Kerry drops support for dairy compact

INDEPENDENCE, Wis. -- Senator John F. Kerry took a step away from New England in his quest for the White House yesterday, as the politician known for his patrician roots highlighted his farming past and said he no longer supported a program that propped up prices for New England dairy farmers.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told about 100 gathered at a western Wisconsin dairy farm that he empathized with the plight of rural residents because he, too, had not only farmed as a child, but he had lived, and had learned to cuss, in that earthy environment.

Kerry also said he would no longer favor the Northeast Dairy Compact, which expired in 2001, because it had been superseded by regional agricultural agreements in the 2002 Farm Bill. The compact, which provided financial support to New England dairy farmers, was strongly opposed in Wisconsin and dairy states elsewhere in the country.

''Let me tell you something: When I was a kid, this 'kid from the East' had an aunt and uncle who had a dairy farm, and one of my greatest joys in life -- in fact, I lived on a farm as a young kid. My parents, when we lived in Massachusetts, we lived on a farm, and I learned my first cuss word sitting on a tractor with the guy who was driving it," Kerry said as he stood, wearing jeans and new Timberland hiking boots, in the tractor shed at the Dejno family farm in this community, which was founded on Independence Day in 1876.

''When I was 12 years old, my passion was being allowed to go out and sit on the John Deere and drive it around the field and plow, and I learned, as a kid, what it was like to look in back of me and see those furrows, and see that pattern, and feel a sense of accomplishment, and end up dusty and dirty and tired but feeling great, looking back at that field that you plowed."

He told the crowd that as he drove across the region's verdant fields amid his three-day Midwestern bus tour, he turned to the local Democratic congressman, former Harvard quarterback Ron Kind, who was accompanying him, and said, '' 'Look at the power of that land. You can just feel it, you see it.' I know what you love."

Afterward, a spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, said Kerry was referring to two farm experiences, one when he and his parents lived on a farm in Millis, Mass., and later when he frequented a dairy farm straddling the Ipswich/Hamilton border that was owned by his aunt and uncle. The first farm was where Kerry rode a tractor with a hand who worked the family's property. At the dairy farm, he tilled the land himself.

At the time, Kerry's parents lived in Europe and he attended boarding school in Switzerland, but he returned to Massachusetts on vacations, Cutter said.

Also yesterday, Kerry refused to discuss the status of his search for a running mate, despite a series of indications he will make the announcement Tuesday in Pittsburgh. ''I've said I'm going to keep this process personal and private and that's exactly what I intend to do," he said in an interview with WHO Radio in Des Moines.

Cutter said that while Kerry had supported the Northeast Dairy Compact, a national dairy component in the subsequent farm bill -- which established a countercyclical price support program for all dairy farmers in the country -- improved upon the old agreement. The Northeast Dairy Compact effectively regulated milk prices in the six New England states, drawing complaints from dairy farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere. Its renewal was blocked by Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin.

Kerry made little mention of his shift during the primary campaign in New Hampshire, but he highlighted his new position last month in an interview with The Country Today, a weekly publication focused on rural issues that is published in nearby Eau Claire in this battleground state.

''I plead guilty. I did vote for it, because I represented Massachusetts," Kerry said. ''I was a United States senator, and I was working in a context that we were living in a number of years ago, and that's the way we saw the world.

''We don't see the world that way now," he told the crowd at the Dejno farm. ''I guarantee you that as president, I'm not going to be president of New England, or president of Massachusetts; I'm running to be president of the United States of America. And I'm going to stand up for farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa and other parts of the country just as hard as I did before."

Afterward, Kerry's caravan moved on to the Gunslick Trap Club in Holmen, Wis., where the senator took a turn at trap shooting. Using a borrowed .12-gauge over/under shotgun, he hit 17 of 25 clay targets at a distance of 40 yards. Last night, he planned to watch a fireworks display from a boat anchored in the Mississippi River, off Dubuque, Iowa.

Late Friday, Kerry closed out the first day of his bus tour with a rally at a farm in west-central Wisconsin that had been transformed into an amphitheater. Roughly 5,000 supporters stood behind a red barn flanked by grain silos.

''I cannot tell you how overwhelming it is for me to come here and see you, with this sunset, looking to the west, and looking into you, and sensing the power of this four months that's ahead of us," Kerry told the crowd.

Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.