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[MUSIC PLAYING] JOHN RABE: Good morning. I'm John Rabe, sitting in for Gary Eichten on Midday. And I'd like to welcome you back to our special broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. Again, my pleasure to introduce to you your host, Tom Rothman, from the Minnesota Farm Radio Network.

TOM ROTHMAN: Thank you very much, John Rabe. Our live broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio is continuing from Farmfest in southwestern Minnesota. We'll continue our discussion this hour on the rural economy, its importance to all of Minnesota, some of the challenges that rural communities face and those folks who live there.

Joining us this hour is Steve Taff. Steve is an agricultural economist from the University of Minnesota Extension Service. Dean Barkley, director of planning for the Ventura administration, and State Senator Linda Higgins of Minneapolis. I'd like to welcome you all and tell our radio audience that you can call in with questions. Our number is 1-800-537-5252. It's 1-800-537-5252.

We're also taking questions with the help of Kent Thiesse of the University of Minnesota Extension Service here at Farmfest and Laurie Sturtevant of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Steve Taff, let's start with you in our discussion of what is going on. The US economy is in great shape. The farm economy and the rural economy is not right now. Why is there such a huge difference?

STEVE TAFF: Well, if we think there is such a thing as a farm economy or a rural economy, we can say, yeah, the average performance is not nearly as good as the average rest of the economy. Of course, it's silly to talk about such things as an economy as if economies were people, just the sum total of everybody's business divided by the number of folks doing the business. That's not a particularly good indicator, but I'll leave that aside.

The reason that we're worried about farming right now in particular is prices are low. Three years ago, prices were at an all time high, and folks responded very predictably. They planted more and more the next year, figuring, wow, this is great. These prices are going to stay up here.

They didn't. Prices went back down to where they were before just a few years before that, and they've continued downward. If prices are low and your costs are the same, you don't make as much money. That reverberates throughout a world community, particularly parts of the state that have a lot of farming going on in comparison to the rest of their jobs and the rest of their economic activity.

So the farm economy as a whole is kind of a silly thing to talk about. But the local economy of Southwest Minnesota or West Central Minnesota or South Central Minnesota, and that starts to make more sense, starts to get close to home, starts to involve folks, which is what really matters.

TOM ROTHMAN: State Senator Linda Higgins, this past session of the legislature in Saint Paul approved money for farmers, special Farm Aid. The US Senate has approved special aid for farmers. Do you get a sense that your fellow legislators believe that this kind of aid is what is needed to keep farmers farming rural communities strong, or is there something else that can do that?

LINDA HIGGINS: Well, I think that that's one piece of it. But there are so many more things that individual citizens and communities as a whole and the greater state and Midwestern area can do. We need to look not only at the agricultural part of the rural areas, but also the pieces that can be a part of the larger group such as housing, child care for the families, the young families, who are both parents are going to work.

And I think that the legislature is very concerned about the rural part of Minnesota. And I like to think that the metro legislators are listening to what our fellow legislators have to say about that.

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley, the Twin Cities continue to grow. Many rural communities, not all, but many rural communities, continue to lose population. Are we going to continue to see a giant shift toward the Twin Cities or perhaps Mankato, Saint Cloud, Duluth? Or will we be able to retain our smaller communities in Minnesota?

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, that is a subject that I'm glad we're getting into because I don't know how much Minnesota can do with the overall international price problems and trade policies, but there are some things that the state can do to help revitalize and keep our regional rural centers healthy to keep people here. A number of things, an example, I know MPR and KTCA were not able to hook into high-speed cable. In order to broadcast this show, they had to bring in their satellite truck.

One of the keys for the rural community to attract new businesses and to keep them to be able to telecommute is the access to that high-speed telecommunications system that is taken for granted in the Twin City areas, but it's not out here. That's one of the things that is going on right now, is trying to connect all of rural Minnesota by telecommunications. That's ongoing now, which is a piece of the puzzle.

Health care. There's a huge problem of adequate health care in rural Minnesota, which isn't a problem in the metro area. We have to take care of the health care. Here we have to make sure there's education out here. We have to make sure there's affordable housing here. So if a business does locate in Marshall, Slayton, that they have a housing stock where they can recruit people in.

There's going to be 600,000 new people in the metro area in the next 10 years that we have to figure out a way of fitting them. And if we don't take care of rural Minnesota and make it livable to keep the young people in rural Minnesota in rural Minnesota, not moving to the Twin Cities for a job, that's going to go to 800,000, 900,000. So there is a direct relationship between what the state does to keep rural Minnesota regional centers vital and healthy to keep their people there and to stay there with good jobs and what happens to the Twin City area.

TOM ROTHMAN: But how do we do that? How do we keep these rural communities strong?

