By Scott Nicholson
Mountain Times
http://www.mountaintimes.com/mtweekly/2005/0331/foxx.php3
Fifth District Rep. Virginia Foxx spoke with local farmers over breakfast at
the Mountain House Restaurant last Thursday.
Foxx, visiting her district while Congress is on Easter recess, faced numerous
questions, though most centered around the recent tobacco buyout program.
Frank Bolick, agent with the Watauga
County office of the N.C.
Cooperative Extension Service, was the first to question the buyout issue.
Foxx said she had been told that Congress wrote the farm bill in such a way
that the buyout is supposed to be on the effective quota, though the Farm
Service Agency (FSA) is contradicting the bill, claiming it’s overly broad.
“Meetings are going on now to make it as close to the quota as it should be,”
Foxx assured the crowd of more than 20 attendees.
The buyout is designed to compensate tobacco farmers and growers for lost
income, allowing them to pursue other crops or ventures. Watauga County farmers
can visit the local FSA office to sign up for the buyout program and will
receive $7 a pound over 10 years, based on the amount of basic quota owned in
2002, provided they owned the quota in October 2004.
Growers receive $3 a pound based on the amount of effective quota grown in
2002, 2003 and 2004. However, several farmers in attendance made it clear their
actual compensation was nowhere near what they expected.
“The rules are being worked out by other groups of people,” Foxx said. “We’re
going to have to make sure that farmers aren’t disadvantaged with whatever the
FSA does.”
Jake Parker, national legislative director with the N.C. Farm Bureau, said the
bureau has been looking at the situation, and that the bureau needs people to
record the difference in sum between their quota and what they’re actually
receiving.
He specified, though, that the FSA doesn’t want to pay people for quota twice.
The sign-up process ends June 17, Parker said.
Bolick said the situation is not just affecting burley and flue-cured tobacco
farmers in western North Carolina, but West Virginia and eastern Tennessee, as well.
“Nobody wants to see people disadvantaged in this situation,” Foxx said. “It
ought not to be overly complicated, but when you get government involved,
that’s what happens.”
Foxx said government should not meddle in such affairs. At $80,000 per acre,
Bolick said, the government is never going to get out.
Foxx, who also serves on House Committee on Agriculture, said, “My sense of the
agriculture committee is there’s extraordinarily strong support for farmers.”
One farmer in attendance provided numerical statistics on the quota difference,
saying one fellow had 33,000 pounds of effective quota, but was paid for
21,000. Another farmer had between 28,000 and 29,000 in quota, and came out
with 25,000 to 26,000 worth.
One attendee said the buyout is going to drastically affect farms in western North Carolina, and that
big tobacco companies will reap all the benefits.
Foxx echoed Parker, and urged farmers to document the gap between what’s
expected and what they’re actually getting, saying, “We’ll find out how we can
fill that gap.”
Foxx also encouraged farmers to write U.S. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC)
and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC).
“While I can tell it to them, it’s much more effective coming from you all,”
she said.
Another attendee asked whether the sign-up period was “hard and fast” or
flexible. Foxx said it was hard and fast, and acknowledged there is little time
to address the issue, as the sign-up period ends this June.
Shifting the topic, an attendee asked about Social Security, and said taking
the cap off payments each year is all that needs to be done. Though she
admitted she was no good with numbers, Foxx said, “taking the cap off will buy
seven years’ time. That’s all that will do.”
When Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the
average life expectancy was 57-years-old, Foxx explained, though the service
was arranged for people to draw money at the age of 65.
She said it was really set up to provide enough funding for federal programs,
and that “people didn’t really think there would be a drain in the system.”
In 1935, when Roosevelt signed the Social
Security Act, there were 50 people working for every one person drawing Social
Security, Foxx said. Now, it’s 3.3 working for every one person drawing and
soon to be two for every one, she said.
“Demographically, things have changed so dramatically in this country,” Foxx
said. “It’s a broken system.”
There are four plans circulating in Congress to remedy the situation, though
all involve raising taxes, Foxx said, adding that she has not committed to any
of them.
People have become too dependent on Social Security as their sole source of
income after retirement, Foxx said, adding that President George W. Bush feels
people should take responsibility for themselves and plan ahead, rather than
rely solely on Social Security.
The average payment is $921 a month, she said.
“The president is trying to get people thinking about planning for retirement
by saying personal accounts,” Foxx explained, saying personal accounts would
give people more control over their money and make them less dependent on
government giving. “We need a mindset change in the country.”
Charles Church, a tobacco and organic vegetable farmer, serves as a board
member with the Watauga County Farm Bureau. Church attended the breakfast,
wishing to hear from Foxx about the tobacco buyout, but asked a different
question altogether.
Touching on the skyrocketing price of fuel, Church said the country has the
technology to make all the fuel needed through other natural means, namely
crops, such as soybeans and corn for the production of ethanol.
“We could get off our dependency on foreign oil and farmers could make a whole
new living off growing fuel,” Church said.
Foxx said she heard similar suggestions when visiting constituents in Surry County
last Tuesday. Constituents said they could get three times the yield from an
acre of soybeans and corn than a farmer could at the coast, Foxx recounted. The
problem, though, is there is nowhere nearby to process the product, the closest
being in Raleigh.
“If we got a processing plant up here, we could help with that,” Foxx said,
adding she’d ask staff to see what it would take to get one. “The cost of
producing ethanol has so far been more expensive than the benefit. We ought to
be able to put time and energy into making it more manageable.”
“It’ll take gas prices getting more expensive before people’s attention will be
caught,” she said.
However, Foxx said she expects to an energy bill that promotes alternatives to
petroleum-based fuels.
