News Coverage
2007 Farm Bill Editorials
“A chance for reform”
With crop prices high, this is an excellent year to reform America's off-kilter farm subsidy programs. But the House Agriculture Committee has delivered, instead, a warmed-over version of the existing flawed system that has cost taxpayers $75 billion since 2002.
Farmers earning up to $1 million a year would eligible for federal subsidy checks under the committee's bill. That's actually an improvement over the current $2.5 million cutoff point, but President George W. Bush had proposed limiting most payments to those earning less than $200,000.
The House committee bill would continue channeling nearly all of the nation's farm subsidies to farmers producing just a few crops - mainly wheat, cotton, corn, rice and soybeans.
Much of the payout still would be based on crop prices. Mr. Bush had recommended basing eligibility on farm income, which doesn't always follow price. That would be a fairer way to ensure that more money goes to farmers who need it, but the president's clout is much diminished on Capitol Hill these days.
The full House soon will get a chance to get the subsidy program under control. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., is expected to introduce a scaled-down version of his "Farm 21" reform plan, which is similar in some ways to the sensible plan proposed by the president. Mr. Kind's plan would link subsidies to income. It would spend part of the savings on farmland conservation and rural development programs. It would set aside more fruits and vegetables for school lunch and snack programs - an important source of food and nutrition for millions of kids from low-income families. Cost projections are iffy, but the best guess is that the Kind plan would save $8 billion over the committee's version of the bill over the next five years.
Our wasteful farm subsidy program is ripe for reform. Mr. Bush sees it. So do many members of Congress. The best hope lies in a vigorous debate when the bill arrives on the House floor.
Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
“Bring farm subsidies back to earth”
Proponents of the farm subsidy bill currently before the House would have taxpayers believe it benefits poor old Ma and Pa Kettle trying to scratch out a living on the back 40. In truth it is a pork-laden monstrosity that benefits agribusiness at the expense of the small farmer, and if major reform is not enacted, the Democratic Congress will have flunked one of its major tests of the year.
Seventy percent of the $25 billion in the House bill will go to the top 10 percent of farm operations. They are primarily giant Midwestern conglomerates, which is why the House Agriculture Committee is dominated by congressmen from those states. The crops are also apparently grown by art patrons — a San Francisco art maven and heiress to a California cattle operation collected $1.2 million in cotton subsidies between 2003 and 2005.
Because farm subsidies are paid by the acre, large agribusinesses are not only disproportionately awarded with taxpayer dollars they are given an incentive to grow even bigger. They do so, in part, by buying up small farmers who can't keep up with rising land prices. The corporate farms thrive while the small farmers who contribute in so many ways to a community, such as by preserving land that would otherwise be given over to shopping malls or condominium projects, disappear.
The Agriculture Committee's idea of reform is to disqualify any farmer with a gross income of $1 million a year from receiving subsidies. What is remarkable is that any farmer making that kind of money was getting what amounts to a government welfare check in the first place. A better idea would be to limit subsidies to small farmers making modest profits or losing money. The savings in billions of dollars could at least in part be used for land-preservation and other environmental programs.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been critical of the shameful farm-subsidy program, but talk is easy and standing up to Agriculture Committee colleagues accustomed to distributing hand-outs to their corporate farming constituents is tougher. If this bill passes the Democratic-led Congress as easily it did the Republican-led Congresses that preceded it, voters can be forgiven for concluding that big money has succeeded in buying off both parties.
“Soooey!; Slop for the Farm Belt”
When it comes to providing federal subsidies for farmers, Democrats in the U.S. House draw the line at subsidizing millionaires. And they have the nerve to call that reform.
The new farm bill would stop farm subsidies for farmers earning $1 million a year or more. The Bush administration wants the line lowered to $200,000 a year.
"There is a point at which people graduate from receiving government cash subsidies," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touts the bill as a "reform" of farm policy. It is really just more pork for farm belt fat cats, as it continues big subsidies for big agribusinesses. So much for curbing special interest influence in Washington.
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
“Farm politics”
Jul. 25--When it comes to reforming the nation's farm policies, success appears to be in the eye of the beholder. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who promised genuine reform, sees only the good in a bill approved last week by the House Agriculture Committee. But those whose eyes are wide open can see the huge flaws in the bill. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., is one of them. He has proposed an amendment to the committee bill that deserves House support.
The committee's legislation would perpetuate a subsidy program that has been far too generous to large farmers who grow grain crops, and far too miserly when it comes to encouraging conservation programs, directing support prices to fruits and vegetables, and providing incentives for minority farmers. The Kind amendment addresses all of these concerns.
Under the committee's bill, subsidies would be eliminated for farmers with more than $1 million in adjusted gross income. As incredible as it seems, the $1 million ceiling technically qualifies as reform, because the current ceiling is $2.5 million. But the $1 million is five times higher than the $200,000 limit favored by the White House, a much more reasonable figure.
The committee bill also continues subsidies for major crops like corn, soybeans, cotton and rice. But why are corn subsidies needed at all when prices are rising to meet growing demand for ethanol?
The committee's bill includes a voluntary crop insurance program that is offered as an alternative to government subsidies. But as long as subsidies remain generous, few farmers are likely to join the insurance pool.
Another reform sought by many environmentalists was restoration of $4 billion that had been cut from the Conservation Security Program. But the committee bill falls short of that goal and, worse, suspends new sign-ups until 2010. That would be a big setback in efforts to encourage more farmers to practice environmental stewardship.
Besides the skewed priorities in the committee bill, there is also the question of fairness. For example, a Washington Post investigative series found that during the last six years, government subsidies totaling $1.3 billion were paid to landowners who did no farming. That is symptomatic of a program in need of major overhaul.
The Kind amendment addresses many of the flaws in the committee bill, while also providing for expansion of anti-hunger programs and tighter income levels for subsidy payments. That's a step toward reform that Speaker Pelosi should embrace.
“Picking Your Pockets”
Does it make you feel good to think that some of your hard-earned tax money may be used to subsidize farm operations making up to $1 million in adjusted gross income?
That's what a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee would do.
But wait a minute: That's an "improvement." The bill would reduce the payment of subsidies to farm operations that have been making up to $2.5 million!
Are you asking why taxpayers should pay any farm subsidies? We shouldn't subsidize banks or machine shops or drug stores or newspapers or any other businesses. Each should stand on its own economically -- without taxpayer subsidies.
We are for our farmers -- on family farms or corporate farms. We want them to earn a fair profit producing the food and fiber we need, selling at competitive market prices -- with all farmers earning a fair profit. But there should be no taxpayer subsidies to anyone for anything.
Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., correctly said: "The government got way too involved in the farm business with quotas and price supports." It certainly has. And we need to stop it.
"Opportunity Crops Up"
Jul. 26--The House has a marvelous chance to change how farm programs operate. The stakes are high, though. If the House fails to approve a bipartisan amendment being offered today or tomorrow by Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and GOP Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, legislators likely will have to wait five years before they get another chance to reshape farm programs.
Here's the situation: Mr. Kind and Mr. Flake plan to offer a substitute amendment that will change the guts of the proposed farm bill. Instead of maintaining the status quo with the two major farm subsidy programs, the Kind-Flake revision would reduce payments to both.
That's a very good move because Washington needs to continue moving away from subsidies to farmers, especially wealthy ones. Realistically, we will always have some federal involvement because of the vagaries of weather and international markets and because we need a steady food supply. But the more Washington meddles in agriculture, the more distorted the situation can become.
Just look at the rush of farmers to grow corn because of the big federal payments. The ethanol lobby has persuaded Congress to entice farmers to grow corn, so they are stepping up to take the nice payout, even though so much corn production has a horrible effect on water resources and food prices.
Mr. Kind and Mr. Flake would limit such distortions by reducing direct payments to crops like corn, wheat and cotton. Their amendment would take the estimated $12 billion in savings from direct payments and invest it in incentives for better land conservation, stocking food banks and paying down the deficit, among other goals.
-- Their amendment would help stop agribusinesses and wealthy landowners like David Letterman (yes, the late-night comedian) from grabbing farm subsidies. Today, farmers with adjusted gross income of $2.5 million a year qualify for subsidies. The Kind-Flake revision would limit eligible farmers to those who earn $250,000 a year after deductions, expenses and credits. We'd like to see the income eligibility even lower, but the proposal would march us back toward helping only farmers who truly need a hand.
-- If the House doesn't pass the Kind-Flake reforms and the Senate doesn't take up the cause, it will be five years until the farm bill comes up for renewal. That would mean more wasteful spending and more reasons for nations to rightly complain about our farm subsidies.
-- It's instructive that groups as diverse as the U.S. Chambers of Commerce, the Environmental Defense Fund, Bread for the World and the Cato Institute back this proposal. You don't often get business groups, the green movement, hunger-fighting organizations and libertarians on the same page.
These are among the reasons we support this reform. We also strongly urge the North Texas congressional delegation to vote for Kind-Flake. Five years of more of the same is not a good option.
July 26, 2007
“Quick Hit”
Subsidies for small farmers may be a good investment, but the current system doesn't help many of them. Instead, it wastes billions of dollars helping congressmen get re-elected. As Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark.) so aptly put it in an interview with the Associated Press: The proposal to reform the farm subsidy system offered by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) would "be tragic not just for farm policy but for the party. . . . It will land us in the minority." Thanks for clarifying your motives, congressman.
July 17, 2007
“Congress Should Weigh All Aspects of Huge Farm Bill”
Jul. 27--If you care about what's on your dinner plate, you need to pay attention to the Farm Bill being debated in Congress.
The bill, which should more accurately be called the "Food and Farm Bill," determines how the government will fund many food and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years. The bill covers the food-stamp program that aids poor families; land conservation; nutrition programs in public schools; farm subsidies; and rural development, research and energy programs.
We urge members of Congress, and particularly Arizona's delegation, to carefully weigh all aspects of the bill and strike a fair balance in funding that will do the most good for the most people.
