On the Farm: Time of Hope, Alienation

Farming never lacks for challenges, and 1989 may bring a bumper crop.

The year was ushered in, after all, by a fresh trade flap with Europe over hormone-treated cattle and a continuing drought now threatening the Midwest’s winter wheat crop. Yet to come are the crafting of a new federal budget that will only mean less money for agriculture and the opening debates on a 1990 farm bill that may phase out crop subsidies altogether.

Despite all this, the mood was distinctly upbeat last week as 6,000 members of the nation’s largest organization of family-owned ranches and farms gathered in San Antonio for the 70th annual meeting of the 3.7 million-member American Farm Bureau Federation. “The mood is as good as I’ve seen it in many years,” said the federation’s president, Dean R. Kleckner, who raises hogs, corn and soybeans in Rudd, Iowa.

Yet, Kleckner added, farmers do have many reasons for concern. And many of these arise from what appears to be an increasing alienation of the nation’s urban majority from the farmers who feed it. For most city dwellers, he said, agriculture today is an invisible industry that goes largely uncredited by consumers for the low-cost and high-quality food it produces.

This feeling of alienation formed an undercurrent during many of the farmers’ talks and panel discussions. The first troubling note was sounded even as they checked into their hotels. Moreover, it came from a surprising quarter--Texas’ highest-ranking farm official, Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower.

Asked by reporters to comment on the European Community’s extension Jan. 1 of its year-old domestic ban of hormone-treated beef to U.S. producers, the commissioner seemed to applaud the Europeans’ stance. Hightower, who cultivates a populist image and was reelected to a second term two years ago from a largely urban power base, said the European ban was not the work of “a group of hippies” but rather reflects “a clear trend among consumers who are concerned about food.”

On Friday, Hightower further charged that U.S. negotiators were denying access to the European market to many producers who don’t use hormones in finishing cattle for market to protect three firms he said control 70% of processed U.S. beef and are “the chief users of anabolic steroids”--Iowa Beef Processors, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, ConAgra and Excel, a unit of Cargill.

“Our farmers,” he said, “should not be put in the position of stating, ‘Eat your hormones.’ ”

Response to Consumer Pressure

Hightower’s remarks drew sharp criticism from the Texas Farm Bureau but were welcomed by agricultural attaches from European Community countries who were observing the gathering. While acknowledging the U.S. point that no scientific evidence has shown that the federally approved growth hormones pose a health threat, the Europeans called that point irrelevant.

“The ban is a response to consumer pressure in the European Community,” said Brian J. Harding of Britain, who predicted that similar anti-hormone pressures will soon build in the United States.

“Legislation isn’t always based on good scientific evidence,” observed Harding’s Danish counterpart, Ludvig Madsen. “But the Americans have to learn that when you export, you have to produce what the customer wants.”

The trade flap so far has triggered retaliatory tariffs by the United States on seven European products, including canned tomatoes, fruit juice and instant coffee, and authorization for the European Community to reciprocate against U.S.-produced nuts and dried fruits (both mostly from California). But for the moment the matter is on hold.

Aside from the obvious trade ramifications, the ban has a broader and, for farmers, more worrisome aspect--fear of biotechnology itself. In California, for example, attempts in the past few years to use biotechnology to increase the frost resistance of potatoes and strawberries generated emotional protests when the plants were moved from the laboratory outdoors for field tests.

Yet, to farm experts, biotechnology must play a major role in future farming.

“The public must be helped to understand that scientists use biotechnology to do such things as create insect- and disease-free foods--not laboratory monsters,” Kleckner told farmers in his annual address. “Japan, Germany and Great Britain have made tremendous commitments to full use of biotechnology. We must do as much or more than other nations if we are to remain competitive in world markets, or we’ll get left in the dust.”

Biotechnology, which can produce freeze-resistant plants, might also be able to mitigate the future disastrous effects of a drought such as that now entering its third year in much of the Grain Belt and threatening the normally hardy winter wheat crop. But popular fears of biotechnology also seem to extend to concern for the safety and purity of the nation’s food supply--from both additives injected during processing and residues left on produce from farm chemicals.

“Whether the public’s concern over pesticide residues is perceived or real, the fact that they feel the way they do means we have a problem,” said Fred Shank, acting Federal Drug Administration director for food safety and nutrition. “Our tests show that actual residue levels represent a fraction of 1% of the average daily intake allowed. We’re talking about mighty small quantities.”

Fiasco in San Francisco

Nonetheless, Shank acknowledged, public opinion surveys still show that 75% of consumers view residues as a serious food hazard. Some retailers, especially in California, are attempting to capitalize on that concern by hiring additional testing services, supposedly to validate the safety of what they sell.

Kleckner himself was forced to take a strong stand against what the farm federation viewed as a hostile act last month, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to support a controversial boycott of California table grapes sponsored by Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, which alleges that field workers are being harmed by chemicals used in San Joaquin Valley vineyards. The federation yanked its 1991 convention from San Francisco, repeating a pullout in 1982 to protest support of a similar boycott of table grapes.

“When will those people learn?” Kleckner exclaimed in frustration.

But Chavez’s boycott, regardless of the merit of the union’s health claims and industry denials, enjoys broad credibility nonetheless among many consumers as demonstrated most sweepingly in 1986 by the overwhelming passage of Proposition 65, an initiative that, among other things, greatly increased state regulation of toxic chemicals, including pesticides.

Further evidence of urban alienation surfaced in Massachusetts last year in the form of a so-called animal-rights referendum on the November ballot. Although the referendum won just 29% of the state vote, similar “animal rights” measures are expected to crop up elsewhere. In California, for example, legislation was introduced last year to set minimum space requirements for veal calves, though it failed to get out of committee.

Rep. Kika de la Garza (D-Texas), head of the House Committee on Agriculture, also expressed concern for urban alienation from agriculture. “We’re getting away from the land,” De la Garza told the farmers. “There are people out there who think milk comes out of a carton and peas out of cans.”

Such ignorance, he said, makes urban voters vulnerable to political exploitation.

U.S. Farm Funds Decline

“We need a greater focus on public awareness of the importance of agriculture and the needs of agriculture, and how we can interweave farming and urban living,” said Henry J. Voss, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. This might be done, he said, by programs emphasizing the safety and purity of produce. “We need to do more of that sort of thing.”

Popular perceptions also tend to work against agriculture, De la Garza said, in the funding of farm programs--a $52.1-billion expenditure this year. About $14 billion went to farmers to compensate for low prices prevailing for the basic commodities covered by program, including wheat, corn, cotton, rice and soybeans. And President Reagan’s proposed budget would lower that to $11.6 billion. Still, De la Garza said, the perception remains that the farm program is inordinately costly.

“They stumble over more money in one day in the Pentagon than we spend in a year on agriculture,” said De la Garza.

Americans devote only 11% of their disposable income to food, he added, and farmers get just 25 cents of the retail food dollar. Then, to the enthusiastic applause of the thousands of farm families present, De la Garza hammered home his point: “So if there is a subsidy, it is to the consumer , and it comes off the back of the farmer!”