DEAN BARKLEY: Part of the thing, we have to come up with an affordable housing strategy. Right now, the private market cannot produce affordable rental housing. It just can't be done. You can't get bank loans for it. We're working on that problem of how we can get the private market back into it, so we can have an affordable housing basis out here.

We are working on building-- right now, we're completing the main backbone of our telecommunications up I-94 up to Moorhead, and then it's going to smoke out. And we are going to connect every part of rural Minnesota to that. So if a high-tech Hutch Hutchinson technology at 3:00 AM, any type of business that has to rely on computer technology and information transfer would have the ability to locate in rural Minnesota.

If you don't have that backbone, they can't be here. So a lot of the infrastructure that rural Minnesota now, we are as a state taking a look at. We realize it's vitally important. And it's being constructed as we speak.

TOM ROTHMAN: We're taking questions over the phone from our listening audience in Minnesota Public Radio. We're also taking questions here from our audience at Farmfest. Kent Thiesse.

KENT THIESSE: Yes, we have Jean Short, who's a county commissioner here in Redwood County. And up until a little over a month ago, was a small business owner here in Redwood County.

AUDIENCE: June 30, Kent, I closed the doors after eight years in small town rural response crisis. The AG crisis has hit small town Minnesota. Everybody knows that main part of our problem was that a lot of people don't shop local anymore. They're leaving their small communities, shopping elsewhere, City of Redwood Falls, shops in Marshall, or Mankato.

We need to do something to start working together a little bit better to do that and support your own local businesses. This rural crisis is really getting to be a tough thing. I would hope that we can come together a little bit more as communities and as individuals and as organizations, so we can support all of our AG industry and locals as well.

I really appreciate what the University of Minnesota, Association of Minnesota Counties, Minnesota Bankers Association are doing with their rural response. And I thank Minnesota Planning for the things that they've done in response to some of the crisis issues that are going on. So basically, I didn't have any questions. I just wanted to make some comments for you.

TOM ROTHMAN: Steve Taft, the farm economy is, many say, dragging down many of the rural communities right now. This is a tough time for the agricultural economy that you spoke about earlier. Is this simply a price issue? Are we simply at a down cycle? And when the markets pick up again, as they often do, they usually do, things will get rosy again, or is this much deeper than that?

STEVE TAFF: Well, I'm not one of those who predicts prices and tries to keep a straight face. There's folks whose job that is. And I'm not going to predict the future, but I can very easily tell us what the past has been. And the past has been a series of years where prices have been about where they are now, followed by a one-year spike where they about doubled two years ago, and then back to where they are again now.

To me, that suggests that that spike was not where we're going to be. That spike was a one-time occurrence. And where we are now is where we're going to be in the future. That means prices will continue to be at a fairly low level. That's the historic pattern. There's nothing new about that. That's very predictable.

Question is, you're asking the right questions, what are we going to do about that? Can we do anything about prices, or do we need to look at other ways of getting income into families so that they can choose to live where they want to live?

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: I think you hit the nail on the head. I'd like to respond to what I call it the Walmarting of rural Minnesota. It is happening. My father started our own family furniture business in Annandale in 1950, went out of business last year because of the same pressures. There's a huge furniture operation in Becker that basically wiped out the small producers.

It's the same thing when a Walmart comes into a town, your local hardware store, et cetera, has a hard time. And I think, yes, the local communities can do something. The Chamber of Commerce can do something. They have to start talking to their people, that there is a relationship to where you shop and how your town is going to survive.

And I think people have to start thinking about decisions they make. But on a larger scale, I think the diversity issue is the one that we're talking about. I think rural Minnesota has to diversify. I think it has to bring in other businesses, so it's not subject to this up and down channel.

In order to do that, we have to provide rural Minnesota with the infrastructure to be able to recruit new businesses into rural Minnesota and to keep their young people here. I mean, the biggest problem we've got in farming right now is workforce. I wonder how many people here have tried to hire detasseling crew and quite kind of luck they've had. Easy or not?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] They had a waiting line.

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, they did? Well, that's good. In the metro area, we have no unemployment to speak of.

AUDIENCE: Wright County.

DEAN BARKLEY: Wright County. OK, well, I used to form one up with the planar farm out there by Clearwater Lake. But providing that infrastructure, dividing the mechanism, or if a business wants to communicate, then the person looking for the part time job, the job to be able to supplement the farm income can find the job where they won't have to commute to the Twin Cities to find a good paying job to supplement their income to stay on the farm.

So that is a piece of the puzzle that we really have to get a handle on to making rural Minnesota vital, healthy communities with job opportunities that aren't just in the metro area, the Saint Cloud growth corridor, or the Rochester growth corridor, and it comes to southwestern Minnesota and Southern Minnesota.

TOM ROTHMAN: Senator Higgins.