One flaw in the Farm Bill that Congress should address is the subsidies that U.S. farmers receive to grow five types of crops -- cotton, corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. Those subsidies will amount to $42 billion over the next five years under the legislation under consideration in the U.S. House. The Senate has yet to take up the measure.
The total Farm Bill would cost $286 billion, meaning subsidies make up about 15 percent of the Farm Bill's cost. That might not seem like much when considering the size of the pie, but subsidies do more than put money into the pockets of the nation's farmers.
A panel of activists who met with the Star's editorial board last week said subsidies take away money that could otherwise go to make diets healthier, conserve rural land, boost family farms and help the poor receive nutritious foods. Subsidies may also play a role in exacerbating the problem of illegal immigration.
By subsidizing certain crops, the U.S. government is essentially giving those foods a leg up in the marketplace. Corn, for instance, becomes cheaper and is more prevalent in the American diet instead of fruits and vegetables, which are supported with fewer Farm Bill dollars.
One activist, Dereka Rushbrook of the border humanitarian group No More Deaths, said subsidies, along with the North American Free Trade Agreement, have resulted in many Mexican farmers being put out of work because they are unable to compete with cheaper U.S. commodities. Out-of-work farm workers are more likely to immigrate illegally to the United States, Rushbrook said.
An amendment written by U.S. Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., would cut back on subsidies and route more money to specialty crops like fruits and vegetables, conservation efforts, and nutrition and rural development programs.
The issue is almost as complicated as the immigration-reform bill that failed in Congress earlier this summer. There are many competing interests, and no bill will satisfy all lawmakers.
Most Republicans and some Democrats oppose the Farm Bill, while President Bush has promised to veto it. The bill is supported by the Democratic leadership and most lawmakers from farm states.
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., said she supports the Farm Bill because it increases funding for specialty crops, though not as much as the Kind amendment would.
"I don't want to see the Farm Bill killed," said Giffords, whose district has received about $10.6 million per year in subsidies over the last five years, according to Environmental Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group. "There are a lot of very good things about this bill."
We urge lawmakers to keep the big picture in mind, however, and consider all the ramifications of helping one group at the expense of another.
A boost for big farmers won't necessarily be good for schoolchildren who deserve healthy meals, or a farmer in another country who is trying to scratch out a decent living.
“End all farm subsidies”
Democrats won a majority in Congress in part because they promised to reform things. But that reform apparently doesn't extend to wasteful farm subsidies that benefit only the rich. The fight this week to ram a five-year farm bill through the House has made that clear.
Farm subsidies stand as exhibit A in the case against believing any politician's promise. They began during the Great Depression as an emergency measure to help struggling farmers who were going bankrupt and having to stand by while their land was auctioned away. They were temporary relief measures.
But when times got better -- even much, much better -- the subsidies didn't disappear. They became entrenched. Not only that, they became tools with which to make the wealthy much wealthier. Today, about 2 percent of Americans live on farms, and the wealthiest of these receive the largest government checks. That's because the system is designed to pay subsidies per acre. The large corporate farms get the tax help, while family farms, which themselves average more than $80,000 in annual income, receive little, if anything.
Not only that, only some crops are subsidized. If you grow fruits and vegetables or raise livestock, you get little, if any, subsidy. And yet the prices of those commodities have remained stable, which argues strongly against the need for subsidies in order to avoid market volatilities -- a commonly heard argument. In farming, as in everything else, the free market ought to rule.
The Democrats would limit subsidies to only those farmers who earn less than $1 million a year, which still would make a lot of rich people richer. The Bush administration has threatened to veto that and would prefer a bill that limits handouts to farmers earning less than $250,000.
Neither side has even attempted to offer a credible explanation as to why any subsidies are needed at all.
Meanwhile, subsidies encourage overproduction and add to worldwide poverty. Cotton farmers in Africa, for instance, cannot compete in the U.S. market because of the subsidies paid to American cotton farmers. Perhaps this form of protectionism appeals to some, but it is just the kind of unfairness the United States often decries when it exists in other nations.
A series of measures has been added to the bill, including nutrition and conservation programs, to make it seem noble and increase its chances of passage. But no amount of lipstick can make this pig look pretty. It's time for lawmakers to see farm subsidies for the corporate welfare handouts they are and kill them entirely.
July 28, 2007
“Still Waiting for Farm Reform”
Doling out last-minute benefits as only a speaker can, Nancy Pelosi managed to kill a progressive farm bill on the floor of the House. The House then passed a bill that further enshrined an outdated and excessively costly system of guaranteed subsidies. It is now up to the Senate, which will address the issue in September, to devise a new and improved bill that eliminates the old subsidies and uses the savings for food stamps, conservation and other causes worthier than making big farmers even richer.
The sweeteners that Ms. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders used to squelch the reform effort, mostly improved the final product. More money was added for conservation programs, for school lunches and for international nutrition.
Even so, the bill perpetuates a lopsided system of price supports and direct payments for producers of major row crops like corn and soybeans, even though crop prices, fueled by the ethanol boom, are at an all-time high. These same generous handouts also complicate international trade negotiations, and -- especially in the case of cotton -- discriminate against poor overseas farmers who cannot compete with America's subsidized producers.
The good news is that there is a core group of influential farm state senators ready to break with the past and with the lobbyists for big agriculture. They include Tom Harkin, the agriculture committee chairman from Iowa; Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat; and Richard Lugar, a moderate Republican from Indiana.
All have expressed interest in a redesigned farm program that would replace guaranteed subsidies that simply encourage overproduction with programs that would protect farmers against price swings and natural disasters -- helping, that is, at moments when farmers truly need help.
Billions of dollars would be redirected -- at far higher levels than the House envisions -- to conservation, renewable fuels, food stamps and growers of specialty crops who are now largely frozen out of the system. President Bush, who is threatening to veto the House bill, favors many of these ideas. With his help, the forces of reform may yet prevail.
July 29, 2007
“Rush for Credit; Congress records some modest -- and dubious -- achievements as it heads toward summer recess.”
THE DEMOCRATIC congressional leadership is anxious to put some points on the legislative scoreboard before it leaves for its summer break. Last week, lawmakers made progress with one of their top priorities: a homeland security bill contains some useful improvements, though it is not as good as it could have been or as its sponsors claim. Meanwhile, Democrats slid back into farm business as usual with passage of a bill that preserves wasteful subsidies.
The newly brokered deal to pass a bill based on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations revives the first proposal the House considered this session and a part of the Democrats' "Six in '06" campaign platform. The bill was stuck for months after differing versions passed each chamber, but House and Senate negotiators settled their differences last week. The resulting legislation contains some helpful provisions. It would authorize grants for improving security on vulnerable public transportation networks, for example. It would also rejigger the formula for distributing homeland security grants to states, decreasing the amount each state must receive under the law -- which would have the effect of increasing the amount of money available to the areas of the country most at risk.
Even so, we see no compelling reason for any amount of money to be reserved for states that face little chance of terrorist attack. The bill also would require the Department of Homeland Security to develop in just five years the technology, know-how and international agreements necessary to scan all sea containers bound for the United States -- an almost certainly impossible task. This mandate was approved even though Congress already created a pilot program last September to test the feasibility of scanning all containers. Fortunately, congressional negotiators inserted language that would allow the homeland security secretary to push off the deadline by two-year increments under certain circumstances -- a loophole that will no doubt create a biannual ritual for the DHS.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her House leadership also deserve discredit for forcing through an irresponsible farm bill that renews an indefensible subsidy system. The legislation does include some necessary funding increases, in nutrition and conservation programs, for example, and a (high) income cap for subsidy payments. But it otherwise fails to significantly improve on the bad farm payments system designed in 2002. This farm bill might help a few Democratic lawmakers from predominantly agricultural districts, but it defrauds nearly everyone else in the country. Unlike the Sept. 11 bill, this is no accomplishment, and President Bush would be justified in vetoing the House's version.
Bristol Herald Courier (Virginia)
July 29, 2007 Sunday
“Farm bill politics”
Jul. 29--An outdated, Depression-era commodity crop subsidy system skews the nation's agricultural policies.
The U.S. House had a chance to enact real reform by dramatically cutting the subsidy system. Politics got in the way.
Instead of improving the farm bill, the House made it worse -- larding it up with all manner of unrelated pork to persuade reluctant Democrats to support it. The add-ons included international food aid money and funds to settle racial discrimination claims of black farmers. While these programs might deserve funding, they should be debated on their merits -- not added to a bloated farm bill to buy congressional votes.
This bit of legislative sausage-making allowed the commodity crop subsidy system to pass through the process largely intact.
Reforms will be relatively minor, and total commodity crop subsidies will actually increase. For instance, under the present system, farmers making up to $2.5 million a year can receive government subsidy payments. The House version of the farm bill lowers the cap to $1 million a year, but this isn't enough.
The Bush administration's reform proposal eliminated subsidies for farmers who make more than $200,000 a year and set stricter rules to keep farmers from collecting payments for multiple farm businesses. It also would have prevented some of the outright abuse of the system, including farm-land owners who collect subsidies, but grow no crops, and payments to dead farmers.
A bipartisan reform of the subsidy system, known as FARM21, would have accomplished many of the administration's goals. The House killed this reform measure last week, after big farmers used to receiving big government payments lobbied for its death.
Reps. Rick Boucher and David Davis were among those voting against FARM21's real reforms. They've got some explaining to do.
Cutting the subsidy program wouldn't harm this region's farmers -- most of whom collect nothing at all under it. The proposals contained in FARM21, meanwhile, would have increased farm and food spending in both men's districts, according to an analysis by Environmental Defense. Boucher's district would have reaped an additional $40 million; Davis' district an extra $30 million.
Under the reform bill, much of the new money would be directed at small farmers who grow fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops. The current system favors millionaire farmers and factory-scale farms that produce corn and soybeans for America's junk food industry.
The House was set to take another vote on the farm bill late last week, but the best shot at reform — FARM21 — was already dead. Reformers' last hopes may rest with the Senate, which takes up the matter in September, and with President Bush, who has pledged to veto any farm bill that preserves the bloated subsidy system.
