Farm Bill Fizzle

The strikers go home to plow

As a gesture of respect, they had removed their red, white and blue caps emblazoned with the words AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. But the thousands of burly farmers, with strike buttons on their brightly colored windbreakers, were readily recognizable last week as they spilled into the Capitol Building with their wives to watch Congress vote on an emergency one-year farm bill to boost crop prices and increase farm loans. It was the climax of a protest begun in December by the farmers, who were caught in a painful squeeze between falling world prices for their crops and rising costs of production.

To attract attention to their plight, contingents of angry farmers went to Washington. They drove tractors up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. They set loose chickens and goats on Capitol Hill. They lobbied in the Capitol's halls, scaring a few citified Congressmen with their passionate pleas for federal aid. Finally, they got their bill to the floors of both congressional chambers.

In the Senate, where all members have some farm constituents, the bill passed, 49 to 41. The farmers in the galleries grinned and politely refrained from cheering. But two days later, they were grim-faced as their bill came up for action in the House, where members from cities and suburbs outnumber those from farm districts.

Many inflation-wary Representatives noted that the Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would cost the Government $5.3 billion and add $100 to an average family's food bill for the year. Said Massachusetts Republican Silvio Conte: "We have heard from the farmers who have been camping in town. But we haven't heard from the consumers who don't have the luxury of taking three months off to lobby Congress." Besides, President Carter had promised to veto the bill as inflationary. Said Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas: "This is just a meaningless charade." The House voted down the bill, 268 to 150. One farmer filled the legislative chamber with a raucous "B-o-o-o." But most were silent.

After the defeat, the farmers bunched wearily outside the Capitol and marched--some 2,000 strong--down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. They pressed against the fence's spiked iron grillwork, dispiritedly chanting, "Carter is no farmer" and "We're gonna vote." Then the demonstration sputtered out, as has the strike for the most part. Nearly all U.S. farmers are concentrating now on plowing and planting, encouraged by the rise in some farm prices. Next morning the strikers began leaving the motels where they had slept three and four to a room. "What the hell," said Wheat Farmer Wilbur Burnside of eastern Washington, with back-to-the-land stoicism, "we tried."

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