A4O-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, September 5, 1987
“Family Farm Bill ” Would Harm
ITHACA, N.Y. Federal
legislation nicknamed “The Fami
ly Farm Bill” by its proponents
could be expected to harm slightly
more New York State dairy far
mers than it would help, according
to three agricultural economists at
Cornell University.
Their study indicates that the
legislation would reduce the net
income of slightly over half of
New York State’s dairy fanners,
while raising the net income of
others. The changes in net income
could range from declines of 211
percent for small farms that have to
purchase most of their feed to
increases of more than 400 percent
for large farms that can grow most
of theirs.
Although the study is based on
dairy farms in New .York, “These
farms are thought to emulate most
of the dairy-farm characteristics of
the Northeast,” said Harry M.
Kaiser, an assistant professor of
agricultural economics. “They are
small farms, and have limited
alternatives to dairy farming.”
He also noted that, were the
proposed legislation to be enacted,
the price of milk would be
expected to nse “significantly -
perhaps as much as 35 cents a gal
lon, or 17 percent, and retail prices
would rise by 13 percent for
cheese, 20 percent for butter and
10 percent for ice cream.”
The bill, introduced by Sen.
Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep.
Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), is
being considered by the House and
Senate Agriculture committees.
The Cornell analysis of the legisla
tion was prepared by Kaiser, gra
duate student Edward H. Heslop
and Associate Professor Robert A.
Milligan.
One indication of the magnitude
of the problems that generated the
legislation under consideration is
the activity on the NY Farm Net
hotline at Cornell: About 10 to 12
farmers a week are calling the toll-
National
of Resources
• The U.S. Department of Agri
culture began a 60-day public
review of the Second National
Appraisal of the soil, water and
related resources of the United
States on July 13. This is carried
out as required by the Soil and
Water Resources Conservation
Act of 1977 (RCA).
Copies of the report will be
available for inspection in county
offices of the USDA Agricultural
Stabilization and Conservation
Service, according to James Olson,
state conservationist for the Soil
Conservation Service. Summary
reports may be requested from the
USDA, SCS, Box 985, Federal
Building, Harrisburg, PA 17108.
USDA will use this report to
update its National Conservation
Program which provides direction
for all conservation programs con
ducted by seven USDA agencies.
In this appraisal, USDA
analyzed the best data available
about land use, soil erosion, water
supply and management, water
quality and related resource issues
such as atmospheric deposition
and wildlife habitat. It began new
research to define more precisely
the threat soil erosion poses to
agricultural production and envir
onmental quality. This data will be
used to project future conditions as
well as identify current problem
areas.
According 16 Olson, Congress
enacted RCA legislation in 1977 in
free telephone number for finan
cial, legal and emotional help,
according to John R. Brake, Farm-
Net’s director and a professor of
agricultural economics at Cornell.
In its 16 months of operation,
the state-funded Farm Net program
has received more than 1,400 calls
from New York farmers, some of
whom say that they fear they will
have to leave farming.
The Harkin-Gephardt bill would
set mandatory production limits on
dairy and other major agricultural
commodities for every farm in the
nation, and would increase the
government’s price supports for
those products in an attempt to
raise farmers’ income and help
family farms survive.
But in most cases, “New York
farmers would lose money because
they would have to produce less
milk and pay higher prices for
grain to feed their cattle,” Kaiser
said. “About 57 percent of all dairy
farms in the Northeast would be in
that situation.”
Basically, the only farms that
would benefit from the bill are
those that can grow most of the
feed for their own cattle, generally
larger farms, according to the
report. In New York, more than
half of the state’s 25,000 family
farms could be expected to make a
smaller profit under the Harkm-
Gcphardt proposal than they do
under current policy, the econom
ists said.
For example, using 1986 fig
ures, the researchers report that
dairy farmers would have to cut
their production by an average of
14.6 percent under the bill, while
the federal government’s dairy
support would increase 29 percent
to $l5 per hundredweight of dairy
product. But forage costs for far
mers who have to buy their cattle
feed would increase from 35 per
cent to 55 percent of their operat
ing expenses.
The result: Net income for small
Appra
isal
response to widespread concern
about mounting pressure on the
nation’s soil and water resources.
Rapidly increasing export
demands were encouraging far
mers to plow highly credible land.
Erosion problems were growing as
farmers began to abandon tradi
tional conservation practices after
finding them incompatible with
large farm equipment and new
farming methods.
Other concerns at the same time
were loss of farmland to urbaniza
tion, mining of groundwater, water
shortages and loss of wildlife
habitat.
With these concerns, Congress
directed the Secretary to make per
iodic appraisals of the nation’s
resources and to ensure that USDA
programs were responsive to long
term needs of the nation.
USDA completed the first
appraisal in 1980. It was used to
design the National Conservation
Program which was implemented
in 1982. Information from the first
appraisal was also used by con
gress in adopting the conservation
provisions of the Food Security
Act of 1985, better known as the
Farm Bill.
Comments on the second
appraisal report should be sent to
the State Conservationist, USDA,
SCS, Box 985, Federal Building,
Harrisburg, PA 17108 by Septem
ber 12th.
dairy farmers who buy all their
cattle feed could drop 211 percent,
and large dairy farms that buy feed
could see an 84 percent drop in
profit.
Farmers who grow their own
cattle feed, however, would be
“consistently better off under the
new plan,” the study says. They
could see an increase of more than
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__ O •
Farmers, Experts Say
400 percent in net income, based
on the 1986 figures.
Farmers who grow some of their
own forage and buy the rest could
expect higher income under the
bill, according to the three
economists.
The size of change in net income
would depend on whether farmers
reduced their production by cut
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ting their herd size or lowering
their output per cow. But the same
farms would tend to be gainers or
losers in either situation, Kaiser
and his polleagues said.
Their findings are based on nine
representative farms constructed
from data in the Cornell Dairy
Farm Business Summary, a census
of dairy farms in New York State.
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