We urge the Senate and the administration not to pass on this golden opportunity to craft a sensible agricultural policy that benefits small farmers and consumers, rather than lining the pockets of those in the wealthiest sliver of agribusiness. Don't play politics with the nation's farm policy.
“Immortal subsidies”
We know how hard it can be to stop even obviously unconstitutional government spending once it has been enacted into law. The very term "temporary tax" is something of a joke, and for good reason.
But farm subsidies appear to have taken on a life of their own.
A new study by Congress' Government Accountability Office finds that more than 170,000 dead people received $1.1 billion worth of federal farm subsidies over a seven-year period.
Stating the painfully obvious, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in an Associated Press article, "It's unconscionable that the Department of Agriculture would think that a dead person was actively engaged in the business of farming."
It appears no one is minding the store, the auditors found. Often, there is no verification to ensure that continuing farm payments are proper. Just how bad is the problem? Well, two-fifths of the payments went to the businesses or estates of farmers who had been dead more than three years. In nearly 20 percent of the cases, the correct recipient of the cash had been dead for seven or more years -- yet the money kept flowing.
The bigger issue, of course, is why Congress hands out farm subsidies in the first place, when the Constitution provides absolutely no authorization for the federal government to do so. Many recipients are, in fact, millionaire non-farmers who happen to have a financial interest in a farm.
It appears the only way to ensure that dead farmers do not continue reaping billions of dollars in subsidies would be to halt the subsidies altogether -- including those for the living.
“Subsidy System Stuck In A Time Warp”
Congressional Democrats are more interested in protecting vulnerable farm-state incumbents than in trimming billions of wasteful spending from the farm subsidy program.
Despite a brutal series of stories in The Washington Post that laid bare the waste and abuse of the multi-billion dollar subsidy system, it appears poised to survive largely intact in the 2007 Farm Bill.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is backing a bill advanced by the Agriculture Committee -- whose members' districts received more than 40 percent of all farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005 -- because she fears freshmen Democrats in rural districts could have a hard time winning re-election if subsidies are cut.
President Bush is threatening to veto the bill in its current form.
"The bill put forth by the committee misses a major opportunity," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "The time really is right for reform in farm policy."
Johanns is right. Prices for the major subsidized crops -- corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat -- are very high, and not expected to drop.
Of the $21 billion in farm payments last year, 92 percent went to those five crops. Some wealthy farmers made millions from selling their crops, and millions more in subsidy payments.
As Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said, "If we can't reform these farm programs at this moment in our history, we will never be able to."
But the Bush administration is hardly a poster child for reform. Bush supports keeping direct payments made to farmers even when they are selling crops at high prices.
The subsidy system is stuck in a time warp. It needs a complete overhaul to reflect modern agricultural practices and needs.
Abuses reported in The Post include $1.3 billion in subsidies to people who aren't even farmers, including $490,000 in checks to a Houston heart surgeon for land that hadn't been farmed in at least a decade.
The 2007 Farm Bill is the perfect vehicle for major reform, but it appears that politics will win instead.
That's a $21 billion shame.
July 31, 2007 Tuesday
“A peck of trouble; The House Democrats' farm bill did nothing to uproot harmful subsidies, so it's up to the Senate to dig in.”
If the farm bill that oozed through the House of Representatives last week is Speaker Nancy Pelosi's idea of accomplishing Democrats' goals, we prefer the good old days of do-nothing Congresses. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is a center of opposition to traditional farm subsidies, hammered together a broad coalition of Democrats aiming to preserve the status quo for another five years.
Democratic leaders did it by playing Santa Claus. To representatives from California and other states that don't grow the types of crops that traditionally get federal handouts, they doled out $1.6 billion for specialty crops such as vegetables and nuts. To the Congressional Black Caucus, they handed at least $100 million to help settle discrimination lawsuits by minority farmers. To urban liberals, they gave a needed expansion of the food stamp program. And to Democrats in farm states, they presented a bill that keeps in place all of the trade-distorting subsidies that made the 2002 farm bill a shameful violation of international agreements.
To pay for all this, the bill would impose a new tax on U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. That drew the ire of Republicans who might otherwise have supported it and assured that the bill would pass on a mostly party-line vote. It also produced a veto threat from President Bush.
The added benefits for food stamp recipients and improved nutrition programs are worthwhile, but an obscure new tax that might violate international treaties is the wrong way to pay for them. Instead, the House should have phased out the price supports and loan guarantees that artificially inflate food prices in this country and make it nearly impossible for growers in poor countries to compete. So badly managed are the farm bill's subsidy programs that a Government Accountability Office investigation turned up $1.1 billion paid out over seven years to dead people.
There are three ways to undo the damage Pelosi and company have wrought. First, the Senate could craft a more sensible farm bill when it takes up the matter in September. Second, Bush could make good on his veto threat. And third, Canada and Brazil could win their cases at the World Trade Organization challenging some U.S. farm supports. Because options two and three would only confuse the issue, the best hope for real reform lies with the Senate.
July 31st, 2007
“Hog Heaven; This is What Happens When Panhandlers Carry Pitchforks”
Remember the Soviet Union's "five year plans," which we Westerners ridiculed as representing the worst sort of top-down, command-and-control economic planning? We have something similar in the United States. It's called a Farm Bill.
Despite a veto threat from President Bush, the House of Representatives on Friday approved a five-year, $286 billion farm bill that Soviet planners would be proud of. Colorado's Democrats all voted for the bill; Republicans (including Rep. Doug Lamborn) voted against it. Enough Republicans opposed it that a veto can't be overridden, which we hope will make senators take a more fiscally responsible tack.
Despite a lot of talk about the need to wean farmers from dependence on federal handouts, the measure maintains current subsidy levels to growers of corn, wheat, barley, oats, cotton, sugar, etc., but for the first time extends subsidies to socalled specialty crops, including fruits, nuts and vegetables. Although specialty crop farmers get only $1.6 billion initially, one can expect that number to climb over time. Corn prices are at near- record highs, due largely to government ethanol mandates, yet Congress couldn't even muster the will to cut off corn growers, despite the windfall they're reaping.
The Department of Agriculture continues to drift far from its down-on-the-farm roots, as this bill shows. Roughly 12 percent of the money goes to farm subsidies. But more than 62 percent will be spent on food stamps and nutritional programs.
Another 12 percent goes to rural development (including an initiative to expand broadband in the farm belt) and energy-related matters -- it requires taxpayers to further underwrite the biofuels industry, for instance, despite mounting concerns about the environmental and economic impacts this manipulation of energy markets will have. The rest, roughly 9 percent, pays farmers not to farm -- to leave their fields fallow in the name of "conservation" or wetlands protection.
This is as much an environmental protection bill and energy bill as a "farm" bill -- which has us thinking: Why not just do away with the Agriculture Department and hand off these functions to the Energy Department, Health and Human Services or the Environmental Protection Agency?
The special interests that stand to benefit most -- including the Renewable Fuels Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Farmers Union, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, National Pork Producers Council and National Association of Wheat Growers -- all give the bill rave reviews. Farm state legislators mostly complained that the handouts aren't generous enough.
And what of the people who have to pay for all this? Forgotten as usual.
In true Soviet style, the bill even gets into a little redistribution of wealth, by slapping $7.8 billion in new taxes on foreign companies operating in the U.S. The proceeds will help pay for a boost in food stamp spending. The hikes weren't in the bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee, but were hurriedly tacked on by the Rules Committee before the bill hit the floor. The tactic angered Republicans who might otherwise have supported the bill, such as Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who accused Democrats of "hijacking" the bill by slipping in a "stealthy new tax." It's too bad this supposedly conservative Republican isn't as offended by all the handouts.
The only modest concession Congress made to taxpayers was a provision that cuts off subsidies to farmers making more than $1 million a year in income. And, oh yes, Congress has asked the Agriculture Department to explain why it sent $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven-year period. But that's where "reform" ends.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns reiterated the administration's opposition to some elements of the bill, including the tax increase and the refusal to reduce subsidies. "I urge the Senate to chart a different course," he said.
We also hope for a dramatically different approach when the Senate takes up its bill. But don't bet the farm on it.
“Maybe the worst farm bill ever”
In President Bush's first year in office, he issued a statement of agricultural principles articulating what he said would be the basis for his farm policy.
He wanted to move away from subsidies and direct payments to a system of savings accounts that would act as insurance for farm setbacks, and toward market-oriented solutions, emphasizing conservation and being fiscally responsible, "generous but affordable." Bush caved to the politics of farm legislation, and in the end only the "generous" part survived. The Republican farm bill of 2002 not only called for more generous subsidies, it reversed the modest reforms of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act.
Now it's the Democrats' turn, and the House-passed reauthorization, at $286 billion, is business as usual down on the farm, only more so. It increases many subsidies at a time of record high farm prices.
The bulk of the benefits would go to largely well-to-do corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybean farmers heavily concentrated in the Midwest and South. Something like half the farm payments would go to only 20 congressional districts. The payments are still weighted to the wealthy even though there's a theoretical limit on payments to farmers whose income is over $1 million a year.
Perhaps most depressing, lawmakers opted to include in the farm program fruit and vegetable growers, the last sector that's something like a free market. President Bush should veto the entire bill.
“Down on the farm, it's business as usual”
House Democrats botch chance to overhaul wasteful crop spending.
If now isn't the time to overhaul the nation's Depression-era system of farm subsidies, it's hard to imagine a better one.
Crop prices are high, driven in part by a huge demand for corn to make ethanol, which squeezes the land available for other crops and raises their prices as well. Democrats took over Congress last year, vowing to show they're the financially responsible stewards their Republican predecessors were not. And President Bush asked Congress to direct the subsidies to the smaller, family farmers that politicians love to claim they support.
So, given this confluence of events, what did House Democrats do? Not much. Last week, under heavy pressure from farm organizations and fearing for the survival of Democratic freshmen from rural districts, they pushed through a business-as-usual farm bill that largely extends the current subsidy system for five more years.