LINDA HIGGINS: The issue of going to a larger town and a larger store to shop makes the whole issue kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The small town stores maybe don't get as good a price when they're buying the goods and services because they don't have the quantity that the big stores do. And so people will say, well, I can drive 15, 20 miles away to a large store and get a better price.

And so their shopping trip may save them $10 or $15 or $20. And if they're on a tight budget, they can do that. But what that does to their home town then is just making it that much harder for those small town stores to stay in business and to offer anything. I grew up in a small town in northern Iowa, and there used to be two grocery stores. Now, there's one that's barely making it.

There used to be two bars. There's one that's barely making it. He does most of his business on Sunday morning with the dinner buffet. And just seeing all those stores get smaller and smaller and consolidating and then finally going away is really hard for anybody who lives in those towns to be able to see because everything just gets harder then.

TOM ROTHMAN: We're going to go to the telephones in just a moment. But we had a follow-up comment from our last questioner.

AUDIENCE: Just one more brief comment. Next week, the Minnesota rural development organizations are having a summit in Duluth. And for your listening audience, I urge you to contact your local elected officials that are going there, provide your input to them. Let them know what you'd like to have them take with, and then ask them when they come back what happened. It's very important to this entire state.

TOM ROTHMAN: Let's go to the phones now and take a call. You're listening to a citizens forum here broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio from Farmfest. Duke, go ahead with your question, please.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, this is Duke Hust. I'm calling from the Saint Paul area. I am coming in on-- the panel talked last hour about the importance of attracting manufacturing, tourism, other diversified industries. Dean Barkley's talked about it this hour. Yet when I see each time that there's a conflict between AG and the environment, the local officials seem to trample the environment.

I'm thinking of wetlands, drainages, the ditch law. In Fillmore County, there's a planning commission recommendation to take the zoning from one house per 40 acres to one house per 60 to one house to 160 acres, where the total purpose of it is to keep retirees and non-farmers out of the area. And so you're trying to attract people into the area and doing everything possible to make it an unattractive place to live. I'm baffled by this. Comment, please.

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, that was the center of controversy with the hydrogen sulfide bill that Governor Ventura vetoed this last session. The animal agricultural-- the Feedlot Study, as everyone likes to call it, is housed in my agency in the environmental quality board. And we have been attempting to deal with this from a broad perspective.

The main reason I think the governor vetoed that bill is because we'd had a year-long process with 25 citizens from the pork producers to the environmental groups, all trying to come to a consensus on how we can deal with this on a fair basis that's fair for everybody. And if that bill had been allowed to go into law, that would have torpedoed that whole one-year process. We would have been back to square 1.

Now, Governor Ventura does want to make sure that we are not burdening farmers, the small farmer. The rules and regulations we're putting on them are such that they can't make it by doing that. And we're reworking, relooking at the connected action rules. But I guarantee you there is a mindset of balancing those interests.

And it's not going to be one way or the other. I think we already proved that by our actions in the last session. We didn't make everybody happy when we vetoed that bill.

TOM ROTHMAN: Steve Taff.

STEVE TAFF: The questioner raises a very interesting point when it comes to the strategy of doing all these wonderful things we want to do. We want to diversify an economy, we want to have more jobs. We want to keep our kids in town. This is nothing new. Many of you folks have heard this all your lives.

But we want to keep things the way they are at the same time. When we're talking about diversification of an economy, we're not just talking about jobs for our kids. Because think about it, our kids always want to leave home. Whether or not there's jobs around, they want to leave home.

It's not our kids who are going to be hired if we create new jobs in a rural area. It's the folks who live there now, and it's new people coming in. And new people coming in are different. They have different perspectives. They have different demands. They have different expectations of what governments ought to do and what a landscape ought to be like.

And we're not ready all the time to accept that fact, that in order to change our economy, we have to change the whole world around us. It lends or it adds a very strong sort of complexity and tension to debates about development and growth within rural areas, just like it does in urban areas. Again, there's nothing new about these kinds of issues. We've been going through this in rural areas and urban areas for decades and decades and decades. If there were silver bullets, we would have found them by now.

TOM ROTHMAN: Let's take another question over the phone from our NPR listening audience. Les in McLeod County, go ahead with your question.

AUDIENCE: Thanks, Tom. I would like to ask the panel, with rural Minnesota losing population and one could argue representation or at least a large voice that is heard in Saint Paul, how does the panel view the possibility of a unicameral legislature or future rural representation at both the state and federal level? Thank you.

TOM ROTHMAN: State Senator Higgins.

LINDA HIGGINS: I'm not a fan of unicameral legislation. When government was founded, it was founded on a system of checks and balances. And I've been at the legislature for three sessions now, and it's interesting to me to see the difference in the mindset and the personality of the House and the Senate and how they're very different.

