Johanns: Long-Term Deficits Threaten Southern Farmers

Agricultural cuts may not be wanted by the farm community, but the long-term effects of budget deficits may present an even worse threat, warns U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns.

President Bush’s 2006 budget calls for a 5 percent across-the-board cut for all farm payments and a reduction in the cap on individual subsidies from $360,000 to $250,000 --- for total reductions of $2.5 billion.

"We recognize that some of these issues are very sensitive, but here's the thing you have to keep in mind: High deficits don't help agriculture," the secretary said, speaking before a farm meeting in Little Rock.

Even so, some Southern farmers are worried about the long-term effects of the agricultural cuts.

One factor that especially worries farmers is the radical turn away from the approach established by the 2002 Farm Bill.

"There are people with operations similar to ours all across the South,” says one Arkansas farmer. “We struggled through and finally got the 2002 farm bill in place and assumed that it would live like it was written until 2007. To arbitrarily change it, it's going to have a real big impact.”

Posted by Jim Langcuster at May 25, 2005 04:26 PM | TrackBack