Farmers and the Environment: Key Battle Develops : Agriculture: A new farm bill is unveiled amid rising sentiment that federal funds to farmers should be tied to safeguards for land, water and food.

A war is shaping up over the nation’s food supply, and on Tuesday the lines of battle were clearly drawn. At the center is the American farmer, only recently a sympathetic figure, now cast as an environmental threat.

The fight’s focus is the farm bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation that bailed embattled growers out in 1985. Today, there is increasing sentiment that federal funds to farmers should be tied to safeguards for land, water and food. The fighting is fierce.

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, a coalition of consumer and environmental groups told a news conference that farmers should get no money from the federal government unless there are strong environmental and food safety strings attached.

An hour later, Secretary of Agriculture Clayton K. Yeutter launched the Bush Administration’s farm bill with a set of proposals that will try, he said, to “balance the need for an abundant, safe and affordable food supply with conservation and improvement of our environment.”

And a few blocks away, the American Farm Bureau Federation staff spent the day defending the much embattled conventional farmer. “I sincerely believe that farmers are conservation minded,” said Mark Maslyn, the bureau’s assistant director for national affairs. “It bothers people that they are being labeled as environmental polluters.”

At stake in this struggle is billions of dollars in farm assistance to be paid out over the next five years. Through the 1985 farm bill, the federal government made more than $87 billion in direct subsidy payments alone.

But it’s more than just the money. Farmers and environmentalists both contend that they are battling over the food supply itself, its safety and availability, price and variety, the effects its production has on the land and the ability of American farmers to grow and reap the food we eat.

“Each cycle of farm policy strongly influences farming practices on hundreds of millions of acres of land for years to come, with profound impacts on soil, water, wildlife and other natural resources,” said a report released Tuesday morning by the consumer and environmentalists’ coalition. “Farm bills also affect the food we eat.”

The events of 1989 set the stage for consumer concern and gave activist groups the perfect platform for getting their points across. Consider:

- First came the scare over Alar--a growth regulator used on apples, one that allegedly posed possible health risks to children. The Alar controversy was prompted by a report last February from the Natural Resources Defense Council and caused apples to be pulled temporarily from grocery bins and school lunches and farmers to discontinue its use.

The near hysteria prompted by the NRDC report raised questions about how a potential hazard should be exposed and how a vulnerable public should be warned. It also polarized farmers and environmental groups, causing a bitterness that lingers to this day and cementing the term “environmental terrorism” in the farm vocabulary.

- Just weeks later, inspectors said they found two cyanide-laced grapes on a shipment of fruit from Chile. As a result, the United States instituted a five-day embargo on Chilean fruit, in part because of telephone threats that additional fruit had been poisoned.

- In September, the National Academy of Sciences released a report called Alternative Agriculture, charging that federal agricultural policies keep American farms hooked on chemicals and are the major obstacle to widespread use of environmentally sound farming methods.

In addition to blaming federal price supports for chaining farmers to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the massive report praised alternative agriculture--a system that shuns chemicals and, instead, exploits biology to kill bugs and weeds and replenish the soil.

- And toward the end of the year, discussion began on the farm bill, a huge piece of legislation that only comes up every four or five years and sets agricultural policy for half a decade.

The last farm bill, enacted in 1985, largely focused on farmers’ economic woes and tried to keep the industry afloat. Environmental issues were addressed that year--but mostly in provisions for soil and wetlands conservation.

But it’s 1990 now, the farm economy is in substantially better shape, a shaken American public is demanding assurances that the food supply is safe, and environmental and consumer groups have had a year to organize.

One result of that organizing effort is a 24-page report called “Farm Bill 1990, Agenda for the Environment and Consumers,” which was released Tuesday morning in Washington and contains the rallying cry: “Farm policy is environmental policy. Farm policy is consumer policy.”

To Ellen Haas, executive director of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, 1990 provides a golden opportunity to put a “moral imperative” into the farm bill. Public Voice was one of 11 groups involved in the farm bill study.

“This is the first time in recent years that there’s a moral imperative to the farm bill,” Haas said. “Consumers have a great stake in the farm bill. It affects the access to a safe and affordable food supply. . . . It affects the way we grow our food.”

The report contains a detailed list of provisions that the groups want to see as part of upcoming farm legislation. The proposals include changes in farm program rules that will eliminate biases against alternative farming methods such as crop rotations; establishment of standards for organically produced food, and revision in food-grading standards that now encourage use of chemicals to avoid surface blemishes.

But the heart of the report is a single line on page 20: “In 1990, the public’s stake in conservation and environmental protection should be reflected in implementation of policies that link federal assistance with environmental stewardship.”

What that basically means is that federal assistance to farmers--in any fashion from loans to price support programs--should be tied tightly to environmental and food safety.

Such an idea is in direct conflict with what America’s farmers want and need, according to conventional agriculture experts. The environment and food safety are important, they concede, but the farm bill is not necessarily the place for them. And slapping farmers with heavy financial penalties does nothing more than turn them into environmental scapegoats.

“That would probably rub most of our membership somewhat raw,” said R. Thomas Van Arsdall, vice president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. “That’s like Big Brother coming in and saying, ‘Do it our way.”’

Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau Federation, contends that if farmers are so pressed with regulations, they might not bother participating in government subsidy programs at all.

“There’s nothing forcing farmers to participate,” Lipton said. “If you’re going to reshape the program to pile on new restrictions, farmers could decide it’s not in their interests to participate. Then they could do whatever they want, and the federal government would have no say in what they do.”

Rather than sit back and take what they termed a year’s worth of environmental terrorism, farm groups began to plot strategy for fighting the battle of public opinion and attacking the farm bill.

Officials at the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, whose members are groups like the Land O’ Lakes dairy cooperative, sat down early last fall to figure out a way to help its ranks “start speaking out for themselves,” Van Arsdall said.

The results of their efforts is a packet of communications aids that will teach members how to take on environmental assaults, explain how they use chemicals (they call them “tools”) and make debate and public opinion go their way. The first kits will be delivered in March.

“We need to show what we’re doing to protect the environment,” Van Arsdall said. “We’ve let other people speak for us, and they’ve said we’re not doing anything. There’s an untold story out there.”

One example for a dubious public is Minnesota-based Land O’ Lakes, Van Arsdall said. The cooperative has hired 300 technicians to work with farmers in soil testing and the careful and efficient application of pesticides; they are now in the second year of an “aggressive program.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation is also pushing to educate its members. At the organization’s national convention in Orlando, Fla., last month, the group ran nearly 30 workshops--25% were on environmental issues, covering sustainable agriculture programs, animal rights activism and the differences between the agricultural community and environmental activists.

At the same convention, the group also hammered out a book of resolutions that will serve as a lobbying guide in upcoming farm bill debate. While many of the resolutions reinforced farmers’ beliefs in some environmental protections, the group’s positions were strong and clear:

- On alternative agriculture: “We oppose: 1) any attempt to mandate low input methods of farming, and 2) requiring low input methods as a condition of participation in government farm programs.”

- On private property rights: “When regulations or legislation regarding rare, threatened or endangered species alter agricultural practices for the benefit of mankind, agricultural producers should be compensated for the cost of altered agricultural practices.”

- On agricultural chemicals: “We oppose any curtailment of the safe and proper use of agricultural chemicals and drugs unless research and scientific data determine that injury to health and well-being would result.”

FARM BILL’S GOALS

The Secretary of Agriculture offers Congress legislation intended, he says, to boost farmers’ flexibility and competition in the marketplace. D13