‘81 Farm Policy Was a Mistake, Block Concedes

Outgoing Agriculture Secretary John R. Block conceded Sunday that there were “some very, very tough times in rural America” during his five years in President Reagan’s Cabinet, and he assigned some of the blame to the 1981 farm program, which he helped shape.

Block, who plans to retire in mid-February, recalled during a televised interview with Cable News Network that the ’81 farm law was drafted at a time when food prices were rising steadily, in response to a seemingly insatiable world demand.

“We wrote a farm bill in that climate and the truth is, that climate did not prevail,” Block said. “It changed almost overnight to a climate of disinflation, surpluses, world problems in trade--and American agriculture has paid a price for it.”

Incentives Seen as Mistake

The secretary said that now, “I think it was a mistake” to recommend presidential approval of the measure, which authorized a five-year program of increased production incentives in anticipation of continued high demand and price inflation.

Block maintained, however, that the current farm depression is a result not of Reagan Administration policies, but of shrinking land values and “too big a production plant in agriculture for the paying customers,” a situation he said causes oversupply and “pressures to contract the production plant.”

Even if Reagan had vetoed the 1981 bill, Block said, “we wouldn’t have gotten the kind of changes necessary” to carry out Reagan’s original intention to “try to get government more and more out of agriculture.” Block said that “Congress would not have any part of that, and . . . we probably got what the times dictated.”

On the other hand, Block said, the law enacted in December, 1985 to replace the 1981 legislation is “dramatically better,” in that it levels out or lowers target prices and loan programs after years of “rising everything.” In the end, he predicted, it will mean “much less government intervention in agriculture, and the farmer will have his independence back.”