WASHINGTON, D.C. – United States agriculture secretary Dan Glickman is not a politician given to public displays of joy, but he came close last week as he described the future for American agriculture.
“The outlook for American agriculture is very very good, very bullish,” he told the opening session of an agriculture outlook conference. “President (Bill) Clinton calls this the age of possibility. I’m inclined to agree.”
Why is this Kansas politician smiling?
He rhymed off the figures: Last year U.S. farmers recorded the second highest farm income ever with cash receipts of more than $200 billion (U.S.); and food export are forecasted to grow by 33 percent to $80 billion in the foreseeable future.
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“I just see a rosy future,” he told delegates to the conference.
Part of it was political self-congratulations.
Get government out
He said American politicians from both Republican and Democratic parties had agreed in last year’s farm bill, the so-called Freedom to Farm bill, that government should stop distorting markets with commodity-tied subsidies. The result is that American farmers can react to market signals and excel.
“The signature shift is the government getting out of the way.”
Glickman noted food exports are increasing and agriculture has once again become the leading earner of foreign currency through a trade surplus of more than $20 billion.
“We are once again number one and we intend on staying there.”
Later speakers at the conference softened the edges of those claims.
The U.S. cattle industry has a fight on its hands to keep its share of the meat market.
Wheat exports will fall this year by an estimated 40 percent because of stronger competition from abroad.
And despite claims of the government getting out of the way, U.S. farmers for the next six years will continue to receive billions of dollars in “transition” subsidies while the government continues to assert the right to use export subsidies and plans to pour more than $1 billion a year into U.S. farm safety nets as they evolve.
Keith Collins, chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also offered caution about the risks of the new freedom to farm bill.
“Farmers and first buyers have reason to be concerned,” he told the meeting.
“Greater planting flexibility, trade liberalization and more private stock holding tend to be stabilizing forces but several factors suggest greater variability in the future. They include smaller government stocks, greater exposure to foreign policy shifts and foreign supply shocks as trade liberalization becomes more important.”
He said American farmers also will be more vulnerable to the impact of foreign weather catastrophes which in the past, the U.S. government absorbed through support programs.
He said success will depend in large part on farmers’ ability to protect their income from risk.
