United States Agriculture

Grasshoppers are swarming over Gary Broyles' Montana farm, aphids are stealing sap from Bob Wallace's sugar beets in California and spider mites in Illinois have almost finished off Ron Mann's clover and are moving in on his soybeans. What the drought is not killing on the nation's farms, insects seem to be eating. "It is not like the plague or anything like that but locally insects can hurt some and potentially cause lower yields," said Dave Noetzel, a Minnesota entomologist.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture on Tuesday reached an agreement that will pay hundreds of millions of dollars to at least 3,500 black farmers who have complained for more than a decade that federal officials denied them loans that were routinely issued to white farmers. Under terms of the settlement, individual farmers with verifiable complaints will receive tax-free cash payments of at least $50,000, said legal sources.

With demand from Asia sinking, pork is no longer bringing home the bacon for Hoosier farmer Jim Moseley. "The reason we have $28 pigs now," said Moseley, recalling the days of $52 hogs, "is we had built a substantial demand base in Japan and Taiwan. The Asian crisis is hurting us." He has lots of company. The nation's agricultural producers are feeling pinched as a falloff in Asian demand for grains, meats, cotton and produce takes a multibillion-dollar bite out of U.S. farm exports.

If you've been under the impression after your weekly trip to the grocery store that you've been paying more for milk products, you're right. In fact, government tinkering, exports and the weather are to blame for a nearly 9% increase in consumer prices for dairy products in the past year, dairy experts say. According to government figures, that is more than double the rate that prices in general have gone up in 1989 and half again as much as all food prices.

The buffalo bunch up on the ranch out here, big and very dark against the flat forever of the sky. They rip at the prairie grass. They call to one another in a dusky purr. Dan O'Brien watches, content. These are his buffalo. And this is how he wants them to live: free to roam, free to graze, free to mate, right up until the very end--when he picks a few young bulls and shoots them, out on the prairie, so he can sell their meat. It's a vision he is committed to, with passion.

Farmers and ranchers seeking federal assistance to protect the environment are not benefiting from the millions of dollars in farm subsidies doled out annually by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to a study released Thursday by an environmental group. Currently, California has a backlog of agricultural conservation projects totaling nearly $123 million. The state receives about $500,000 annually in USDA spending for conservation programs, according to the report.

Up before sunrise in a blowing snowstorm, John Faulkner is out in the barn repairing his truck. He'd driven home from Southern California just the night before but still must take more of his 12,000 sheep to Blythe for the winter. It's the grueling life of a third-generation sheepman, made all the more frustrating because he is losing money with every lamb he delivers to market. "My incentive for getting up on mornings like this," the 69-year-old rancher said, "is that I owe so much money."

The trick, as Rudyard Kipling put it, is to "keep your head when all about you are losing theirs." And if you did that last week when stock prices collapsed amid fears about U.S. trade and the economy in general, you might have noticed a few exceptions to the widespread decline. As the Dow Jones industrial average fell 150 points on Wednesday and Thursday, the stock of Deere & Co., the farm equipment outfit, hit new highs for the year. And the stock of Caterpillar Inc.

The Senate on Tuesday rejected a Democrat-backed $11-billion bailout of the farm economy in favor of a smaller Republican package. But lawmakers said they hoped to work out a bipartisan compromise later this week. "There's bipartisan recognition that there's a disaster out there," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). The Republican-controlled Senate defeated the Democratic plan, 54 to 44, after Democrats, in a 51-47 vote, narrowly failed to kill the $7-billion GOP emergency farm package.

Underscoring concern over the growing use of genetically engineered ingredients in processed foods, the environmental group Greenpeace released a study Thursday that shows three top baby food and nutritional products contain DNA from genetically engineered corn and soybeans. The study of eight popular products taken from grocery shelves earlier this year is part of a larger campaign by environmentalists and consumer groups to persuade lawmakers and the U.S.