The house seems to take a much more jump into it with both feet first and whack a couple of people around and pass some bill. And the Senate then becomes the body that actually often will dig into that issue much more, find out things that at first blush sounded like a really good idea. But after you investigate them more, you can find out reasons why the House's original actions isn't the right thing to do.

And I think that's what people really want us to do. They want us to think and deliberate and come up with the best solutions possible, not just a knee-jerk reaction to a situation. And I think that we are best served with two houses to do that.

TOM ROTHMAN: Do you think, though, rural Minnesota is getting the kind of representation that it used to with a growing population in the metro area and some of the larger communities?

LINDA HIGGINS: It may not have in numbers, but the leadership of the Senate is very rural dominated. And much of the power in the Senate is in who chairs those committees and who controls those agendas.

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, I'll have to take the other hat. Obviously, the unicameral effort is going to be one of the centerpieces of Governor Ventura, and that effort is going to be also housed in my agency to help bring that about. And I'm not going to sit here and debate whether it's a good or a bad idea. But I will say I think it is a right that every voting member in Minnesota has to decide whether they want to vote for that or not.

It's how they want to be governed. And that's the issue. Should we put it on the ballot and trust the citizens of the state to make an informed decision of whether it is a good thing to do or not? And I'll leave it at that. In the second part of it, there is no question that when we're done redistricting in the year 2001, that rural Minnesota is going to have less representation than it does now.

And that power is going to be going to the suburbs and the exurbs, which is that part-- the Wright counties, the Sherburne counties, the Olmsted counties, those growth corridors. That's what's going to do. But that's not necessarily going to be bad because these areas are going to have one foot in and one foot out of the rural versus the metro.

And I think maybe some good solutions can come out because that's where we're addressing these issues of how we merge the two in a diversifying economy where both are kind of trying to coexist. And maybe we can come with some policies that can serve both communities well. So I'm hopeful that after the redistricting, that actually we're going to have some representation out there that can come up with some new ideas of how we can merge the two economies together.

TOM ROTHMAN: Steve Taff.

STEVE TAFF: It's always been a case in Minnesota politics that rural has been a code word for farming. But of course for 50 years, the majority of people in rural areas, geographic areas have not been farmers at all. So one has to ask the question, is it necessary that rural areas dominate or is it that farming interests dominate?

The interesting politics that's going to be coming up over the next several sessions of the legislature is probably the natural alliance between farm interests and inner city interests. Both groups largely-- well, their dominance in the legislature is declining. In many cases, their incomes are lower than average. In many cases, there is a long tradition of government assistance.

That kind of alliance has not been seen in the legislature until the past few years. It'll be very interesting to watch because rural doesn't mean farming in Minnesota politics anymore.

TOM ROTHMAN: You are listening to a special Mainstreet radio broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. This citizens forum is sponsored by MPR, KTCA public television, the Star Tribune newspaper, and the University of Minnesota Extension Service. We'll take a break for news. We'll be back with our live broadcast from Farmfest on Minnesota Public Radio.

SPEAKER 1: This week on This American Life.

SPEAKER 2: There's no phone. There's no way back. You are completely-- you wanted to lose control, and now, you've lost control.

SPEAKER 1: Tom wanted to get off the map. Ended up in the Sahara, lost, not much water.

SPEAKER 2: Meanwhile, the heat's picking up, but you just catch this little click that the whole universe makes. It's this silent little chick that says, oh, you've passed the point of no return.

SPEAKER 1: You are here this week.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Saturday night at 7:00 and Sunday at 9:00 on Minnesota Public Radio. Good morning. With news from Minnesota Public radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. Richard Holbrooke has won Senate confirmation this morning to become the new US ambassador to the United Nations. Holbrooke worked out the Bosnia peace agreement, but his nomination ran into an ethics investigation and then unrelated Senate squabbles.

The post has been vacant since Bill Richardson left last year to become Energy Secretary. Attorney General Janet Reno is telling Congress to move forward with a juvenile justice bill. Reno says despite a rash of school shootings, new federal figures show that youth violence has declined.

She says Congress can help continue the trend by passing the legislation. House and Senate negotiators are set to start work on a compromise today. The big issue in the bill is gun control. The House version doesn't contain new gun restrictions passed by the Senate.

House Republicans and Democrats are talking about the GOP tax cut plan. Republicans are rallying at the Capitol today and say their $792 billion plan is fair, responsible, and balanced. President Clinton and House Democrats say the plan is bloated. The House plans to vote on the package today. President Clinton has promised to veto it.

In regional news, a report from the company that is monitoring former SLA member Kathleen Soliah finds she has met all her check ins during her first week of electronic home monitoring. Soliah is awaiting trial on charges she helped plant pipe bombs under Los Angeles Police cars in 1975. Soliah has lived in Saint Paul for more than 20 years as Sara Jane Olson before authorities captured her on June 16.

