A View From Newport’s Heartland : Grower Says His Kern County Spread Deserves Subsidy

Victor C. Andrews may own a farm, but he never drives the tractor. There’s no dirt under his fingernails. He wears a suit and sits behind a big desk in his Newport Beach office where the only thing remotely agricultural is the shrubbery outside.

Andrews is a cotton grower whose spread is more than 200 miles away in Kern County. He heads a family operation that received federal farm subsidies of $713,748 from 1985 to 1994, according to federal records.

As such, he knows that his federal cash supplement faces a possible reduction as Washington lawmakers wrestle with the issue of whether to continue the decades-old federal farm subsidy and support program for an additional five years.

Just in the last 10 years, the government has paid $27.8 million to 1,862 Orange County companies and individuals who own farms that often aren’t even in California. Nationwide, the government has spent $1.3 billion over the period on subsidies and supports that flowed mostly to big cities, rather than the rural heartland.

Andrews, however, says he’s had no free ride. He takes his work seriously, tending to oil and farm interests that include 600 acres of cotton near Bakersfield.

He visits now and then, but not recently “because I don’t like going up there when there is so much fog and you have to follow the taillights of a big rig.” He had a house in the Bakersfield area, but he said he sold it because he wasn’t staying there often enough.

Now in his late 70s, Andrews sticks close to Orange County, where he has spent much of his career as a close aide to television evangelist the Rev. Robert H. Schuller. He continues to work with local universities and dabble in politics. He is a dedicated Republican who was one of 13 founders of Orange County’s Lincoln Club and chaired the county GOP’s effort to elect Richard M. Nixon President in 1968 and reelect him in 1972.

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Even now, amid the clutter of his desk, is a freshly autographed photograph of himself with Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, though Andrews is quick to say he hasn’t decided whom he will back among 1996 GOP presidential hopefuls.

Yet it is a fellow Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who is leading the charge in reviewing farm subsidies. Andrews, however, assigns no blame in adamantly defending farm programs.

“No matter, Republican or Democrat, the question of subsidies as it pertains to agriculture outweighs any party affiliation,” Andrews said. “You’re talking about a national interest that transcends politics.”

American farmers need subsidies because foreign farmers receive aid from their governments as well, he argues. “I would be delighted to end subsidies if the government could assure us that all foreign governments would do likewise.”

He bristles when asked whether his subsidies might be considered a form of welfare. “That’s absolutely wrong,” he asserted.

Subsidies aren’t a windfall, but critical to staying in business through wild swings in weather, consumer demand and price, Andrews maintains. “Farming,” he said, “is the greatest gamble in the world.”

To hedge it, Andrews has an abiding interest in Kern County oil. He keeps a jar filled with a black syrup labeled, “Andrews 1,” from one of his wells on 500 acres of oil fields.

The family agricultural holdings--founded by Andrews’ grandfather in 1923--are shrinking. Andrews said he sold about 900 of his 1,000 acres of orange groves in Central California as he saw other growers adding new groves, a move that would increase quantity and reduce prices. Orange prices, he said, have dropped so low that some growers leave fruit to rot on trees because the cost to pick and truck them is too high.

The cotton fields have dwindled as well. Andrews sold two-thirds of the 2,000 acres of cotton he had at his high point. Ironically, his holdings are down just as cotton is having a record year. Prices hit more than $1 a pound, the highest level since the Civil War, from 65 cents a pound last October.

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Andrews says he has no regrets, however. While this year’s crop will be highly profitable--the heavy winter rains haven’t damaged his cotton--such bumper crops are rare.

“I don’t know of a farmer who hasn’t had substantial losses,” he said. “Once in a while you need a good year.”

Andrews has had enough good years to give him time for other activities.

He remains close to Schuller, having served as his unpaid chief executive officer in the mid-1980s. He has served in board posts at Chapman University and UC Irvine. He got to know actor John Wayne while running the local campaign for Nixon, and he has pictures of both men on the white walls of his modest office.

A bust of Abraham Lincoln sits atop his desk, a memento of the Lincoln Club, a powerful Republican fund-raising and support organization.

His local activities reflect his deep roots in Orange County. He has lived with his wife, June, in the same three-bedroom house in Laguna Beach’s lush Emerald Bay since 1952.

The way he figures it, the family farming days are almost over.

Farming, he said, wasn’t his choice anyway. “I inherited it from my father. You just go ahead with it,” he said. Andrews beams when noting that none of his daughter’s three sons followed him into the family farming business--two are lawyers and the third is an engineer.

“I didn’t want them to be in farming,” he explained. “I got all three boys to do something else, and I am glad I did.”

Small operations like his are dwindling, he said, because big operators are more efficient. In a few years, he predicts, there won’t be any small farms left.

“Today, farming should be (done by) large, large, extra-large corporations. That’s where farming is headed,” he said. “If you are farming less than 5,000 acres, you ought to get out.”

* GROWTH INDUSTRY

Farmers’ safety net evolved into investment program. A1

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Where the Subsidies Go

More than $27 million in farm support payments was paid to individuals and companies in Orange County from 1985 through 1994. Most own farms elsewhere in California or in other states. Recipients and total subsidy received during the period, by city/area:

City/area Recipients Amount Newport Beach 144 $3,549,751 Anaheim 218 2,633,060 Orange 137 2,291,837 Huntington Beach 190 2,126,511 Dana Point 36 2,001,338 Santa Ana 139 1,981,736 Fullerton 130 1,899,533 Brea 47 1,730,058 Irvine 111 1,314,555 Corona del Mar 47 1,233,634 Yorba Linda 58 1,221,655 Garden Grove 111 903,775 Laguna Beach 63 790,384 Costa Mesa 69 652,993 Westminster 46 650,121 La Habra 73 621,493 Cypress 34 547,056 Fountain Valley 64 473,842 Seal Beach 58 431,345 Buena Park 39 352,363 Tustin 38 303,405 Sunset Beach 2 34,481 Capistrano Beach 8 27,030 Total 1,862 $27,771,956

Source: Environmental Working Group; Researched by JOHN BRODER / Los Angeles Times