FARMERS NEED ACCESS TO OVERSEAS MARKETS

The good news is that the growing season for the past four years in major crop-producing states has been generally good. More good news is that farmers have seen increased crop yields over those same four years.

But there is bad news too.

The bad news is that record harvests of soybeans and corn will further depress prices paid to farmers.

And so it goes for American farmers, who are capable of feeding the world, but who continue to get shortchanged because they are so good at what they do.

Feeding the world is what a lot of American farmers would like to be doing. Goodness knows there is still rampant starvation in far too many nations.

But overflowing silos in the United States and hungry mouths around the world never seem to get matched up. There are all kinds of bureaucratic reasons for this. Then there are competitive pressures from other nations whose farmers aren't so proficient as American farmers but who enjoy expansive government protection and support for the crops they manage to raise.

Meanwhile, American farmers must rely on the Freedom to Farm Act, which has had the effect of hamstringing government production quotas and other checks and balances on agricultural production in this country. U.S. farmers are more and more being forced to rely solely on a market economy, which sounds good in theory but, after decades of government controls, hasn't been easy for some farmers. These are the farmers most likely to call the current U.S. farm policy the Failure to Farm Act.

While government production quotas are no longer permitted in the United States, the federal government is finding other interesting ways to help farmers in some instances. For example, the farm act doesn't prohibit incentive payments to farmers who voluntarily cut back on crop production.

The biggest factor affecting American farmers today is the ability or inability, as the case may be to sell this nation's high-quality food and fiber to overseas markets. Until the federal government faces up to the fact that it must act on behalf of our farmers, better yields are going to produce too little too late.

Strangely, our national farm policies have put us in this situation: If we had a good drought or calamitous flooding that affected farm output, farmers might actually see more demand and higher prices for whatever leaves their fields. Is that what it's going to take to change things?