House Panel OKs Plans to Cut Dairy Surplus, Idle Cropland

The House Agriculture Committee approved a dairy program that would pay farmers not to produce milk as a way of reducing current heavy surpluses while promising dairy farmers a price that would cover their production costs.

In a rare late-night session, the committee also approved language calling for a 25-million-acre program of paying farmers to idle their most highly erodible cropland and imposing tough penalties on farmers who bring currently idle fragile land under the plow.

Added to the “sodbuster” penalties were new “swampbuster” provisions applying the same sanctions to farmers who drain wetlands to plant crops.

The dairy measure was little changed from the bill passed two weeks ago in the panel’s dairy subcommittee over the staunch opposition of the Reagan Administration.

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced) called it a “self-help” program for the industry because the cost of paying farmers not to produce milk would be met through assessments on all dairymen.

Meanwhile, senators met off the floor in an effort to come up with a policy on wheat and corn that would enable U.S. grains to be priced low enough to compete in world markets yet provide farmers adequate income. That combination has proved elusive in weeks of meetings of the Senate Agriculture Committee and was not yielding to easy solutions even in private.

Grain prices now are supported by government loans, which a farmer can receive by using his crop as collateral.

One proposal that the senators were reviewing would cut loan rates rapidly and set them at 70% to 80% of average market prices but would have the government, rather than the farmer, absorb the impact of the reduction.