"Cane farmers fighting Louisiana airport"

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Opinion
Cane farmers fighting airport 
The Baton Rouge (LA) Advocate


Backers of a colossal new international cargo airport envisioned for
fields between White Castle and Donaldsonville had a tough row to hoe
even before a well-defined opposition emerged this week.

Proponents of the proposed $5 billion complex that would link air, land,
water and rail transportation modes failed to win public funding for the
massive project, and private investors have been slow to line up.

Still, no specific opposition coalesced until after the Louisiana
Airport Authority identified an airport site. That came last month when
the authority mapped out 25,300 acres, mostly straddling Ascension and
Iberville parishes and including a small portion of Assumption.

Resistance to the airport from owners of land sought for the cargo
complex was as inevitable as weeds in a garden. The level of antagonism
that surfaced Thursday during a project briefing at St. Jules Catholic
Church in Belle Rose reached a pitch usually seen only when mothers feel
their young are threatened.

Or when farmers feel their subsidies are threatened.

Backers of the huge cargo airport have spread the hyperbole very
generously. If one believes their rhetoric, the new facility would
amount to nothing short of economic salvation for Louisiana.

That type of swagger is expected from pitchmen trying to build momentum
for a large-scale venture. More remarkable is the wrath of the
grass-roots opposition.

"We are going to fight this tooth and nail," sugar-cane farmer Scott L.
Falcon told the airport authority. "You all are in for a really, really
tough road."

Agriculture industry representatives unleashed plenty of hype as well,
calling the airport plan a "kiss of death" for area farmers.

Sugar-cane farmer Warren Harang told the authority the cargo facility
would cost the state $87 million per year in lost agricultural revenue.

"Remember those numbers," Harang said. "I want us to maintain the
integrity of the sugar-cane industry."

By "integrity," cane farmers must mean welfare checks in the form of
farm subsidies. Sugar production in Louisiana defies the law of supply
and demand. The industry's survival is completely dependent upon
governmental handouts.

The farmers' rhetoric of the moment seems aimed at trying to boost the
market value of their land, should they be compelled to sell it for the
use of an airport. When arguing for federal subsidies and price
controls, however, their focus shifts away from the great wealth
potential of the sugar farm and toward the terrible struggle of the
farmer to make an honest living.

According to state Secretary of Agriculture Bob Odom, hundreds of
sugar-cane producers in Louisiana would go out of business in just a few
years if Congress ended price supports.

A 1993 study by the General Accounting Office, the research arm of
Congress, found that U.S. sugar programs drive up consumer prices by at
least $1.4 billion a year and funnel a substantial portion of the money
to a handful of wealthy growers.

Since 1979, the U.S. sugar industry has pumped tens of millions of
dollars into campaign war chests for congressional races.

While the huge cargo airport might at the moment be little more than a
pipe dream and its financing is still a work in progress, airport
backers are selling the project as primarily a privately funded venture.

If developers can come up with suitable financing, the airport's
potential to help the Louisiana economy far exceeds that of a handful of
sugar-cane farmers.

There might be compelling reasons for opposing the cargo airport, but
the protection of a few sugar-cane farmers is not among them.


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