She was released from a Los Angeles jail on $1 million bail last month. The judge requested Soliah submit to home monitoring. Soliah is to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom for a pretrial hearing on August 31. The forecast for the state of Minnesota today calls for sunny skies in the south, partly cloudy skies in the north. There's also a chance of showers or thunderstorms in the northeast.

High temperatures today near 75 to 88 degrees. At this hour, mostly sunny skies reported around the region. Rochester reports sunshine and 71, Duluth. Sunny skies and 69. It's sunny in Fargo and 76. And in the Twin Cities, mostly sunny skies, a temperature of 75 degrees. That's a news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

TOM ROTHMAN: Welcome back to our live broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. We are broadcasting today from Farmfest in southwestern Minnesota, the last day of the three-day show. Joining us for our panel discussion, part of our citizens forum, is Steve Taff, an agricultural economist from the University of Minnesota Extension Service, State Senator Linda Higgins of Minneapolis, and Dean Barkley, director of planning for the Ventura administration.

We are taking calls in our radio audience. You can call us 1-800-537-5252. The number again is 1-800-537-5252. We're also taking some questions from our Farmfest audience. Laurie, you have a questioner?

LAURIE STURTEVANT: Yes, Tom. I have with me the mayor of Brewster, Minnesota, Dick Cotter. For 35 years, Dick was the proprietor of Dick's Food Mart on downtown Brewster. And I understand that business is no more. What's your experience, Dick?

AUDIENCE: I was in business for 35 years at Brewster. And I built it into a successful locker and meat business where they were coming from all over, buying meat from me, even Minneapolis, Sioux Falls, Marshall, all over. And when I grew up as a little boy-- I've lived in Brewster for 64 years. And I was working in a grocery store when I was about 12.

And when I graduated from high school, it was always my dream to have a grocery store. So when I became 30 years old, I had my chance to buy it. And I went into business and made it a successful business for 35 years. But I had good years in the '60s, '70s, and the couple of years in the '80s.

But then the crisis came where they build the malls and the Walmarts, the Shopkos the Cub Foods whenever-- in the town of Worthington about six miles away. And my volume started declining. So I had four employees, so I got rid of two of them. I only had two left. And then finally, I got rid of that one and put my wife to work and my children.

But what I can't figure out is, as the mayor of Brewster, when you see a town of about 20 or 25 successful businesses go down to five, I have a question that I have is, what can a mayor do to promote business to a town to make it successful again? And another question I have is-- this is my third farm forum meeting that I went to.

Went to two in Worthington, and I was hearing at-- some of the farmers were talking to Jesse and those that they had lost money for the last five years. And the thing that I never got an answer to was how can you lose money for five years and still stay in business and be solvent. I know when I was in business, if I lost money for one or two years, I wouldn't be able to be solvent. So can you answer some questions to me?

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley, you want to take the first one? How do you rejuvenate some of these communities throughout Minnesota that have seen some very serious economic challenges?

DEAN BARKLEY: This isn't just a rural Minnesota problem. I just got back from England, and the same thing's happening there that's happening here. Exactly the same thing. It's a marketing, big competitive type of thing. And I don't know what you can do to put-- get in front of the Walmart, Target, Cub Food, that type of competition, other than making your town unique in some way, making it more different than another town, and finding a niche that those other businesses aren't doing.

I mean, that's about the only way that I can do, other than sitting there and having town meetings and pleading with your local people to shop local, which I don't know if that's going to work or not. I know Annandale did something about 15, 20 years ago, the town I grew up, where they put some balcony, some old Western Front balconies in the Mainstreet. And they've also started becoming sort of like a-- medical retirement type of service business in that town is still vibrant and alive.

And I think a town's got to look for a niche that they can do to survive because I don't know if you can stop this bigger, bigger, bigger franchise-franchise type of thing in the business community. Because I said our own family business bit the dust the same way as yours did. So if I had the solution, we would have done it. But I think it's finding a unique niche and making yours and finding that little place that you can survive. I think that's the only thing right now that can save the smaller towns.

TOM ROTHMAN: We have another questioner on-- or in our radio audience. Beth from Elk River, go ahead with your question, please.

AUDIENCE: Hi. I have two questions. The first one's pretty simple. I don't understand why supply and demand economics don't come into the farming industry. The supply is still there-- or I mean the demand is still there. And especially with the bad weather, the supply, I just don't understand why they're not making money.

I don't understand why if they're not getting paid enough for it, why the farmers don't get together and don't sell it at such a low price. I mean, maybe you have to bite the dust for a year or something, but you're going to end up losing your farm, otherwise. If you could just explain that briefly.

And also, I live out in the country, and I telecommute working on my computer from home. And life is changing, and it's changing rapidly. And just like with the auto industry, when we automated everything, a lot of people lost jobs. A lot of people had to retrain. I don't understand why people are looking for ways to stop it.

