GRAIN WILL BE OFFERED TO POOR NATIONS, CLINTON PLEDGES
[quoting] Hoping to avert a farm crisis at home and famine abroad, President Clinton announced Saturday the United States will donate $250 million of wheat to impoverished nations, with more likely to come.
"It's good for American farmers, good for our economy, and it's the right thing to do," Clinton said in his weekly radio address, recorded in Little Rock, Ark.
Buying surplus grain is the latest official response to slumping crop prices and widening hardships in America's farm country. Wheat growers have been especially hard hit, with prices half of 1996 levels, and weather disasters bedeviling the Dakotas, the Texas plains and parts of the South.
"Our farmers face a difficult and dangerous moment," Clinton said.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said the purchase should lift wheat prices by up to 13 cents a bushel, or about 4 percent. That should have little impact on consumers or supermarket prices. But it was welcomed by farmers who have just completed the winter wheat harvest.
"It's a step in the right direction," said Kansas farmer Ray Crumbaker, who is facing the decade's lowest wheat prices, plus a hailstorm that killed part of his crop.
Glickman said he hopes to expand the donation program, adding wheat flour and other grains that have been hurt by surpluses and low prices.
The wheat will be offered to nations so poor that they're unable to buy grain. Brian Atwood, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said those nations will include the Sudan, which is facing widespread starvation, and Indonesia, where economic calamity has created "a very dire need" for food. North Korea and several African nations are also possible recipients.
Clinton said the idea of opening America's granary was "in the best humanitarian tradition - an action based on human need to help save lives, as it opens new links of trade."
There's also a political dimension. All last week, Democrats and Republicans in Congress scolded each other over farm problems, and both parties rushed forward with aid proposals. Clinton repeated a Democratic theme in his radio address, noting that two years ago when grain prices were high, he urged Republicans not to dismantle the government net for farmers.
"But sooner or later, prices were bound to fall so low that we would need that safety net," Clinton said. "That day has come."
Republicans also blame Democrats, citing the frequent use of economic sanctions that have hurt grain sales overseas. And many of today's farm problems have little to do with partisan politics, including bad weather, crop disease and the Asian economic crisis.
The wheat donation will not require congressional action, Glickman said.
"With prices for many farm products plummeting, America's farm families face a crisis, and we have an obligation to help," Clinton said. [End quoting]
I think regular CONTACT readers can see through this fog of manure.
The way I see it, what causes falling prices normally is too much crop production and not enough carry-over from previous years. And one other very important cause is Archer Daniels Midland and others of their ilk controlling the price of world foods.
Doesn't Clinton tell us above that part of the problem is that the weather was bad and there are crop diseases - which should result in rising prices.
What about this scenario?
ADM squeezes the farmers on prices so the farmers can't make a living directly. The government comes in and gives the farmers taxpayers' money to keep a few of them alive. ADM makes much more off the grain they bought and the farmers still gets below what they rightfully should have gotten - ADM makes a killing off of the taxpayers' backs.
I read just several weeks ago the railroads still can't deliver all of the crops because of shortage of railroad cars. Why do you suppose that might be, for the second year in a row??
Why would we go into countries and force them into bankruptcy and then say they are too poor to pay for our grain - Asian countries, Korea, Sudan and many others??
Would the elite be giving us more excuses to get all of our supplies of grain out of this country so we'll very soon be begging for food, which means 100% slavery??
Have you ever known of the elite to give anybody anything?? They'd kill for a dollar!!
And don't forget, a lot of this bad weather was and is not caused by Nature - then who do you think is to blame??
It's WAKE UP TIME OR WE'LL BE STARVING SOON WHILE THEY LET THE FOOD ROT!! Depopulation is behind schedule, folks!!