by Don Deichman
Note: Five days after the following article appreared, the debate between Clinton and Dole that had been set for St. Louis was abruptly cancelled by a joint announcement of the two campaigns. (Tough luck? Or were the candidates even more eager to avoid farm prices debate than we expected?)
Despite a flourish of polls suggesting Americans suddenly feel better about the economy and the nation's overall course, many voters are still concerned that there is no clear economic debate among the presidential candidates. The presidential debates would be an excellent setting to open the door to a public re-thinking of the economy.
What questions are posed to the candidates is, of course, key. Who determines them? TV journalists skilled at pretending drama and importance? A petition now circulating in Missouri gives citizens a voice in shaping the debate: It asks if so called free trade is really a good path when the U.S. farm community has seen a 50% fall in the number of farmers during a 30-year period of "export-oriented" agriculture.
Recent near-record grain prices do not mean prosperity for farmers. But there is unlikely to be a "tractorcade" of discontented farmers down the street from the debate hall as there was in 1984 during the Ronald Reagan - Walter Mondale debate in Kansas City. Still, rural America walks the uneasy path it has been on for a long time.
The showy but soon-forgotten Little Rock Economic Summit, held soon after the 1992 elections, included a discordant note that reporters overlooked. Iowa Farmers Union President Gary Lamb charged that other speakers, who repeated a Clinton-Gore campaign theme of "growing the economy" through exports, ignored the experience of farmers.
Lamb's call for a closer look at agriculture, in which he noted global and domestic hunger, is as needed now as when he spoke in Little Rock.
Several months ago, through a crowd of chanting Dole supporters here in Maryland, I got Bob Dole's attention as he was leaving a county fairgrounds. When I raised a question about global agriculture, he tersely replied, out a still open car door: "Agriculture has done very well." He even got out of the car to make his point when I suggested he'd overlooked what's happened to farmers.
Both Dole and Clinton, whose ties with the Archer Daniele Midland's Dwayne Andreas and Tyson Foods' Don Tyson are well known, confuse agriculture and agri-business.
In the min-1960s, a sign bearing the red and white checkerboard hung on the wall in the high school where I studied vocational agriculture. It proclaimed that "agriculture is more than farming." To contend that agriculture has done well even while the number of farmers has plummeted surely adheres to that message. But over what - or who - agriculture is misses the point: that is a caution flag to us all about allowing our economy to become more global.
Anyone who questions economic globalization is commonly labeled isolationist. Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., a former Peace Corps volunteer, spoke at the presentation of a 1993 statement against the North American Free Trade Agreement signed by former Peace Corps volunteers from more than 20 states. As Walsh said, the isolationist tag won't stick on us.
I was among the signers of that statement. Former volunteers, especially those of us who worked in agriculture, can speak with credibility in our own communities about how our pricing policy undercuts the farmers of hungry nations.
Not that we are concerned only about consequences abroad. As that 1993 statement against NAFTA says, our nation's "thirst for foreign markets and resources is due to overlooking needs and resources of our own people, leading to growing income disparities here."
Repercussions of economic policy pop up in unfortunate places. Some years back, President George Bush was told by the then-president of Columbia that if we were serious about stemming the drug flow, we would favor an international coffee agreement that was fair to coffee producers. But if Bush learned anything from that, he didn't pass it along to his successor from Arkansas.
At a recent meeting of farm journalists, President Bill Clinton cited the climbing earnings of U.S. farm exports, and lauded farmers as "citizens of the world". Had he been in Washington during the 1979 "tractorcade" protest, he would know that farmers take citizenship more seriously the the term "global citizen" suggests.
Many of the farmers who were in the protests were veterans of military combat. There were leery of loose definitions of national interests. They cited words of presidents like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln articulating how democracy requires an agriculture of numerous family farms, owned by the farmers rooted in their communities, not by corporate landlords.
A point made by Colorado leaders of the protest connected to the hunger problem: Our exporting grain at "globally competitive" prices injures Third World farmers and results from our failure to keep commodity prices at parity (balance) with other goods and services.
An early hero of the farmers' lobbying effort was Dole, who sponsored their parity pricing measure. But he made an 11th hour reversal that they now recall bitterly. If Dole were to acknowledge that he abandoned the measure for global competitiveness - for our market dominance - it would open the way for reconsideration of their decision.
St. Louis is the headquarters of Ralston-Purina, Continental Foods, Monsanto and other corporate food and agri-business giants, so the area may not appear to be the place to seek support for putting our question on the debate agenda. But it’s still a city of workers and entrepreneurs. Also, awareness of trade policy’s effects has grown recently - for example, machinists walked out at McDonnell Douglas when the firm continued to expand its export market and use subcontractors.
A still more compelling reason than job security for people to join out petition is the concern for world peace. The present path is such a narrow, competitive approach to the world that it misses the possibilities of cooperation and disregards the legitimate need of other nations for their own markets and their own resources.
Missourians attending the recent christening of the Harry S. Truman carrier at Newport News, Va., heard much verbiage about U.S. interests around the world. Most of it was as lacking of Truman’s common sense as the use of costly barely visible fireworks at the 10 a.m. ceremony.
Common-sense Missourians can join our effort to raise questions on the wisdom of global trade. Let the challenge be made by citizens who care about their children’s economic future and who know that even more important than a good answer is a good question.
Don Deichman is a Missouri native who works on a fruit and vegetable farm at Germantown, Md. Information about the petition effort can be obtained by e-mail: suebuckler@idealink.washington.dc.us