WASHINGTON -- The House made agricultural history by voting to wipe out a Depression-bred program that limited peanut farming to people who inherit, buy or rent acreage allotments.
It then focused on another major farm crop by voting against restoring sugar price supports. These supports were first eliminated in 1974, ending a 40 year program, although they resurfaced briefly in 1977.
Both votes Thursday were rejections of deals made by the administration last summer to get southern votes for President Reagan's sweeping economic recovery program of record spending and tax cuts.
The 250-159 vote in favor of an anti-peanut amendment by Rep. Stanley Lundine, D-N.Y., injected a scare into tobacco state legislators. Tobacco allotments are to come before the House next Tuesday when the chamber resumes consideration of the farm bill.
The vote for the anti-sugar amendment was 213-190.
Southern legislators said they believed liberal legislators voted against the peanut program to retaliate against 'boll weevil' Democrats who voted for the president's budget and tax bills.
But Rep. Peter Peyser, D-N.Y., who led the fight against the sugar program and opposed the peanut program, said 'I don't really believe that was any part of anyone's thinking.'
He said he believed House members did not want to promote privilege at a time of cuts in social programs.
In trying to explain why the House has approved a milk support program supported by the dairy lobby but rejected a peanut program, he said, 'The peanut issue was so understandably objectionable.'
Peyser recalled that when he worked against the peanut program several years ago, he received a call from Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, who said, ''You don't understand, this is our welfare.''
But he argued that peanut farmers would not be hurt by loss of the 43-year-old program.
Peanut and sugar issues ultimately will be settled in a House-Senate conference committee. The Senate has approved both a compromise peanut program that does not go as far as the House amendment and the 18-cent sugar support rejected by the House.
During debate on the peanut amendment, Rep. Paul Findley, R-Ill., recalled that wheat, cotton, rice, tobacco and peanuts were grown under allotments 20 years ago when he entered Congress. But now peanuts are the only edible crop still under the system, he said.
The House-passed peanut amendment would let all farmers grow peanuts under a price support system like those for other major crops.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said, 'I'm puzzled that in a year of deregulation, we make it tougher to grow peanuts than half of the countries of the world make it to grow heroin.'
The peanut program was not a big-ticket item -- it would have cost just $80 million over four years.
'This program is not broken,' said Rep. Charles Rose, N.C., arguing unsuccessfully for the allotment system. 'It doesn't need to be fixed in this manner.'
Southern legislators said that if the allotment system were scrapped, farmers' returns would decline and corporate farmers would take over.
Arguing against sugar price supports, Rep. Margaret Heckler, R-Mass., said a program would cost consumers $2.9 billion a year in higher sugar prices.
House Democratic Whip Thomas Foley of Washington countered that consumers have been hurt by sugar price swings of more than 400 percent since the 1974 defeat of the sugar law.