It's not going to stop, and it's going to go faster. So it's kind of a waste of energy to sit and say, what can we do to stop this? The Walmarts are here. Anyways, I'll listen off the air. Thank you.

TOM ROTHMAN: Thank you for your question, Beth. Steve Taft, supply and demand is very much alive in agriculture, isn't it?

STEVE TAFF: Well, I think we could say that it's working just as it was designed, and that's the problem. Farmers a few years ago saw record high prices, said wow, I can make a lot of money. I'm going to plant even more corn and beans next year.

Everybody did that. All of a sudden, we had more corn and beans than we needed, particularly some of the Asian buyers stopped buying. Now, we've got way too many corns and beans for what people want to pay high prices for. What happens? Prices go down.

Now, the link that is missing in the normal story we tell about the balancing of supply and demand is that farmers in seeing low prices are not cutting back on production, at least in any large level. There's a variety of both political and economic reasons for that. But one of them is, is that the price farmers see is not the price we hear announced on the radio, but rather the price we hear announced on the radio, plus whatever subsidies are available in any given year, plus any disaster payments that are going to be made in any given year, plus any of a number of other kinds of sources of income.

So farmers don't see directly the lowest prices in terms of their economic decisions. They see those low prices plus subsidies, which have been the only thing keeping people in business this past couple of years. That's why somebody can lose money five years in a row because they're only counting the prices they're getting at the market. They're not counting the payments from the state and federal government in their calculations.

TOM ROTHMAN: The second part of Beth's question dealt with change. And we've talked about some of the changes in rural communities, changes in agriculture. Is this change-- even though it might be difficult to accept sometimes, do you think it's just inevitable, or is there something we can do about this change that we're seeing throughout rural Minnesota and elsewhere? Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, if you're talking just about the AG economy, I don't think there's any way that you can deny that what's happening to other small businesses is happening to the family farmer. The bigger farms are getting bigger. They have more competitive advantage. Corporate America is getting into farming. They have a competitive advantage.

If as a society we want to make the decision to keep the smaller family farm as a model that we want, then policymakers, politicians, decision makers are going to have to sit there and honestly debate whether that's something that we want to continue to subsidize. And there is no way around it. It's whether we should have subsidized the furniture store, whether we should have subsidized the others.

That's the political debate, because what's happened to the rest of the economy is now starting to happen to agriculture. And we might as well get our head out of the sand and say it is happening. Feedlots, the whole thing that's coming to us is getting bigger and bigger.

And if we want to preserve the culture of the family farm and the benefits that has to rural America, then we have to be honest about it and figure out what is the fair way of doing that, because I think it's not going to be saved unless policymakers make a concerted effort and agree that they're going to call it subsidizing the family farm or else they will get bigger. It's just the natural way it's going to go.

TOM ROTHMAN: State Senator Higgins.

LINDA HIGGINS: Well, I think change is inevitable, but I think what we need to do is figure out how to manage the change and make a way that we can adapt to the change and make it work for the individual families that are involved. Think of the differences between the families that farmed in the '50s, where your one-family farm was probably the only income you had-- sometime in the '60s and early '70s, mom probably left the farm, got a job in town.

Somewhere probably not long after that, dad probably went and found another job for the part of the year when he wasn't in the fields. So people have been changing all along. It's just now we have to figure out what to do and to figure out the ways that people can all win at it.

TOM ROTHMAN: We have some more callers to get to. We also have some questioners here in our audience here at Farmfest. Kent Thiesse.

KENT THIESSE: Yes, we have Wayne Murphy from Cokato, Minnesota. He's a district manager with AgriPro Seeds.

AUDIENCE: Good morning. I'm sure appreciate you being here at Farmfest. I was just going to say, Senator Barkley, but not quite.

DEAN BARKLEY: No.

AUDIENCE: Mr. Barkley, you made a comment about affordable housing and that was needed in rural Minnesota. And I would beg to differ. The fact that affordable housing would be based on income, not upon housing. And I do not see how the government can dictate the income that would be needed to generate for affordable housing.

I'll give you a quick example. Because I live in Wright County, my basis for why we have so many detasselers there is because we're so close to the Twin Cities. And those kids that need income during the summer are there and readily available. Whereas you come out here to Olivia, Minnesota, there are not the base of kids available to fill those jobs. And in most cases, the minorities or the migrant workers have taken those jobs.

My wife works in a factory in Cokato where they employ 50 people, and she runs the office. One half of those people are minorities, and the other half of those are people that would take jobs where they only pay between $6 and $8 an hour. Now, I don't think the government's job is to fill an affordable housing in Cokato for an $8 an hour job.