In a small nod toward change, the bill cut the $2.5 million annual income limit for getting subsidies to $1 million (or $2 million if a husband and wife each claim subsidies). House Democratic leaders called this "reform," but it was just a ghost of the real thing. Bush had proposed a $200,000 ceiling.
It's long past time to take a thresher to a complex system that pays farmers billions not just in bad times, but also in good times such as now, when farmers can prosper without government help. Subsidies that pay farmers to overproduce help drive up the cost of farm land, drive away smaller farmers, and make the United States vulnerable to international trade sanctions.
Most of the big money goes to just five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. The usual justification for the largesse is that farmers would go out of business without it. If that's so, how do you explain that many other crops do quite well with little or none of the government help that goes to the favored five?
In addition to boosting just a few crops, the subsidies also favor a tiny sliver of the largest farms and agribusinesses: The top 10% of recipients get nearly three-fourths of subsidy payments, while the bottom 80% of recipients divide up a scant 12%.
For that cockeyed system, U.S. households pay an average $320 a year in taxes and higher food prices, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Farmers deserve a safety net to help them survive when bad weather damages crops, or when world markets slash prices far below production costs. That could be done, however, with the current system of crop insurance and innovative ways of letting farmers and government put aside money in good times to draw on when things go bad.
Although the House-passed farm bill does include worthwhile provisions to overhaul the food stamp program, bolster land conservation and promote biofuels, the Democratic majority botched its opportunity to wean farmers from government handouts. Now it's up to the Senate, whose agriculture leaders seem more receptive to serious change.
The experience in the House shows just how hard it is to undo government subsidies protected by potent lobbies. But with corn as high as an elephant's eye, and prices climbing clear up to the sky, it's a beautiful day to start chopping away.
July 31, 2007
“House votes more farm subsidies”
It is disappointing that the U.S. House of Representatives has voted 231-191 in defiance of a veto threat by President George W. Bush to hand out more of your tax money to subsidize farms, with most of the big payments going to large corporate operations rather than to what may be described as picturesque "family farmers."
Spending tax money that way not only victimizes taxpayers but helps encourage bad operations and raises the prices you have to pay at the store for food and fiber.
We believe farmers should receive fair prices for their investment, hard work and production. But the prices should be set by competitive free market demand, not by political vote-buying.
Who voted for subsidies at taxpayers' expense and who voted against them? The tally of the Tennessee representatives tells the tale: Democrat Reps. Steve Cohen, Lincoln Davis, Bart Gordon, and John Tanner were for subsidies. Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper and Republican Reps. Zach Wamp, Marsha Blackburn, David Davis and John Duncan were against.
July 31, 2007
“As an elephant's eye”
The corn is high, and the clover is fragrant in the meadows. It has been a summer of abundant rain and abundant sunshine.
For Vermont's farmers the milk price has also been pleasant news. After a year when prices hit levels lower than any time since the 1970s, high prices have given farmers a breather.
It's a good thing. The price of grain is also high, driven up by increasing demand for grain for ethanol. Farmers also face higher costs for fuel and fertilizer, reflecting the higher costs of petroleum. The higher milk price enjoyed by farmers is helping to alleviate the pain of these higher costs.
The federal program that places a floor under the price of milk remains in the new farm bill after House passage last week. Support for the dairy program is always iffy, though dairy interests have a presence in numerous states, and it is never easy to kill it entirely.
It helps that the dairy program only kicks in when the milk price falls too low. Otherwise, the program does not require government payments. An earlier version of the dairy program, in which milk processors were forced to pick up the tab, would have required even less of the government. But the processors have successfully pushed the cost burden back onto the government and the taxpayer.
Following the House vote to approve the farm bill, Rep. Peter Welch pointed to provisions that curbed expenditures going to support large corporate farms. In many parts of the country, "farming the government" is the main occupation of farmers who harvest big subsidies to support highly mechanized operations. More and more, a rural landscape composed of numerous small, family-run operations is becoming a thing of the past, and the government's support of industrial agricultural is partly to blame.
Efforts to scale back corporate welfare to large farms is welcome, and certainly more could be done. The pressures of international trade could have a positive effect. Last week the World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. government subsidies to American cotton growers represented a violation of international trade agreements. Presumably, the government will have to scale back those subsidies.
The number of dairy farms in Vermont has steadily dwindled over the years, and consolidation into larger farms continues to be the trend. One problem faced by many farmers is a shortage of workers willing to put in the necessary hours. That is why many farmers have turned to illegal immigrant labor.
But Vermont agriculture continues to consist largely of family-run operations that struggle to get by, often by buying up a neighbor's land, moving to more efficient technology, and improving herd yields. The trend toward organic dairying continues to grow, securing an even higher price for the product, and the farm bill contains provisions to support organic agriculture.
Agriculture remains a special interest whose demands on the federal budget are hard to contain. Efforts to curb corn or soybean subsidies inevitably run up against the power of the major agribusiness corporations whose interests are sometimes mistakenly equated with the interests of rural America.
As the Senate takes up the farm bill, the senators ought to keep in mind the difference between the neo-feudalism that is being imposed by large corporations and the rural economy that thrives when the local needs of family farms are served.
JULY 31, 2007
“Growing farm subsidies”
With the prices of many subsidized row crops at or near record levels and with farm incomes very strong and likely to remain so for some time, this was the perfect moment for Congress to begin reforming the trade-distorting, welfare-laden farm-subsidy programs. Regrettably, the House balked last week. Real reform will now be up to the Senate, where Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana and Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa could lead a bipartisan reform agenda. The Senate will be considering its own five-year farm-overhaul legislation after the August recess. However, if the Senate follows the House's path to failure, President Bush will need to exercise his veto threat and force Congress to reconsider. Otherwise, an opportunity for real reform will have been lost for at least another five years, and the prospects for rescuing the multilateral Doha trade negotiations will suffer another major blow.
The good news is that the five-year, $286 billion House measure, which was passed last Friday by a 231-191 vote, did not achieve a veto-proof two-thirds majority. The bad news is that scores of Republicans decided to vote against this previously bipartisan measure only after Democrats added a provision that would have increased taxes by $7.5 billion over 10 years for foreign multinational corporations operating in the United States. If the tax increase were not part of the bill, a veto-proof margin for a very bad bill almost certainly would have been achieved. In other words, it is fair to say that the House remains a bipartisan obstacle to real farm reform. Indeed, House GOP Minority Whip Roy Blunt declared that the farm bill could "easily have been a huge bipartisan victory" without the tax provision.
A much-preferred substitute bill, offered by Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, was resoundingly defeated 309-117. A similar substitute bill that Mr. Kind offered in 2001 garnered 200 votes, including the vote of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker. In an effort to protect the new Democratic members who were elected from rural districts last year, Mrs. Pelosi opposed the Kind reform bill this year and embraced the business-as-usual bill produced by the Agriculture Committee. Worse, more than 75 percent of Republicans opposed the Kind-Flake measure as well.
Farmers are notorious for gaming the present system of price-based counter-cyclical payments, which the Kind-Flake bill would have reformed. The substitute bill also would have barred farmers with annual adjusted gross incomes of more than $250,000 from receiving subsidies. The Democratic version, which most House Republicans supported absent the tax measure, allows subsidies for farmers earning up to $1 million per year. To its credit, the White House wanted the limit to be $200,000. The Kind-Flake bill also would have limited direct payments, which are made to qualified farmers (and their wives) irrespective of crop prices, to $40,000 per person. Direct payments should have been eliminated altogether, but the measure passed by the House actually raises the individual limit for direct payments by 50 percent - to $60,000.
The Senate will have its hands full. Let's hope it has a backbone.
August 1, 2007
“Senate should plow under House version of farm bill”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must have wanted a new farm bill in the worst way. Because that's exactly what she got.
There's not much to be said in defense of the massive package of subsidies-as-usual that Pelosi shepherded through the House last week, except that it thoroughly deserves the veto that President Bush has threatened if it arrives on his desk in its current form. As blessed by the House, the new farm bill threatens to do equal damage to taxpayers and the environment alike, while preserving welfare for millionaire agri-businessmen.
Still, it's too early for environmentalists and taxpayers to give up the fight to draft a more responsible blueprint for agriculture in the 21st century. The bill still has to go through the Senate and there is at least some hope that Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, who chairs the Agriculture Committee, will be more receptive to the conservation and nutrition programs that received short shrift in the House Agriculture Committee under Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
Ideally, the Senate would revive a plan by Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., that would have shifted $12 billion in crop subsidies and payments to farmers over the next five years toward conservation, rural development and nutrition programs that fight obesity. At Pelosi's urging, the House rejected the Kind-Flake amendment, which was backed by an unusual alliance of environmentalists and fiscally conservative Republicans.
Pelosi had supported past efforts to reform farm policy. But this year she marshalled Democrats in defense of the status quo that channels billions in subsidies to five row crops: wheat, rice, corn, soybeans and cotton - despite near-record prices for some of those commodities. It was a simple case of politics trumping good policy because 10 first-term Democrats who represent farm districts felt they would have faced tough re-election fights if the farm bill had been recast to reflect priorities advanced by the Environmental Working Group and others.
Pelosi defended the $42 billion, five-year, subsidy tab by calling the bill "a critical step toward reform that eliminates farm payments to millionaires."
Pardon us, Madam Speaker, but wouldn't the best way to "eliminate farm payments to millionaires" be to, well, eliminate farm payments to millionaires? The Pelosi-blessed farm bill allows subsidies to continue to farmers who earn up to $1 million a year - or $2 million for a couple. Admittedly, that is less than the $2.5 million ceiling in the existing farm subsidy law, but five times as high as the $200,000 per farmer President Bush had sought.
