News Release:

Farmers get foreign perspectives on developing U.S. farm policy

Participants at the 2007 Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention—mostly farmers—heard the insights of Australian and European Union representatives on U.S. farm policy in general and the developing 2007 Farm Bill specifically.

Dean Merrilees, Australia’s minister counsellor for agriculture in Washington, and Dan Rotenberg, agricultural attaché for the delegation of the European Commission to the United States, spoke Nov. 26 at the event in Chantilly. Farm Bureau scheduled its presentation earlier this year with the assumption that a 2007 Farm Bill would have been completed by the time the convention opened.

“Now we’re in kind of a situation,” said Wilmer Stoneman, VFBF associate director of governmental relations.”

Much of the convention is focusing on trade issues, and the farm bill, Stoneman noted, “will certainly have an impact on how we trade, how much we trade and whether we trade” with other nations.

Merrilees said agricultural issues had a considerable role in Australia’s recent elections that unseated the country’s prime minister. While he predicted some change in farm policy related to environmental issues, he said current Australian policy related to agricultural trade likely will be unaffected.

Australia, he told Farm Bureau members, exports 60 percent to 70 percent of its agricultural products, chief among them beef, wheat, wine and dairy products. Food processing is the country’s largest industry. About 10 percent of its exports go to the United States.

U.S. exports are valued at about four times those of Australia, Merrilees said, though Australia’s farms are about 20 times larger. Still, the country has seen increased competitiveness and productivity since the 1980s—an average annual increase of 3.5 percent that’s attributed to changes in farm policy. Among those changes has been decreased support payments.

“Just like for Australia’s farmers, the future of American farms is in foreign markets, he said. “We have to make the rules fairer for all.”

Options for U.S. farm policy reform, he said, include conservation programs, farmer savings deposit programs, transition assistance, revenue insurance and recourse loans.

With greater attention to those options rather than to support payments, Merrilees said. “in our view, the U.S. would re-arm rather than disarm the ag sector.”

The European Union, Rotenberg noted, is the world’s first major importer, but it’s also the world’s first major exporter. The bulk of E.U. ag exports are no longer raw commodities but finished products, and since the 1980s a trade deficit has been turned into a surplus.

Farmers in E.U. member nations historically have enjoyed a higher level of support than U.S. farmers, Rotenberg said, but attention has fallen on U.S. farm policy because while support levels to E.U. farmers have been decreasing, support to U.S. farmers has increased.

With 148,000 members in 88 county Farm Bureaus, VFBF is Virginia’s largest farm organization.

Farm Bureau is a non-governmental, nonpartisan, voluntary organization that supports its members through legislative lobbying, leadership programs, commodity marketing and risk management services, insurance products and other benefits.