Yeutter Calls ’90 His Most Hectic Year : Farming: He worked on a farm bill that some say is a ‘disaster’ and saw multilateral trade talks collapse. His job may be just as tough in ’91.

WASHINGTON —  Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter says 1990 will go down as “the most hectic year for a secretary of agriculture in the history of the United States.”

Yeutter noted the months of debate and negotiation as Congress wrote a farm bill, the wrangling and eventual action on cutting the federal budget, and, of course, the multilateral trade negotiations.

Except for the trade talks that are still to be resolved, 1990 stacked up as a pretty solid chapter in Yeutter’s book.

“We would make a few changes if we had an opportunity to do so,” Yeutter said last week. “But considering the complexities of what’s happening and the rapid changes in the world, I feel pretty good about the year.”

Yeutter, a hard-driving 60-year-old, gave his year-end appraisal during a telephone interview with farm broadcasters and later with a group of news reporters here.

Despite Yeutter’s enthusiasm for his job and accomplishments, critics contend that the new farm law is a blueprint for disaster. Yeutter disagrees.

“In my judgment, we emerged with a farm bill package that is certainly respectable and probably a lot more farmer-friendly than most of our farmers around the country now believe or realize,” he said. “I think it’ll turn out to be a bill that will serve American agriculture very well over the next five years.”

A favorite bone chewed by critics involves the budget-cutting plan approved by Congress in October, which will hold down federal spending by about $496 billion over five years.

The Agriculture Department’s share of the cut was $13.6 billion. Many farm interest groups, and some members of Congress, complained that agriculture was hit too hard.

Meanwhile, Congress finished a five-year farm bill that includes provisions to carry out the spending cuts assigned USDA, mostly in the commodity programs that provide price supports and deficiency payments to farmers.

The new farm law will mean smaller subsidies going to farmers in the next five years. Other provisions, including special assessments on some producers, tighten the outlook further.

“A lot of folks pay attention to this supposed $13-billion cut over five years . . . which is a somewhat misleading number,” Yeutter said. “And they make a simplistic evaluation of the bill that is not really an accurate reflection of a lot of its good features.”

The deep-seated concern of Yeutter’s is the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations launched four years ago under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Yeutter, who was U.S. trade representative in the Reagan Administration, is a gung-ho advocate of liberalizing GATT rules so that countries can produce and trade to the fullest of their abilities.

The U.S. view on agricultural trade is for fewer protective import barriers, a reduction in domestic price supports and a phase-out of export subsidies.

Many countries sided with the United States during what was supposed to be the windup of talks in Brussels earlier this month.

But the push wasn’t enough to persuade the European Community to compromise meaningfully on reducing farm subsidies, and the Brussels meeting collapsed. Another attempt may be made in mid-January.

Yeutter and other advocates of freer trade have painted optimistic pictures of long-range prosperity for farmers under liberalized GATT rules.

But there is a measure of ambivalence among U.S. farm organizations and individuals regarding the Uruguay Round.

A few condemn the talks outright as a sellout of longstanding protection for small farmers. Others favor parts of the package, while some go along entirely with the U.S. negotiators.

The National Family Farm Coalition, which represents about 40 farm and rural advocacy groups, joined thousands of European farmers who protested the GATT talks in Brussels on Dec. 3.

Randolph Nodland, president of the coalition, said the U.S. government “negotiated a deal behind closed doors that trades away American agriculture for what they hope will be gains in other sectors of the economy.”

The European farmers objected to proposals that would reduce EC subsidies and protection from imported commodities.

Harvey Joe Sanner, president of the American Agriculture Movement, a member of the coalition, said “unelected free-market zealots” such as Yeutter and Carla Anderson Hills, the U.S. trade representative, have misrepresented the needs of rural America.

Nodland and Sanner accused the Bush Administration of trying to use the 1990 farm bill to eliminate federal farm programs.

The National Farmers Union, although not a member of the coalition, is asking the new Congress to change the 1990 farm law to prevent a decline in farm income when its provisions take effect.

“The 1990 farm bill is simply a disaster where rural America is concerned,” said NFU President Leland Swenson. “We want a 1991 version of the bill that revitalizes rural America.”

Yeutter said the NFU’s campaign for another farm bill was “a big mistake” and that the next time around Congress might provide even less money.

The way it looks now, Yeutter will have a busy year in 1991 too.