Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium
The peanut price support program is ``only a teardrop in an ocean of red ink'' coming out of Washington, Marvin Everett, chairman of the Virginia Farm Bureau's peanut advisory commodity committee.
Everett was among about 150 farmers and peanut industry representatives who jammed the Suffolk City Council chamber for a U.S. Senate field hearing on the 1995 farm bill. Eliminating or revising the subsidy has been proposed for the farm legislation.
Congress is revamping a broad array of farm subsidy programs this year, and the peanut program specifically has been targeted by critics.
Lower consumer demand and foreign competition generated by the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade have put pressure on lawmakers to slash the $678-a-ton peanut support price or lower the quota of 1.35 million tons.
But Sen. John Warner said a reformed peanut program can be saved. Warner, R-Va., conducted Tuesday's hearing on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. He is a member of the panel.
The keys to keeping the peanut program, Warner said, are making price supports flexible while eliminating costs to taxpayers and developing a global marketing strategy that makes U.S. peanuts competitive abroad.
``Congress simply can't pull the rug out from the family farm and the agriculture industry,'' Warner said.
Virginia is one of nine U.S. peanut-producing states. In the half-dozen localities from Greensville County to Suffolk where peanuts are grown in Virginia, 92,000 planted acres produced 291 million pounds of peanuts last year. The state crop's cash value was more than $80 million.
Growers have agreed to lower quotas. Many have turned increasingly to alternate crops, particularly cotton, to keep supplies closer to demand.
But many farmers also are in debt for the specialized equipment needed to harvest peanuts and are fearful of efforts to set too low a price, since production costs continue to rise.
``It's important to remember that farmer debt loads are already heavy and the cost of equipment is increasing,'' said Paul Rogers, a peanut farmer in Southampton and Surry counties who also is a director of the state Peanut Growers Cooperative Marketing Association.
Charles Harden, Rogers' counterpart with the North Carolina Peanut Growers Association and an eight-generation farmer, said support prices must reflect production costs and not some artificial ``world'' peanut price, which might include peanuts of far less quality than the U.S.-produced crop.
``The one thing I want to see above all else is the program, once it gets reformed, will be a growing program and not phased out'' in a few years, Harden said.
by CNB