing right up to the
last minute. At the planning
stages, organizers assumed that
<he 1985 Farm Bill would already
have been passed, and asked the
(Turn to Page A 18)
“That’s about all we’ve got room
for,” said Probst, noting that a
recently completed addition to the
existing auction barn adds 8,000
feet of floor space to the original
10,000-square-foot building.
“We expect the market to open
up not too much stronger then it
was last year,” said Probst. The
best tobacco should sell for about
$1.05 to $1.15 a pound he said,
adding that he has heard talk of
prices going as high as $l.lB. “The
buyers have hit the field pretty
hard since last Saturday, and they
really want to buy tobacco,”
Probst said.
The sale’s auctioneer will be
Mitch Ashby, a professional
tobacco auctioneer from North
Carolina.
Jobacco will be graded ac
cording to “tips,” “middles” and
“bottoms,” and will be displayed
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 14,1985
Senate Minority Leader Robert
Dole was reportedly trying to keep
the Congress in session through
Tuesday, in order to pass the
landmark legislation. Congress
had originally planned to begin its
Christmas recess Friday.
Earlier this week, the Congress
had okayed separate versions of
the Farm Credit bill, before, in
effect, moving the House version
through channels, with approval
expected imminently at press
time.
House Ag Committee Chairman
E. “Kika" de la Garza and Dole
were reportedly working on the bill
personally, in order to come up
with a compromise that would not
Breakfast aids
Ag land preserve
LANCASTER - Whether
you’re hungry, or you want to
help preserve prime
agricultural land, you can
satisfy both yearnings today or
Sunday.
Just attend the holiday season
country buffet breakfast
sponsored today and Sunday at
the Family Style Restaurant,
4V4 miles east of Lancaster on
the Lincoln Highway East.
The buffet, which will benefit
the Lancaster County
Agricultural Land Preservation
Fund, will cost only $3, all of
which will be used for ag land
preservation activities.
Area suppliers have donated
food and materials, while the
owners of the restaurant have
donated facilities and staff time
to prepare the meal.
on skids containing 10 bales ot a
single grade, the PTA manager
said. The auctioneer will walk,
down the aisles auctioning tobacco
by the skid, with buyers following
on the opposite side of the skids.
The high bid will be written on the
skid ticket, and sellers as well as
buyers will have 30 minutes to
reject a bid after it is recorded.
Tobacco not sold will be im
mediately put up for resale.
Probst stressed that all tobacco
sold must be paid for on the day of
the sale, and sellers should be able
to pick up their checks by late
afternoon. “We think we can have
most of the auction over by noon,”
he said.
The two cent-per-pound
assessment charged to buyers
represents a savings over
traditional handling charges, said
Probst. “They’ve been paying up
have to go to a House-Senate
conference.
Essentially, the Farm Credit
legislation slated for
Congressional approval is the
House bill with some minor
modifications, mostly operational.
Major provisions of the credit
package include:
System Self-Help
This portion of the bill is
designed to enable the System to
assist troubled individual in
stitutions by more effectively
marshalling the resources of its
network of Federal Land Banks,
Federal Intermediate Credit
Banks and Banks for Cooperatives.
To accomplish this, the bill
Will ewe numbers double?
Rocco may need 500 Pa. lambs a day
BY JACK HUBLEY
GRANTVILLE - If industry
leaders have their way, 1965 may
prove to be the pivotal year for the
East Coast sheep industry.
The catalyst for change is Rocco
Enterprises, Inc., the well-known
Virginia-based poultry processor
that has vowed to escalate its lamb
slaughter to 10,000 animals a week
at its further processing plant in
Timberville, Va. Now when Rocco
speaks, the sheep industry listens.
More than 100 representatives of
private industry, government and
state agricultural organizations
were listening on Tuesday evening
when an address by Rocco’s
executive vice president James
Darazsdi kicked off a two-day
sheep industry leader forum.
Since its beginnings as a feedmill
in 1939, Rocco has blossomed to
nine divisions with its
headquarters located in
Harrisonburg, Va. Best known as a
poultry processor, the company
operates the largest turkey
processing plant in the world.
to five to eight cents a pound to
receive tobacco directly from the
farmer,” Probst said. “We provide
all those services for two cents a
pound.” Growers will also pay two
cents to sell their product at the
auction.
Probst and the PTA are certain
that the auction will prove to be an
improvement over the county’s
traditional marketing method. In
years past, buyers would canvass
the county, buying tobacco on a
one-on-one basis directly from the
farmer.
Though early sales will feature
only Maryland 609, Pennsylvania
Type 41, commonly used in the
cigar and chewing tobacco trade,
may come under the gavel as well.
“If we have a successful sale of
Type 609, we expect sales of Type
41 to fall into place," Probst said.
Monday’s event will be the first
f 7.50 per Year
requires the creation of a new FCS
institution to be called the Farm
Credit System Capital Cor
poration.
The FCS-CC would:
- Provide a central source of
financial assistance to individual
FCS institutions.
- Serve as a System-wide
“warehouse” to which System
institutions could sell acquired
properties and loans on which
farmers had not made payments.
The FCS-CC could hold, restruc
ture, guarantee and administer the
loans, and it could refinance,
reamortize or otherwise adjust
debts for borrowers on any such
purchased loans, or eventually
(Turn to Page A 22)
at Timberville, the
Rocco Further Processing plant
devdtVf half of its 90,000 square
feet floor space to poultry and
the other half to lamb slaughter.
Though Rocco lamb is marketed
strictly in boxed form at the
(Turn to Page A 23)
James Darazsdi
tobacco auction to be held in
Lancaster County since 1946. More
than 90 percent of the state’s total
tobacco crop is grown here, said
Probst.
Red Rose DMA
holds meeting
Lancaster County DHIA
members and supervisors
received a host of awards and
certificates during the annual
Red Rose DHIA banquet this
week.
To find out who had the
county’s top producing herds
and which supervisors were
recognized for outstanding
service turn to page A 24.