Plan Would Curb Government’s Role in Farming

The nation’s largest farm organization on Wednesday advanced a long-term policy proposal aimed at paring down but not eliminating the government’s role in farming.

Robert Delano, president of the 3.3 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation, said the group was proposing its own farm bill as a replacement for the law that expires this year, in part because the Reagan Administration’s more austere plan is not “politically practical.”

The bill Delano outlined would retain, at slightly lower levels, the current system of “target prices,” fixed commodity prices that farmers are guaranteed they will get for their wheat, corn, cotton and rice. It would allow the target price to drop beginning in 1987, but by no more than 5%.

That differs with the Administration plan, which would phase target prices down to far lower levels over five years. The Farm Bureau in the past has opposed target price protection for farmers, but a proposal to phase the program out entirely was defeated by delegates at this year’s convention.