The new farm bill isn't all bad. It does provide modest increases in funding for government nutrition programs for low-income families and increases money for programs devoted to conservation, biofuels and renewable energy. It adds $1.6 billion to help growers of specialty fruit, vegetables and nuts. The money would pay for research programs, improved pest detection, aid to organic farming and the promotion of farmers markets. Another section, which The Post wholeheartedly supports, would promote labeling of meat to disclose country of origin - an important protection for American farmers and consumers alike.
On the whole, however, the House settled for cosmetic improvements in aging New Deal farm programs that need major surgery. We hope the Senate will adopt the Kind-Flake reforms and yield a more taxpayer and environmentally friendly farm bill.
August 1, 2007
“Make farm bill more about future”
The transformation of agriculture into a producer of fuel as well as food and fiber demands visionary American farm policy to position farmers and the nation to thrive in a new era.
Unfortunately, the farm bill passed by the U.S. House last week, a five-year blueprint for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's spending and priorities, reads too much like the farm bill of 2002. It breaks too little new ground in directing policy and dollars to embrace a new future for agriculture.
It's up to the Senate, under the leadership of Iowa's Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to craft a better bill. It must unleash the capabilities of American agriculture to lead this energy revolution, while also better protecting the nation's soil and water as farmers shift their operations to produce crops for biofuels.
The House bill does a good job on the first count, but a poor job on the second.
It recognizes that ethanol made from corn grain can replace only a fraction of the nation's gasoline use - less than 4 percent currently. But by also making ethanol from cellulose, the fibrous material in plant stems, leaves and wood, displacing up to 30 percent of gasoline use could be possible, according to some estimates.
The bill provides incentives for investors and farmers to develop the next generation of energy crops. The secretary of agriculture would designate 10 innovation centers around the country, which could include land-grant universities such as Iowa State. Farmers in selected project areas nearby would receive extra payments for taking the risk to plant, grow, harvest, store and transport entirely new types of crops, such as perennial grasses, or to handle existing crops in different ways, such as harvesting corn cobs and stalks. A similar program would provide incentives to forest owners to experiment with fast-growing tree varieties.
The House bill also would provide loan guarantees for constructing biorefineries. Today, oil refineries produce not only motor fuel but also chemicals used to make everything from plastics to fabrics. Biorefineries would make fuel and a host of other products from plant material, producing energy from a renewable source and reducing global-warming emissions.
In a conference call Tuesday, Harkin praised the energy provisions of the House bill, but said he hoped to craft a Senate bill that would be more aggressive in providing incentives to grow energy crops. For example, farmers who grow such crops should be eligible for certain conservation payments, he said.
Where the House bill falls disastrously short is in failing to beef up conservation incentives on working lands, which will be crucial as farmers step up planting to produce energy crops. Higher crop prices could prompt farmers to plant on marginal lands or abandon soil-replenishing crop rotations. Duane Sand, a consultant to the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, estimates that 20 pounds of soil washes away for every gallon of ethanol produced. Removal of cornstalks also could harm soil quality.
If done right, however, planting perennial crops to produce cellulosic ethanol could lessen soil erosion and improve water quality and wildlife habitat.
The House bill did extend the popular Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to idle highly erodible land. But it gutted the Conservation Security Program, which pays farmers for stewardship practices on land in production.
Harkin can be counted on to fight for funding the Conservation Security Program, which he created. The problem is money.
Part of it should come from placing reasonable limits on farm subsidies to ultra-wealthy farmers and from eliminating abuses such as payments on land that's no longer farmed or made in the names of people who have died. And part needs to come from other cuts in the federal budget.
A visionary farm bill will further the national priority of energy security, but also protect the soil and water that grow the crops fueling a biobased economy.
The Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
“Farm Subsidies: McConnell Should Back Saner Bill”
Aug. 1--Kudos to U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and John Yarmuth for casting a vote in favor of healthier food, family farms, a cleaner environment and sane fiscal and foreign policy.
Who could be against that?
The four Republicans in Kentucky's House delegation.
Reps. Hal Rogers, Geoff Davis, Ron Lewis and Ed Whitfield were not part of a bipartisan coalition that last week backed changes that would have aligned federal farm policy with the interests of more Kentuckians. (Rogers, Davis and Lewis later cast a party line vote against the whole farm bill. Whitfield joined Democrats in voting for the final bill.)
The problems with current farm policy are plenty. Taxpayers are forced to pour billions into subsidies for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice, with no regard to the producers' financial need. Two-thirds of the money goes to 10 percent of growers.
One result: Overproduction that drives down prices and puts small farmers around the world out of business. President Bush has threatened to veto the farm bill passed by the House because the subsidies violate trade agreements.
Farm policy is also damaging Americans' health by subsidizing corn, which becomes the high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens an array of foods that are making us fat and sick. Corn is also used to fatten livestock in feed lots and factory farms.
Put together a healthful table of fresh veggies and fruits from a farmers market, with meat raised on local pastures, and none of it will have received any support from the federal government. But put together a spread of fattening, artery-clogging food, the kind that's shortening the life span of today's kids, and it will be heavily subsidized with your tax dollars.
Last week's amendment, sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., would have barred subsidies to producers making an average of $250,000 or more annually and steered the savings into conservation; nutrition; specialty crops, such as vegetables and fruits; and rural development programs. It did this without a tax on foreign investment in the United States that helps pay for the subsidies in the bill that cleared the House.
While the Kentucky delegation split along party lines the amendment brought together green Democrats, Republican budget hawks and defenders of small farms from both parties on the House floor.
They couldn't overcome internal House politics or a lobbying blitz by big agriculture interests. The House did incorporate some of their ideas into the farm bill, but that only made it even more bloated.
Now, there's an opportunity in the Senate to trim the wasteful subsidies while shifting to more healthful priorities at a time when corn growers are already rolling in dough because of the demand for ethanol.
In the past, Sen. Mitch McConnell has spoken in favor of shifting farm spending away from industrial-size farms into programs that would do more for small farms and the environment.
As Senate minority leader, he should put those good ideas into action.
August 2, 2007
“Pushing up paychecks; Let's start by getting the dead off the dole”
Federal government programs live forever: maybe their beneficiaries do, too. A Government Accountability Office report released last week found that the Department of Agriculture distributed more than $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of farmers who had died. The department approved these payments without any review 40 percent of the time, while 38 percent of the cases had "weaknesses" including "nonexistent or vague" documentation.
And this was just a sample of 181 cases from 1999-2005.
Safeguards against this sort of waste and fraud need to be established before Congress renews another five-year farm bill, which will dole out hundreds of billions of dollars. Taxpayers need assurance that the widespread gaming of farm programs will be curtailed, before they sign up for yet another round of giveaways.
Estates are allowed to collect farm subsidies for up to two years after an owner's death, giving heirs time to restructure the business and clear probate. Then local Agriculture Department officials are supposed to certify each year that the heirs are still farming and have kept the land for reasons other than merely to collect subsidies. But the Agriculture Department acts as if its mission is to send out checks, rather than to help people who are actually engaged in farming. This outrage is minor when compared with the larger scandal of the farm subsidy program itself, which has evolved into a massive giveaway to the wealthy that actually discourages the small farmer in whose name the program is continued.
Agriculture Department figures show, as the Washington Post reported, that "in 2004 a third of agricultural payouts went to 'very large' operations that boasted average annual incomes above a quarter of a million dollars. These subsidies have helped push rural land prices up and small family farmers out of the market." From 2000-06 the government paid $1.3 billion of your money to landowners who didn't farm at all.
And this is just a snapshot of what goes on in federal farm programs. "Some of Utah's wealthiest residents have benefited from federal farm subsidies, including a billionaire and the owner of the Utah Jazz," a wire service reported this week. James L. Sorenson, who became a billionaire with real estate and medical equipment businesses, received $600,000 in farm payments between 1995 to 2005, according to the story. Utah Jazz owner and car dealer Larry Miller, a millionaire, wasn't sure why his wife received $239,000 in farm payments for a ranch they own in Idaho. "Evidently we've got some land where you get government subsidies for not planting," Miller said. "I think that's very silly to get paid on something like that."
But that didn't stop him, like it doesn't stop many Americans, from taking the check. It's "free" money after all.
Our farm subsidy program increases food prices, which mainly hurts the poor, and is a huge barrier to trade agreements. The recent Doha round of trade talks went belly-up because of disagreements over European and American (and Korean and Japanese) farm subsidies.
Congress back in 1996 passed the "Freedom to Farm Act," which was supposed to help wean the ag sector from its addiction to handouts and make it more market-oriented. But dependency and farm spending exploded since then, prompting some to dub the bill the "Freedom to Freeload Act."
The Democratic Congress came in promising to change the way Washington works and shake up the old ways of narrow interest-group politics. But its actions on the next farm bill suggest that nothing has changed, and that the feeding frenzy at the federal trough will continue.
August 2, 2007
"AGRIBIZ'S BOUNTIFUL HARVEST"
In President Bush's first year in office, he issued a statement of agricultural principles articulating what he said would be the basis for his farm policy. He wanted to move away from subsidies and direct payments to a system of savings accounts that would act as insurance for farm setbacks, and toward market-oriented solutions, emphasizing conservation and being fiscally responsible, "generous but affordable."
Bush caved to the politics of farm legislation, and in the end only the "generous" part survived. The Republican-drafted farm bill of 2002 not only called for more generous subsidies and annual "emergency" bailouts, it reversed the modest reforms of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act.
Now it's the Democrats' turn, and the House-passed reauthorization, at $286 billion, is business as usual down on the farm, only more so. It increases many subsidies at a time of record high farm prices.
The bulk of the benefits would go to largely well-to-do corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybean farmers heavily concentrated in the Midwest and South. Something like half the farm payments would go to only 20 congressional districts. The payments are still weighted to the wealthy even though there's a theoretical limit on payments to farmers whose income is over $1 million a year.
The already well-protected sugar growers were insulated against cheaper Mexican imports at a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $1.4 billion. And the lawmakers opted to include in the farm program fruit and vegetable growers, the last sector that's something like a free market.
