Ag Interests Nervous About
Research Funds They Expect

WASHINGTON —(AP)— When the federal government decided to stop using its money to prop up crop prices, farmers were told Washington would help provide a new kind of safety net: markets eager for their products.

The farmers took that as a commitment of more federal dollars for research into new uses for agricultural commodities and cheaper ways to produce them, information that could smooth the transition to free-market farming.

Now, a new law to pay for that and other agriculture research — overdue by more than six months — is bogged down on Capitol Hill. And the money it earmarks for farm research is being coveted by lawmakers who want to bankroll highway projects instead. The delays and legislative infighting have left farm advocates worried lawmakers will renege on their promises.

"We haven't seen anything out of Congress to help that market be there," lamented Rodney Weinzierl, head of the Illinois Corn Growers Association. "What kind of signal is Congress trying to give to agriculture?"

In Illinois, federal research dollars go to the Agriculture Department's lab in Peoria and to institutions such as Southern Illinois University. Of the $44 million the University of Illinois spent on research in 1997, for example, $7.6 million was from federal grants.

Individual projects funded this year include $158,000 for research at Illinois State University into alternative income sources for producers and new markets for grain, soybeans and corn; and $1.3 million for the Illinois-Missouri Alliance for Agricultural Biotechnology, which brings farmers, agribusinesses and universities together to study food safety, environmental farming and new markets.

But with federal funding relatively stagnant, inflation has eroded the buying power of research funds. And in 1996, Congress enacted the Freedom to Farm law, which ended restrictions on what farmers could plant but began phasing out government subsidy payments. Those payments end completely in 2002.

The research portion of that law expired last Sept. 30, and lawmakers passed a one-year extension.

The proposed replacement now before Congress would boost agriculture research spending by $600 million over five years, mostly for biotechnology and food safety. It would also continue most current research, allot $500 million for federal crop insurance programs and $100 million for rural development. And the extra funds would not be subject to the whims of annual congressional budget battles.

"Research funding has been declining in real dollars for 20 years," said John Phipps, who farms 1200 acres of corn and soybeans near Chrisman, along the Illinois-Indiana border, and is research chairman of the Illinois Corn Marketing Board. "The additional funding simply catches us up."

"The thing that is often overlooked is how important this is our economy," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

To fund the bill and restore food stamps to some legal immigrants, the bill uses $1.73 billion in administrative savings from the food stamp program.

That's where the measure's problems begin.

It took until the end of last month for House and Senate negotiators to write a compromise version. Then a few Senate Republicans blocked final votes on the measure, objecting to a provision restoring food stamps for most legal immigrants.

Meanwhile, the Senate approved a nonbinding budget resolution for fiscal 1999 that directs the food stamp program savings to a massive highway bill. Both houses have cleared the highway measure and left for the Easter recess without hammering out a compromise version.

Once lawmakers return, if the highway bill is voted on before the research bill, research funding would be in serious jeopardy.

"It's kind of a race to see which one is passed first," Weinzierl said.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., promised farm-state lawmakers he would bring the research bill for a vote after the break. But he didn't say when, and suggested he might separate the research and food stamp provisions. That could destroy the fragile coalition of urban and farm-state lawmakers that give the research bill majority support.

"For reasons without any good explanation, the bill clearly faces some tremendous obstacles," acknowledged Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Sen. Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who sponsored the research bill, intends to press for a vote on the bill as now written, said his spokeswoman, Jennifer Cutshall. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman made a pitch for it in an April 6 radio address, urging Congress not to let the funds be "hijacked by a very costly highway funding bill."

Others are hopeful as well.

"Research has allowed us to double food production in the United States," said David Chicoine, dean of the University of Illinois' College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

"That's the good news and the bad news. We've been so successful, everybody thinks it just sort of happens. But we don't have the technology on the shelf to double the food supply again."