‘Agricultural Mischief’

The finely honed minds of The Times editorial staff utterly missed the point of the national farm coalition for foreign agricultural investment reform, FAIR, in the editorial (June 15), “Agricultural Mischief.”

FAIR’s objective is not to restrict farm loans to poor nations, as The Times claims, but to reform counterproductive lending policy. FAIR’s 4.2 million members are experts on development--they have seen what brought success in the Pacific Rim, and what is causing failure in Latin America. They know, better than anyone else, that higher Third World standards of living are their only hope for growth export markets. And that growth under present Third World policies is not occurring.

FAIR opposes only that investment that enables countries to service debt but does nothing to increase the wealth of the people. Financing farm production in the face of world surplus, exchange, is a case in point. Does The Times really believe the hard currency obtained in this way is returned to the poor? Debtor nations rarely see it before anxious foreign creditors siphon it off. And since prices of surplus goods don’t inspire profit, exports must be subsidized, drawing domestic resources away from essentials like education and health care.

This impoverishing cycle is so obvious that it is difficult to imagine how you mistake it for “development.” Brazil, which increased its exports 56% over the last five years at the cost of a 33% increase in its debt, saw only 25% more export revenue. Mexico boosted its exports 66%, its debt increased 41%, but revenue went up only 34%. Argentine exports rose 47%, as did the country’s foreign debt, but revenue increased a mere 3%. And poor Chile--it struggled to increase exports 21%, taking on an added 43% more debt in the process, just to see its export revenue decline 23%.

Supporters of FAIR are far more concerned about the welfare of our struggling foreign neighbors than The Times assumes. As one Brazilian farmer lamented, explaining the 25% drop in his annual income since 1981, “If this is development, please, sir, I don’t want to be developed any more.”

STEVE SYMMS

U.S. Senator

from Idaho