The farm bill may be terrible policy and provoke an interminable battle with the World Trade Organization, but it was a legislative tour de force for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rolled over reformers she had supported just five years ago.
There are worthy alternatives offered by respected farm-state lawmakers like Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., but they were no match for the prosperous agribiz lobby.
The president has threatened a veto. It might be a futile gesture at this late date -- the old bill expires Sept. 30 -- but it is still worth dusting off his 2001 statement of principles and this time sticking by them.
August 2, 2007, Thursday
“Bumper crop; Farm subsidies for rich”
ORIGINALLY, federal farm subsidies were supposed to rescue family farmers, protecting them from unpredictable weather and market prices.
Created in 1933 under President Franklin Roosevelt, subsidies were designed to help small growers survive the Depression and Dust Bowl disasters. Back then, 25 percent of Americans still lived on farms. Now, less than 1 percent do.
Today, 74 years later, agricultural subsidies mostly enrich moneymaking giant corporate farms. They got the lion's share of $21 billion in government payments last year. Many economists believe those subsidies may also help force small farms into bankruptcy and keep young people from starting new farms. The Daytona Beach News-Journal commented:
"In 2002, when Congress was controlled by Republicans, a $180 billion farm bill lathered the subsidies on those who didn't need them, with the following results: The top 1 percent of beneficiaries claimed 17 percent of crop subsidy benefits between 2003 and 2005. In that category, the average payment over three years was $377,484 per beneficiary."
USA Today said subsidies "favor a tiny sliver of the largest agribusinesses: The top 10 percent of recipients get nearly three-fourths of subsidy payments, while the bottom 80 percent divide up a scant 12 percent."
The Guardian of Britain added that subsidies are "a cash cow for wealthy landowners and industrial-sized farms."
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a new giveaway co-sponsored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., authorizing $286 billion in payments over the next five years. The bill will eliminate subsidies for married couples earning more than $2 million and individuals earning more than $1 million a year from farms. That will stop payments to 3,100 big-money farmers, according to the Agriculture Department.
Pelosi's bill also will increase payments during the next five years. Some large farms already get between 20 percent and 40 percent of their annual gross revenues from those subsidies, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Many farmers and politicians from agricultural states opposed renewing the large subsidies. Food and environmental activists also questioned the bill, saying more money should go to promote environmentally friendly farms. But the new bill won support from some Democrats by including $4 billion for food stamp, child nutrition and school lunch programs.
Plowshares & Pork Barrels, a new book by the libertarian Independent Institute, argues that current farm subsidy programs "confer most of the benefits on individuals whose wealth and incomes are considerably greater than those of the average taxpayer footing the bill.... The benefits are highly concentrated on the few who can afford to expend time and effort to influence the political process, while the costs are widely dispersed among taxpayers and consumers."
During the Depression, farm subsidies helped multitudes of needy farmers. The concept may still have some positive effects. But it is unfortunate that the House caved in to the nation's wealthiest farmers by passing this new legislation. We hope it is modified by the Senate.
August 3, 2007
“Time to start over; Bad system produces bad farm bill; Washington needs to change both”
A very bad farm bill was about to roar through the U.S. House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support, pledging another 42 billion taxpayer dollars to further engorge soil-burning, water-fouling, market-glutting megafarms that swell the bellies of Americans and empty the treasuries of poor nations.
At the last minute, though, a divisive tax provision was added to the $286 billion bill, which also funds food aid and conservation programs. The package still passed, but by a narrow enough margin that, in its current form, it would not survive a threatened veto by President Bush.
This conflict would best be solved by junking the House bill altogether and allowing the Senate to start afresh, hopefully crafting a new approach to agriculture that is based on rewarding the sustainable production of healthy food.
Bush might have vetoed the House bill even without the additional tax, a measure to raise some $7.5 billion from foreign-owned companies with U.S. subsidiaries. The president is among the few in Washington who will say out loud that it is time to get away from Depression-era subsidy programs that rightfully enrage poor nations whose farm products are undercut by our artificially cheap grain and cotton. Dropping our subsidies would help poor, agriculturally based countries make their own way in the world by selling their crops in a truly open market, with more economic benefits to those nations than any amount of U.S. foreign aid.
But it is the tax measure, which Democrats call the closing of a loophole and Republicans decry as a business-killer, that would make the veto threat credible. Farm bills by themselves are such a treasure trove of free money for constituents in every state, and most congressional districts, that they don't get blocked on their own.
There was, for example, no reason to expect either Democrats or Republicans from Western New York to stand in the way of a farm bill laden with benefits for the dairy industry, corn growers and producers of grapes and other fruit. New York may not have the image of a rural state, and the $184 million its producers received in federal assistance over the last three years ranks it 30th among the states. But the state's 12 billion pounds of milk annually makes it the third biggest dairy state, behind only California and Wisconsin. And in just the 11 counties of Western New York, farmers in 2005 brought in 26 million bushels of corn.
The 231-191 vote Friday included area Reps. Louise Slaughter and Brian Higgins, both Democrats, and Republican John Kuhl in the affirmative and Republicans Thomas M. Reynolds and James Walsh opposed.
Reynolds and Walsh both cited the tax provision as the reason for voting against a bill that would preserve programs that won their two districts combined more than $54 million in subsidies between 2003 and 2005. Kuhl, whose district's producers got $24.3 million over that same period, had to hold his nose and vote for it, having labored hard to get more money for the usually overlooked producers of grapes and apples.
Few members of Congress, and apparently none from Western New York, can look beyond the federal boodle that farm bills traditionally distribute to their constituencies and see instead the despoiling impact that huge subsidies have on the global food market, and on the planet itself.
It's time to rip this policy out by its roots and start again. The House, apparently, won't. The Senate must.
August 4, 2007
“House of ill repute; Bush, Senate reformers aim to save farm bill”
How bad is the five-year, $286 billion farm bill recently approved by the House of Representatives? So bad that there are at least three rock-solid reasons to reject it.
- The measure isn't about small family farmers, who are doing much better than in the "Farm Aid" era of the 1980s. Instead, it is more accurately seen as a gigantic payoff to multimillionaires and thriving corporate agribusiness.
- The biggest subsidies go to crops that are readily turned into unhealthy processed foods. The subsidies help make these processed foods very cheap and have a major negative effect on the diet habits of an entire nation.
- The subsidies arguably violate trade treaties the United States willingly signed and are a huge headache in negotiating new trade deals.
But there is good news: President Bush and many senators aren't buying Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bizarre assertion that the House measure amounts to reform. Bush wants to limit payments to farmers who make more than $200,000 a year. A Senate coalition -- led, strikingly enough, by Iowa's senators, Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Charles Grassley -- also wants an earnings cap on those who receive subsidies and is tentatively touting a reform that would go a long way toward making farm policy more rational: dropping most subsidies in favor of guarantees to farmers that they would be insulated from distress caused by price swings and floods, droughts and other natural disasters.
Unfortunately, there are senators who prefer the House approach and see farm policy as just one more way to belly up to the pork trough, including California Democrat Barbara Boxer. So next month, when the Senate takes up the farm bill, watch for a free-for-all between reformers and pseudo-reformers. And hope, for once, that common sense finds a place in our farm policy.
August 4, 2007
"Congress is once again headed toward wasteful farm subsidies"
A rare opportunity for reforming America's deeply flawed farm policy has been plowed under in the U.S. House. But reform can still take root in the Senate.
Last month the House passed a bill that would largely maintain the inequitable and wasteful system of taxpayer subsidies for farmers another five years. That system's cost has topped $20 billion in some years. Nearly 90 percent of the subsidies go to farmers of just five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. At least two-thirds of farmers get little or nothing.
Subsidies are paid based on acreage planted, so large farms grab most of the handouts, even when their prices and profits are high. The system spurs overproduction, wasting resources and damaging the environment. It inflates land prices, squeezing out small farmers. And it impedes trade agreements that would open more foreign markets to U.S. goods, including farm products.
The House bill was drafted by its Agriculture Committee, whose members represent districts that collected more than 40 percent of the subsidies paid from 2003 to 2005. What a coincidence.
The bill's supporters boasted that it would lower the annual income limit for farmers eligible to collect subsidies from $2.5 million to $1 million, and steer $1.8 billion to programs for fruit and vegetable growers. But these are tweaks, not the overhaul the system demands.
A chance for an overhaul came during House debate on the bill, when Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind — a farmer himself — proposed a scaled-back version of his bipartisan plan to phase out subsidies. That plan would gradually replace them with accounts to stabilize incomes for farmers who truly need help, no matter what crops they grow. It's a fairer, smarter and cheaper approach to farm policy.
Yet Mr. Kind's proposal was voted down nearly 3-1. Republican Ric Keller was the only Central Florida lawmaker to support it, even though it would be a better deal for Sunshine State farmers.
When the House bill came up for a final vote, it lost the support of Republicans because Democrats had added a corporate tax hike to increase funding for food stamps. But Mr. Kind's proposal would have saved enough money on subsidies to finance such an increase without a tax hike.
Fortunately for taxpayers, Congress isn't done with the farm bill; the Senate hasn't passed its own version yet. Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, a former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is vowing to seek support for Mr. Kind's approach.
Mr. Lugar's efforts deserve the enthusiastic support of senators from both parties, including Republican Mel Martinez and Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida. Congress needs to move beyond the parochial politics and special interests now dictating farm policy to a much better plan for taxpayers and farmers alike.
August 4, 2007
“A Surer Way to Feed the Hungry”
Globally, about 800 million people are chronically hungry, and the number rises every year. The Bush administration is pushing what should be an obvious policy change to help those most acutely in need — victims of catastrophe or some other emergency. Instead of shipping American-grown food abroad, Washington would send American dollars to buy food from local farmers.
The present food aid system is a favorite of American farmers. But it is also cumbersome, slow, expensive and leaves people hungry who could easily be fed. President Bush has rightly proposed shifting $300 million from farm subsidies to enable governments and relief groups to buy food locally.
