Matulka Outlines Ag Platform

Saying that recognizing a problem is the first step in solving it, U.S. Senate Candidate Charlie Matulka of Beatrice has announced a farm policy to help the "sagging rural economy."

"We need to scrap the old carcass of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill," Matulka told the Beatrice Daily Sun. "It's designed for agribusiness and is destroying family farms and ranches."

Matulka called the 2002 Farm Bill an "improvement" over the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill, but said much still needs to be done.

"This is a very complicated issue, but I've done my homework," Matulka said.

"The market pricing system has been destroyed by two current issues. One in the program is 'marketing loans' and the other, associated with commodity futures trading, is 'hedge funds'", Matulka said.

"For 55 years there were satisfactory farm programs with the use of nonrecourse federal loans for nonperishable commodities," Matulka said. "These loans maintained a decent price by the loan rate setting a floor price."

But, he said, the loan rates were gradually reduced from 90 percent of parity in the 1940s and 1950s to 35 percent of parity in the early 1990s. In the early '90s, he said, "target prices of about 45 percent of parity were established to generate deficiency payment subsidies.

Then came Freedom to Farm. Target prices were eliminated and a marketing loan program with loan deficiency payments was added along with the nonrecourse loans with the loan rates of both options reduced to about 30 percent of USDA parity. The marketing loan works to the distinct benefit of the multinational commodity processors and exporters."

With the marketing loans, Matulka said, "commodities can be delivered directly from the field to a local elevator at just any price ... and the government will pay whatever amount of loan deficiency payment required to get the sale price back up to the very low loan rate. The marketing price will therefore never rise above what once was a higher floor price.

"The now predominant use of the marketing loan has destroyed any ability of the still available nonrecourse of loan to help hold up the price.", he continued. "I will move to eliminate the marketing loan and use only the nonrecourse loan. This would work well with the 2002 farm bill where target prices were re-established and would reduce the amount of federal subsidy payments so that payment limits per person would become only a minor issue."

The "hedge funds," Matulka said, "over 500 speculative funds totaling more than $600 billion ... have knocked the bottom out of any natural market price formation based on supply and demand, especially so in the livestock sector."

He proposes moving that money into treasury and municipal bonds to "be used instead for infrastructure building of public projects in the U.S."

Current U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel "has been in office five years and we don't know where he stands" on farm policy, Matulka said.

Citing an editorial written by John K. Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, Matulka points out what he calls inconsistencies in Hagel's position on ag-rellated issues.

Hagel voted against the original Senate Farm Bill proposal that contained a $275,000 payment limitation cap, Hansen wrote, and then voted against the 2002 Farm Bill because he said, it did not contain the $275,000 cap.

But Matulka wants to make clear, he said, "I'm not running against the Republicans. I'm running for the Nebraska people.

"IBP had record quarterly profits just after the hog market bottomed out," Matulka said, and a top executive at IBP made a $6 mllion bonus.

"IBP practically stole the hogs from the farmers, and failed to lower the retail prices to the consumers," he said.

Peoplle are making millions of dollars off the farmers," Matulka said, "but what if they (farmers) could have even one vote in the Senate? That's one way I can contribute.