ANSWER TO FARM CRISIS LIES IN FOREIGN SALES

Talk to anyone in outstate Missouri these days and it won't be long before the conversation turns to farm prices, which are bumping along at catastrophic lows. Soybean prices last week hit a 29-year low. Hog prices fell out of bed last year and, even after a partial rebound, are at historic lows, far below production costs. There is a tone of panic, even desperation, emerging from agricultural producers and their spokesmen, and this even from level-headed ones not given to hysterical pronouncements.

What is to be done?

From Gov. Mel Carnahan and many other Democrats, you hear criticism of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act, written to phase out decades of government price-support safety nets for farmers. Carnahan wants Congress to revisit that measure with an eye toward restoring farm price supports to bolster the struggling farm sector.

U.S. Sen. Kit Bond rejects the Carnahan advice. Bond says Congress has also approved $18 billion for agriculture to deal with the short-term crisis of the collapse of farm prices around the world. Bond says that's more than farmers would have received under the old price-support system. He says there aren't the votes to repeal the 1996 law.

For his part, Carnahan signed into law three bills passed this year. They will extend a program of grants to farmers who want to show off sustainable agriculture methods, extend the life of a fund that will make payments to ethanol producers and encourage the formation of new farming cooperatives for Missouri products.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson has written the president urging that he address the financial crisis in farming. Emerson says the Clinton administration has failed to put forth a plan to address the crisis and has allowed existing farm loan programs to run out of money.

The one thing we know will help our agricultural producers is to knock down other countries' trade barriers and to open foreign markets. And that will take everyone working together -- state and federal leaders, as well as producers themselves.