This plan struck a responsive chord almost everywhere except the Congress. The House omitted the idea from the farm bill it passed last week. And prospects for the Senate approving anything more than a pilot program seem dim.
This is sad but unsurprising. Farm policy continues to be dominated by farm-state legislators who prefer the traditional approach of sending surplus food abroad, further enriching heavily subsidized farmers as well as the shipping industry.
A recent article by The Times's Celia Dugger shows why that makes so little sense. Starving Africans in the arid reaches of northwestern Kenya desperately needed food. Kenyan officials did not want surplus American corn because they feared driving down the prices for local farmers. The obvious answer was for the Americans to buy local corn, but American law prevented this. So the corn was never shipped and people continued to go hungry.
The United States is the world's most generous provider of food aid, amounting to $2 billion annually. But too much of that aid is wasted in overhead, mainly shipping costs. At the other end of the pipeline, subsidized American food can hurt local farmers, while local procurement gives them a commercial outlet. Administration officials also note that food purchased here usually takes four months to reach its destination. Food purchased locally takes days.
The virtues of Mr. Bush's idea are self-evident. What it needs is full Congressional support, not pilot programs. It would be nice if, for once, America's farm bloc could think of interests other than its own.
August 5, 2007
“Eternal farm subsidies”
PHILOSOPHER GEORGE Santayana said only the dead have seen the end of war. He should have added, however, that even the dead haven't seen the end of farm subsidies.
A report on farm subsidy programs found that the U.S. Agriculture Department paid $1.1 billion to 173,000 dead people, including a few in Alabama. Payments to estates are allowed, in some cases, but the Government Accountability Office says agriculture officials aren't doing a good job of checking whether subsidies should follow recipients to the grave.
Estates can qualify for farm welfare if the heirs or their personal representatives actually are farming. Apparently, federal officials haven't been very aggressive in determining whether the farming ended with the deaths of the original recipients. They've just kept the aid flowing, even when some of the recipients have been dead for more than seven years.
Everyone knows federal programs are eternal, but the agriculture department seems to be taking that axiom a little too literally.
Farm subsidies - like a number of other federal programs - deserve to die. They were instituted in the 1930s to help ease the effects of the Depression on farmers. Over the years, they've morphed into an insidious form of corporate welfare.
According to the Heritage Foundation, commercial farmers with an average annual income of $200,000 receive the majority of farm subsidies. Huge agribusinesses, not small farmers, are the main beneficiaries of the federal largesse.
Congress should bury the subsidies and put the $5 billion allocated for them to better use.
August 6, 2007
“California plants seed of change with farm bill”
CALIFORNIA'S enhanced standing in Congress has resulted in more recognition of the state's specialty crops while hopefully pointing the way toward an eventual rerouting of the billions of federal dollars disbursed through our nation's lucrative farm programs.
It's long overdue. Since the Great Depression in the 1930s, growers of such commodity or cash crops as corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton have received the yeoman's share of the money that goes into subsidizing agriculture.
Two-thirds of the $236 billion in the five-year bill being pondered by Congress goes to underwrite our nation's food stamp and nutrition programs. Most of the balance goes to the cash crops that dominate agriculture in the Midwest and South. Such crops must be processed before they're put to human use, but much of it goes to feed livestock -- and in the case of corn, increasingly into ethanol.
Little traditionally has been routed into developing, marketing or subsidizing such so-called specialty crops as the fruits, nuts, vegetables and nursery products grown in California. Only 2 percent of agricultural spending goes into the production of fresh fruits and vegetables.
It's an imbalance that needs to be corrected as our human population and demand for healthier foods continue to grow -- and climate change puts agriculture under new stresses. Emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables also could be instrumental in fighting such medical and social ills as obesity, diabetes and poor nutrition.
What's more, 66 percent of federal assistance to farmers goes to a mere 10 percent of the recipients. Half the cash goes into just 20 congressional districts. Recipients are often large cash crop farmers and increasingly corporations. Even Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, asks: "Is that fair, or a good use of taxpayer dollars?" To which he replies, "Of course not."
Farmers in California, the largest agricultural state, reap 15 cents out of every dollar earned in agriculture, but get less than 3 percent of federal farm aid.
This year, however, change may start to take place. Thanks to growing discontent with subsidies, a hardline approach by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and insistence of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, the House Agriculture Committee agreed to route $1.7 billion into organic and specialty crops research, conservation and environmental improvements, channeling more fresh fruits and vegetables into school lunch programs and the promotion of food safety and farmers' markets.
More certainly needs to be done -- the specialty crops funds are but a drop in the big commodities bucket -- but hopefully it's as Pelosi says the "first steps" toward change, which may ultimately be worth more than the dollar amount. The traditional farm lobby is potent and well-heeled. But less money must eventually go into traditional subsidies and more into growing, facilitating, marketing and providing more fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as getting them into schools and public lunch programs. Although payouts shouldn't be welfare for farmers, current subsidies often function to keep them in business.
Federal funds can also be used in soil and water conservation programs, land protection and to restore watersheds crucial to agriculture.
Our agriculture policy has been skewed in one direction far too long. Phasing out subsidies and otherwise changing farm policy won't be easy, but it's time we do so.
Cardoza and Pelosi have helped plant the seed. But the reform doesn't go nearly as far as we'd like it to go. It will be up to them, their allies and successors to nurture this young seedling, make it grow and change priorities in the farm bill.
August 6, 2007
“Farm Bill's Cash Crop”
Any bill that spends $286 billion over five years ought to make a lot of constituents happy, and the House version of the 2007 Farm Bill hands out enough commodity and income subsidies to keep most from complaining. But as generous as the bill is, it still doesn't fully reform the system by which it hands out subsidies, how these federal transfer payments meet global trade rules and what effect these payments have on poor countries. The Senate, expected to take up its version of the bill next month, has plenty of work to do.
For instance, President Bush proposed providing benefits only to those farmers with adjusted gross incomes of under $200,000, to lessen the current concentration of payments to the wealthiest farms. But that would have affected about 38,000 farmers currently receiving subsidies, so House Democrats raised the cap to $1 million. This distribution to wealthy farmers hurts those with lower incomes because it limits how much they might receive and provides incentive for large-scale owners to further consolidate farms.
The bill does contain some measures that are valuable - fruits and vegetables are now recognized and the Milk Income Loss Contract program is continued; land conservation is included and food stamps gained support. And no one should assume that putting together such a large and heavily lobbied bill that makes sense is an easy undertaking. The House Agriculture Committee could have done worse.
But it also could have taken steps to head off disputes at the World Trade Organization, where Canada and Brazil argue that the level of U.S. subsidies through direct payments, loan deficiency payments and counter-cyclical payments distort trade and harm farmers in their countries. These are not new complaints, and the United States has lost these battles before, such as the question of cotton subsidies in 2005.
Maine Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud voted in favor of the Farm Bill, and given the bill's increased spending on Maine farmers, its conservation and forestry provisions and several administrative improvements, that's understandable. But the bill is only a half step in the right direction.
August 6, 2007
“Restoring the Bay; An example of what this year's farm bill should really be about”
IT WAS only a few months ago that Democrats were claiming that they would write radical new investments in conservation and environmental stewardship into this year's farm bill. But with a tight budget and the House majority's unwillingness to seriously slash giveaway agricultural subsidies, there was less money for lawmakers to devote to such worthy priorities. Some increases in funding, however, did make it into the House's version of the legislation, including an infusion of money into programs to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.
The bay funding is a crucial provision, and we are glad to see it in the bill. It doesn't redeem the irresponsible and wasteful farm bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders pushed through. Indeed, this bit of farm sense amid a fair amount of farm nonsense underscores the bill's obvious flaws: Many other attractive conservation projects might have been better funded, too, if only the Democrats had aggressively reformed the subsidy programs authorized in the legislation.
The new money for the Chesapeake comes at a critical time -- the states that contribute most to bay pollution are far from reaching their pollution reduction targets, and bay ecosystems continue to verge on collapse. The nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation calculated that even if the bay states carry out cleanup initiatives already on the books, they will reduce annual pollution by only 40 percent of their goal for 2010. At the beginning of the year, an Environmental Protection Agency official estimated that at the current rate the bay will not be restored for generations. The House's farm bill would commission a federal plan for restoring the Chesapeake and provide $212 million over five years in bay cleanup funding. According to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who pushed for the addition of the language, bay states will also have access to an additional $292 million over five years for Chesapeake restoration through other programs in the bill. The bay foundation's Doug Siglin says that the money will go a long way to promote conservation efforts such as planting cover crops and building natural barriers to prevent nitrate and other pollution from entering the watershed.
These are just the sorts of initiatives a 21st-century farm bill should be funding. The prospects for the House's draft farm bill are unclear -- President Bush rightly has threatened to veto it, and the Senate has yet to act. There is still opportunity this year to reprioritize this country's agricultural budget to focus more on worthwhile conservation programs and less on unneeded farm payments. But at the very least, the Chesapeake Bay program should figure in whatever legislation ultimately becomes law.
August 2, 2007
“Let Farm Bill Cultivate Reform”
Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold should beware.
Wisconsin is expecting the 2007 federal farm bill to give American agriculture a new direction. The bill should suit a new era shaped by the global economy, growing demand for biofuels, a sense of urgency about conservation, and a need to rein in federal spending.
Yet, the House of Representatives this week adopted a farm bill that keeps agriculture stuck in the same old furrow - dependent upon subsidies, insulated from market demands - at a staggering cost of $286 billion over five years.
It's now up to the Senate to adopt the needed reforms.
Kohl and Feingold should help make it happen.
At stake is the safety net that protects farmers from steep declines in prices for their products. Consumers also depend on the net to ensure a consistent supply of food at reasonable and stable prices.
The safety net is dominated by a flawed system of subsidies, supply and price controls, and import restrictions.
Subsidies encourage too much production, which depresses prices, which requires more subsidies in a cycle now costing taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.
Furthermore, supply and price controls and import restrictions limit foreign competition and distort markets.