And I don't believe that you can find jobs that you can move to rural Minnesota that can make people want to live here if they choose not to, because of the reasons that they choose to live elsewhere close to the Twin Cities. The plant manager for or the sales manager for their company in Cokato lives in New Jersey and commutes out here every day or once a week and back and forth because he is afforded enough income to do that, and they're willing to do that. But to compete in a world market, they have to pay only so many dollars an hour.

I don't think you can legislate what's going to happen out here. I don't think we can get affordable housing. My digital telephone works just fine out here. Just because you put in a T1 line to rural Minnesota, that company is not going to come out here and pay these people the kind of money that they need in order to revitalize rural Minnesota, because it's a world economy out here. It's a big task. Good luck to you. I appreciate, again, the chance to visit with you this morning.

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: Well, I would say without at least attempting to provide rural Minnesota with the infrastructure, the T1 lines, the other things, there is no chance that those good-paying jobs are going to locate here. So at least by giving the infrastructure, there is a fighting chance of attracting or even being able to telecommute from rural Minnesota where you don't have to go to the Twin Cities to do it. So I do believe the state does owe rural Minnesota a fighting chance of providing them the infrastructure they need to compete for those higher-paying jobs that would then keep people out here and not have them move into the Twin Cities. So maybe it's an impossible task, but it's one we're going to try to do.

TOM ROTHMAN: State Senator Higgins, does the legislature see that as any kind of a priority?

LINDA HIGGINS: This last year, we heard-- I serve on one of the committees that deals with housing issues. Housing, jobs, and economic development are all together along with energy policy in the Senate Committee. When we got done with our bill, we had put $120 million toward housing this year.

And much of it was in response to people who own businesses throughout the state of Minnesota saying, we want to expand. We have jobs that are going unfilled because there is no housing close enough by our plant that is vacant for people to move into. And so we really did see and hear from a lot of people throughout the entire state that that was a huge issue.

We put a lot of money toward a fund of money that we called challenge grants for community organizations, towns, coalitions of people, churches, and maybe some nonprofits and maybe the city councils working together, trying to come up with some innovative ways to provide some housing where there is none or where there's a real shortage.

TOM ROTHMAN: We have another caller on the line. Howard from Crookston, go ahead with your call.

AUDIENCE: Yes, thank you. My question goes back-- there was some discussion earlier about contract agriculture and discussion about open markets disappearing and all going to contract production. And there seems to be a lot of thinking that that's a great thing. And yet, a lot of the contracts that are offered differ greatly.

Basically, once the open market has gone, if you don't have a contract, you can't sell your product. That creates a serious problem for smaller farms or farms that can't do the volumes that are required under the contract. The other thing that happens is the contracts all seem to lean towards the processor or the manufacturer.

If the product is short one year, your product is just fine. It grades a certain level, and everything's fine. The next year, if there's more product around, all of a sudden, what graded a certain grade last year now falls below that grade this year and doesn't meet the contract standards, and you get discounted or you lose your contract.

All kinds of outs for the manufacturer or whatever. If they have a strike, something goes wrong with the plant, they don't have to honor the contracts. Everything seems to be toward the processor and away from the farmers. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on-- if, in fact, we are going to go towards corporate agriculture and contract production, are there going to be some safeguards for farmers or some standardizing of contract language and standardizing of quality of product and that type of thing to ensure some safeguards for the farmer? Or is the producer, the farmer producer going to just have to sit out in the wind and swing?

TOM ROTHMAN: Well, thank you for your question, Howard. Just for a bit of clarification, the contracts that Howard referring to, for the non-farm audience, the contracts between farmers and a supplier dealing with a particular product, whether it be hogs or a specific type of grain or something else. Steve Taff any reply?

STEVE TAFF: Well, as the listener mentioned, this is all the rage within agriculture, at least within agricultural politics these days. Is it a good idea for producers to-- instead of growing a crop or growing some pigs or making some milk and driving it into town and saying, wow, what can I get for it today, is it a better idea before the season starts or a year in advance or three months in advance say, hey, what's the deal? If I deliver you 100 pounds of milk on September 31, will you give me $14?

And if somebody says yes, then the farmer has sort of locked in a price and has some guarantee about what that milk is going to be worth when it arrives in the market. Now, for some folks, that sounds like a pretty good deal because it takes the risk out of the transaction. But of course, as the speaker mentioned, it's a good deal only if you read the contract and find out who's really bearing the risk.

And what we had happen in many different commodities throughout the state because it's relatively new for folks who aren't in dairying and aren't in sugar beets and aren't in canning crops-- for other folks, this is new. And they took the word of the person waving a piece of paper in their face. They didn't have an attorney look at it. They didn't really read it themselves, and then they got bit on it.

