Washington - With pork prices hovering at the lowest in decades, and cattle prices also suffering, Senate Democrats hope to set in motion a process that will bring the ills of the nation's livestock industry to the top of Congress' agenda.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, will co-chair a Democratic Forum on the Crisis in the American Livestock Industry.
“I am hopeful that we can draw attention to this important issue, so that members of Congress understand just how deep these problems are in agriculture,” Daschle said. “We need to act now to help producers before it is too late.
The hearing comes as livestock farmers are taking serious hits at the marketplace, particularly hog producers, whose prices had dropped last week as low as $7 per hundredweight in some parts of the country. Cattle prices, which reached around $80 per hundredweight at the first of the year, have hovered in the $60-$70 range in some parts of the country.
“We are in the middle of one of the biggest crises we have ever seen in the livestock industry,” Daschle said. “Prices have literally collapsed, and producers are being devastated.”
Daschle said he hopes the session, which will include farmers and economists, will help lawmakers find ways to return competition and profitability to the industry.
One question Congress will look at is “What authority does USDA have, and are those authorities sufficient enough to assist?” said Michael Dunn, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.
“How many different commodities are we going to go through on it? I think that is one of the things they're looking at,” Dunn said. “If it's pork today, is it going to be beef tomorrow?”
Caroline Anderson, government relations director for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said nowhere is the livestock price crisis more devastating than among hog farmers.
“People are basically marketing their hogs for a huge loss,” Anderson said. She said it costs about $36 per hundredweight to produce a hog -- far more than what farmers are getting at the market.
“You're talking thousands of dollars lost,” Anderson said. “Even the small- scale hog farmers are losing thousands of dollars each week.”
The Clinton administration has taken several steps in recent weeks to help pork producers.
The government has agreed to buy $65 million more of pork, bringing government pork purchases since March to $95 million.
On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman agreed as well to defer some loan repayments for hog farmers and formed a task force to look at ways to help pork producers.
Glickman also announced a temporary freeze on Agriculture Department lending for new pork production plants to prevent exacerbating the industry's oversupply problem.
Daschle and Harkin said hog prices have lost 72 percent of their value this year, and producers are losing about $75 for each animal they market.
“When selling prices don't even come near the cost of production, small and medium-sized producers -- even the most efficient operators -- are being driven out of business,” Daschle said. “These low prices are devastating not only our producers but also entire rural communities whose economies are based on a strong farm economy.”
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