This year offers an opportunity for reform as Congress prepares a farm bill to govern policy for the next five years. The House, however, knuckled under to the vested interests in the status quo, principally large farmers and agribusinesses who benefit most from the subsidies, controls and import restrictions.
Four Wisconsin representatives - Democrat Ron Kind along with Republicans Paul Ryan, Tom Petri, and F. James Sensenbrenner - deserve credit for voting against the bill. The state's four other representatives, including Tammy Baldwin of Madison, should be held accountable for turning their backs on reform.
The Senate, which takes up the farm bill this fall, is aiming to improve on the House bill in at least two important ways. The Senate is likely to impose a stricter limit on the amount of government aid any individual farmer can collect, and it plans to expand aid for conservation measures.
But the Senate should look past what the House adopted to see what the House failed to adopt - a reform plan co-sponsored by Wisconsin's Kind and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
The Kind-Flake plan would make a forward-looking breakthrough. It would phase out subsidies in favor of a more cost-effective method of protecting farmers.
At the center of the proposal are risk management accounts, which the government would fund for farmers to tap during hard times or to buy crop insurance.
The plan would save $55 billion over 10 years and spread the aid to more and smaller farmers. It would also help U.S. farm policy comply with global trade agreements, which some subsidies violate. That would benefit U.S. exports.
At a minimum, the Senate should incorporate the principles of the Kind-Flake plan in its version of the farm bill.
It's time for American farmers to produce for market demands, not to collect a subsidy check.
August 7, 2007
“Pelosi's scorecard”
IT'S HARD not to root for a hometown player who has made it so big, but some San Franciscans have been a little disappointed lately with our representative, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
We're especially disappointed with the outcome of two recent big bills, one supposedly having to do with farms and the other supposedly having to do with energy. The Democratic-led House had an opportunity to push forward real solutions on long-standing problems that nearly every American recognizes as wasteful (in the case of trade-distorting, obesity-producing farm subsidies to often-wealthy commodity farmers) and destructive (continued government assistance and encouragement for fossil-fuel industries in the face of global warming). But when it came time to make changes, the Democrats only tinkered at the margins.
The energy bill cuts $16 billion in tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and requires electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from renewable fuels by 2020, but there's nary a word about increasing federal fuel economy standards. With the price of oil tipping over the $70-a-barrel mark, ending tax breaks for this industry is a much-needed change, but it's no rousing victory. Increased federal fuel standards are what will make a real difference in the fight against global warming. And the farm bill? It throws a little change at California's fruit-and-nut farmers, but without dismantling the subsidies that have landed America in hot water with the World Trade Organization, it might as well be called the "Continued Welfare for Wealthy Farmers" bill.
Which leads us back to Pelosi - are we disappointed with her failure to produce the results we know she agrees with because she has failed as a leader? Or does her record merely look disappointing because our expectations have been so high?
Pelosi has been lobbying hard to contain a diverse coalition, and she has had to make big compromises. Sustaining the subsidies in the farm bill was an unfortunate bid to keep farm-state Democrats happy (even President Bush pushed for larger reforms) and she has rightly taken much heat for it. But she may redeem that mistake with the energy bill - it does include a renewable energy requirement, and she has made no secret of her goal to include tougher efficiency standards in a conference bill when the House and Senate combine their versions. We hope her savvy tactical skills carry that goal through.
August 6, 2007
“House farm bill short of reform”
If the farm bill that the U.S. House passed in late July is approved by the Senate in September, President Bush should veto it as he has threatened.
The bill would continue to support, even increase in some instances, subsidies to producers of major crops.
While the House of Representatives made a stab at reform by restricting subsidies to those earning more than $1 million (the current limit is $2.5 million), the White House wanted a limit of $200,000 income averaged over three years.
The White House also objected to the House proposal to fund $4 billion in nutrition and food stamp programs with a tax on overseas businesses with subsidiaries in the United States.
With corn and soybeans earning record-high prices, now would be a good time to begin weaning farmers from subsidies. Instead, representatives gave their approval to about $42 billion in assistance to farmers, even after a recent study reported that $1.1 billion in subsidies went to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven-year period.
The Senate should approach the farm bill with genuine subsidy reform in mind. A joint committee then may be able to persuade the House to adopt stricter limits.
August 8, 2007
“If Senate can break farm bill away from the status quo, Americans could reap a more modern, more sensible policy”
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited Warm Springs in the 1920s, he was stunned by how poor Georgia farmers were, even before the Depression. Such personal exposure helped make the plight of rural America a New Deal priority in 1933.
But seven decades later, the system of price supports that Roosevelt created to help hardscrabble farmers survive has evolved into something very different. Most commodity supports now go to farmers who raise one of five crops - corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton or rice. The result is that 60 percent of growers get no aid at all, while fewer than one in 20 collected two-thirds of last year's $16 billion in federal subsidies.
Many growers who might like to try new crops are afraid to lose the safety net. But that safety net is imperfect because artificially high commodity prices mean little to a farm decimated by weather or other calamity.
The current farm bill expires next month, and when Congress convened, there was some hope that a smarter system might replace it. The Bush administration, which embraced the status quo in 2002, this time suggested capping support eligibility at $200,000 in adjusted gross income and moving toward a floor for farm revenues, not prices. The idea was to reserve help for those farmers and for those times of most need. A bill with similar reforms had drawn support in 2002 from Nancy Pelosi and others now in the Democratic leadership.
But Speaker Pelosi chose this year to defer to Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota, whose constituents collect $300 million a year in subsidies. Backed by a committee weighted with members also invested in the status quo, Peterson drafted a bill that did some fine things - expanding nutrition, conservation and rural development programs - but left subsidies almost untouched. Peterson's one bow to reform: a $1 million income cap on eligibility for federal largesse. He paid for spending increases by shoehorning in a tax provision that turned the farm bill - which historically splits members along regional lines, not party lines - into a partisan fight that the Democrats narrowly won.
That leaves it up to the Senate to reshape the commodities program. A vehicle to do so has been offered by Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, the majority whip, and Sherrod Brown, the first Ohioan on the Senate Agriculture Committee in 40 years. Much like the administration, Durbin and Brown want a federal policy that focuses on farm income.
They have proposed a program that would dovetail with private crop insurance to help farmers - especially small growers - survive a bad year. By shifting away from a few favored commodities, their proposal would free farmers to raise whatever they think will sell. It would also free up dollars for other agriculture-related programs - such as the food stamps and food banks that are so important to the needy in Greater Cleveland - and allow tax issues to be taken up systemically rather than willy-nilly.
Credit Brown and Durbin with fresh thinking. If their Senate colleagues are as creative, they can force the House to reconsider its error. Farm bills come along only every five years. The time for reform is now.
Centre Daily Times (State College, PA)
August 8, 2007 Wednesday
“Farm tours on tap”
A doctoral dissertation waits to be written -- if it has not already been defended -- on bumper sticker slogans. The discipline could be philosophy, popular culture or politics.
One of our favorites (after, of course, "Gods, guns and guts made this country ...") is, as many are, simple yet profound: "No farms, no beer."
That boils the issue down to a level most of us can understand, one at which even nonrural residents are affected. Where do you think the barley, malt and hops come from?
Got Yuengling?
The only time some of us think about farmers is when we find ourselves on the road behind a tractor or horse and buggy or when the price of milk or ground beef goes up.
If thoughts turned to agriculture every time an adult beverage were consumed -- especially in State College on a weekend night -- farm families may not be in the precarious position in which they always seem to find themselves: one bad season away from financial disaster or ruin.
Tuesday's Centre Daily Times was illustrative -- more so, we hope, than even the aforementioned bumper sticker. "State declares drought watch," read the lead page-one headline. "Officials warn corn crop could sustain significant damage."
It ran just above "Growing fields of energy," a story that told how "alternative fuels create new market opportunities for farmers."
And the opinion page featured a column by Brian Snyder, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, explaining how food prices are related to the cost of fuel: One more reason to, in another bumper-sticker phrase, "buy fresh, buy local."
These are exciting times and anxious times for farmers. The need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and our dependence on foreign oil is making ethanol -- we, as many, prefer a switchgrass base, rather than corn -- a popular fuel product.
But the farm bill before Congress, as previous farm bills have done, offers economic supports -- subsidies -- for the corporate and millionaire agribusiness enterprises and little for the small operators who need them most.
It offers little, advocates say, for organic farming. But then, even with its growing popularity as a sustainable way to produce safer food, organics is still looked upon by mainstream and large-scale corporate operators with a mixture of amusement and consternation.
As a National Public Radio report noted Tuesday morning, organic farmers who are trying to meet growing demand for chemical-free food are facing, among other financial hurdles, higher premiums for crop insurance than are farmers who use pesticides.
This is Local Food Week in Centre County. Planned festivities include the fun -- county commissioners will pair with local celebrity chefs to cook up something good at area farmers' markets -- and educational. Seventeen local farms can be visited as part of the PASA-sponsored Centre County Farm Tour.
Getting to know your producer and buying locally produced fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products not only help farmers, they are examples, as Snyder explained, of enlightened self-interest.
Think about it the next time you sit down to a meal -- or belly up to the bar.
The Republican-American (Waterbury, CT)
August 8, 2007
“Pork barrel runneth over: Rich farmers getting richer”
Taxpayers got irrefutable evidence that President Bush is no conservative when he signed the $248.6 billion Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, a pork-laden bill he had opposed only months earlier. He said the act would support struggling family farms, but it only accelerated their demise by directing 75 percent of federal farm aid to the richest 10 percent of farmers, if such conglomerates as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Caterpillar can be called farmers. California, for example, ranks 10th in farm subsidies, but only 9 percent of its farmers and ranchers ever saw a penny.
The farm bill's biggest yields were cronyism, corruption and fraud. The growers of just five commodities (corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice) got 92 percent of the subsidies. Most of the largess ended up in states well-represented on the House and Senate Agriculture committees. In 2003, drought aid went to farmers in hundreds of counties where no drought had occurred. The gov