State Farm Bureau Backs Cattlemen Over Dairymen

California’s cattlemen, winning a bitter fight against dairymen, persuaded the state’s largest farmers organization to oppose the possible renewal of a federal program under which farmers are subsidized to slaughter dairy cows.

The so-called dairy herd buyout program was the most controversial element in the five-year farm policy approved by Congress last December. It provided $1.8 billion to reduce the nation’s herd of 11.1 million dairy cows, heifers and calves by 1.55 million over an 18-month period that began in April. The goal was to slash production of milk, which the government has stockpiled for years, by 8.7%.

Cattlemen opposed the buyout from the onset, saying it swamped the red-meat market. Spokesmen said the slaughter cost cattle interests $25 million in lost revenue in the first week of April alone.

The cattlemen, who receive no government aid, prevailed in a voice vote by 150 delegates at the final day of the annual meeting of the California Farm Bureau Federation. The measure was intended to indicate the state organization’s position before next month’s American Farm Bureau Federation meeting in Anaheim.

Oppose Support Programs

The policy statement adopted by the California Farm Bureau said its members “oppose milk and other price-support programs, but recognize the need for a continuation of some form of price supports during a transition from the present price-support levels to an unsubsidized free-market system.

“We oppose the dairy-herd buyout or any programs that tend to help the dairy industry at the expense of the beef industry or any other commodity,” the statement said.

The comments were more pointed during unusually heated debate on the issue Tuesday and Wednesday.

C. E. (Bud) Swift, a farm bureau director from Mariposa County, said: “We in California are tired of government programs that provide price supports for one commodity at the expense of the others. We don’t want the government in our business.”

Although the current buyout program is scheduled to expire by mid-1987, the farm legislation passed last year empowers the government to authorize a new program. In California, 325 dairy operators signed up for the program last spring, consigning 182,000 cows, heifers and calves to slaughter. The dairy operators also agreed to stay out of milk production for five years.

Biggest Payments

For that, the government paid California dairymen $277.1 million--$100 million more than received by farmers in any other state, or an average of $850,000 per dairy farm operator.

In the previous two days of the annual meeting, officials generally praised the nation’s five-year farm program. Both Harry Bell, vice president of the 3-million-member American Farm Bureau, and Henry J. Voss, the president of the 103,000-member state organization, urged lawmakers not to tamper with the package.

They warned against proposals to impose mandatory crop controls and trade barriers, saying such actions would interfere with the movement in U.S. agriculture away from government assistance. Bell and Voss said the federal government should continue on its course of reducing price supports so that U.S. farmers can become more competitive in international markets.