Consequently, contracts have taken on a bad name in some farming circles, but it's not the contracts that's at fault. It's folks who are grown-ups, who are business people signing pieces of paper that they don't read. Now, that isn't something society can do anything about.

TOM ROTHMAN: Dean Barkley.

DEAN BARKLEY: The number 1 complaint that I've heard with the contracts is the farmer's inability to get true information about what others are getting. It's the freedom of getting the information on other contracts, so they're just guessing. I know South Dakota tried to enforce some disclosure of contract prices. And quite frankly, the risk that a state takes if they singularly go ahead and try to force the large marketing companies to reveal their information often is they can then just go elsewhere.

So I think if this issue is ever going to be dealt with, they actually open up the books of what our fair price is, what are they giving other farmers, it almost has to be a national solution or we're going to be an island like South Dakota was. And we can see what's happening to the processing plant in Sioux Falls. Once they pass that laws, that their business is shriveling up.

So it's a fair issue for the farmers. I need access to information to base an intelligent decision, but I think that almost has to come from the feds, is to open it up so Minnesota doesn't experience what South Dakota experienced.

TOM ROTHMAN: Senator Higgins.

LINDA HIGGINS: The legislature this last year in our AG and environment bill did a couple of things toward the issue of contracts. The first one is we put a small amount of money to cover the costs of a study for the producer contracts. The second piece that we did was just what Dean was talking about, that we're going to require that the packers report the prices paid for livestock under practice-- under contract and in the open market. And we're going to require that they disclose those prices both daily and quarterly.

TOM ROTHMAN: We have time for one more question here from our audience at Farmfest.

LAURIE STURTEVANT: Yes, Renville County Commissioner, Deb Hess, is with us. She's also a small business owner in Redwood Falls. Deb.

AUDIENCE: Yes, Redwood County, right here is my district. I represent the fourth district in Redwood County that elects me to serve for the entire county of Redwood. I attended a transportation hearing that a state legislator addressed the crowd, stating that she represents her constituents.

And I'm wondering if we have a unified message for the urban residents and the rural residents to help talk to our legislators about the fact that they do represent the broad state of Minnesota. And Senator, I guess I would ask you if you have a sense of how we can bring that message to them clearly.

LINDA HIGGINS: I think that the way that you're most effective is talking to your individual legislators, your senator, your House member, and to work with them so that you can help them get the information across to the rest of the legislature and to the administration. We really all do have to work together. I was noticing at the grocery store the other day a package of two pork chops was around $4.

What are you selling a hog for these days? $8 or $9, right in there somewhere. It is important to all of us to be able to figure out how to help the farm economy. And Roger Moe said earlier this year that at one time, most of the metro legislators came from a farm or are still grandma and grandpa were on the farm or the aunts and uncles. I'm about the only one left who actually grew up on a farm, and that has changed quite a bit.

TOM ROTHMAN: All right. Thank you, State Senator. We are out of time now for our program, our citizens' forum, sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio, KTCA public television, the Star Tribune, and the University of Minnesota Extension Service. I'd like to thank our guests this hour, Dean Barkley, director of planning for the Ventura administration, economist Steve Taff, an AG economist at the University of Minnesota, and State Senator Linda Higgins.

I'd like to thank our producer of our program, Sarah Meyer, engineers Cliff Bentley and Scott Liebowitz, Randy Johnson and Ken Thiesse and Laurie Sturtevant for their work here at the show. Have a great day.

JOHN RABE: Tom Rothman, farm director of the Minnesota Farm Radio Network. Coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant making leadership training and convening. The Writer's Almanac is on the way.

MELINDA PENKAVA: Many people consider going back to school to fill in gaps in their education or maybe take arts or humanities courses they missed the first time around. But do you really need the school? Many people are learning on their own using resources like the public library, lectures on tape, and the internet. I'm Melinda Penkava. A look at the merits of self-education, next Talk of the Nation from NPR News.

JOHN RABE: Talk of the Nation from 1:00 to 3:00 weekday afternoons on Minnesota Public Radio. Now, here's Garrison Keillor.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Thursday. It's the 5th of August, 1999. It's the birthday of writer Wendell Berry, born 1934, Henry County, north-central Kentucky, northeast of Louisville. Taught in California and in New York, and then in 1964, he went back to farm the hill country along the Kentucky River where he was born. His recent book came out last year, A Timbered Choir.

It's the birthday of Poet Conrad Aiken, born Savannah, 1889. And it's the birthday near Dieppe, France, of Guy de Maupassant, 1850, considered the greatest French writer of short stories. He was taken under the wing of Gustave Flaubert, who was a friend of Maupassant's mother. And in the 1880s, turned out 300 short stories, six novels, travel books, verse, and journalism.

Here's a poem by Wendell Berry from his collection of Sabbath poems, A Timbered Choir.

"Even while I dreamed, I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,

For I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake of the objective, the--