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 government made more than $15 billion in wasteful or redundant payments, including $1.3 billion to people who don't even farm. The latter amount would have covered almost all of Waterbury's budget this year, plus wiped out its unfunded pension and retiree health-insurance liabilities.
A Government Accountability Office investigation found dead people collected an estimated $1.1 billion because 40 percent of grants were approved without official review and 38 percent were awarded despite vague or fraudulent documentation. The aid process is so fouled up the GAO said it has no clue how much the government actually overpaid.
With the farm bill up for renewal this year, reformist Democrats had a chance to demonstrate leadership, but instead are using the bill to buy votes. Shepherded through by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House bill spends a staggering $286 billion by leaving in almost all of the Republican excesses and adding a bunch of Democratic ones.
The new billions are directed toward districts tenuously held by freshman Democrats, toward districts represented by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, toward urban districts where little or no farming occurs, and toward districts with rich Democratic donors who grow profitable specialty crops and don't need subsidies. The bill would accelerate farm consolidation, direct even more money toward the wealthiest farmers, and discourage farmers from adopting more practical, efficient and environmentally sound business models.
Congress and the president get a chance to set farm policy once every five years. In 2002, they skinned taxpayers alive, and unless the Senate restores sanity to this process or the president wields his veto, they are on course to harvest a few more pounds of taxpayer flesh.
“Stay strong: Our position: Congress can't let politics derail its return to sound budgeting.”
Aug. 9--In the weeks before Congress adjourned for its annual August recess, the Democrats in charge pushed through measures that would raise taxes and/or cut spending to pay for expansions in government programs.
What are they, nuts?
Politically, they just might be. But those Democrats have been showing more fiscal sanity than Washington has seen in years.
After taking control of Congress in January, Democrats resurrected the sound principle of paying for spending increases or tax cuts with other spending reductions or tax hikes. During the 1990s, this kind of pay-as-you-go requirement helped turn chronic deficits into surpluses. But since Congress allowed it to expire in 2002, the national debt has swollen by more than $2 trillion, as lawmakers have borrowed to cover the cost of spending increases or tax cuts.
The Democrats' recommitment to pay-as-you-go has led party leaders in the Senate and House into politically dangerous territory. In recent weeks, the Senate passed a bill that would sharply increase federal tobacco taxes to cover the cost of expanding government health insurance for children. The House approved its own bill calling for a bigger expansion financed by cuts in Medicare along with tobacco-tax increases.
In addition, the House passed a farm bill that would increase taxes on U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations to raise more money for food stamps, and would trim crop insurance to pump more dollars into conservation programs. And the House endorsed legislation that would repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies and impose new fees on them to raise more money for energy conservation and alternative fuels.
This is not to suggest that the Democrats' proposals are ideal. Party leaders have been too quick to resort to tax increases over spending cuts. A bipartisan alternative to the House farm bill, for example, would have raised the money Democrats sought for food stamps by phasing out wasteful and inequitable farm subsidies.
But at least the pay-as-you-go rules have been forcing Democrats to set priorities, and come up with ways to pay for them. And that's the point. The absence of such discipline has added to the national debt and the burden weighing on future generations of Americans.
Yet some Democrats' resolve to stick with pay-as-you-go is weakening under an onslaught of Republican critics labeling them as tax-and-spend liberals. Some Democrats would prefer to use accounting tricks, or exempt some programs, to get around the rule. It's essential for fiscally responsible members of both parties to insist that sound, honest budgeting not fall victim to petty politics.
American families and businesses make adjustments all the time to match their spending with their income. It's only in Congress that this approach would be considered nutty.
Journal and Courier (Lafayette, Indiana)
“Bloated farm bill bad news for Hoosiers”
A significant block to Indiana's $1 billion welfare privatization efforts is lurking in the bloated farm bill that is working its way through Congress.
Flawed, fat and excessive, the House version is a $299 billion bill that governs everything from food stamps to farm subsidies.
Subsidies, originally crafted in the 1930s as a safety net for the American farmer, have a become a wasteful albatross around the necks of the American taxpayer, often given to those who do not need them.
In 2006, a nine-month investigative report by the Washington Post found that landowners who had planted nothing since 2000 received at least $1.3 billion in farm subsidies since 2001 -- all courtesy of the American taxpayer.
This year's House bill as written prohibits privatizing the handling of food stamp applications. If such restrictions aren't removed during negotiations between Senate and House versions of the bill, Hoosier taxpayers will be dealt a blow costing millions.
That's because Indiana has entered a contract that could be illegal should the bill pass.
Last year, a committee examined the Family and Social Services Administration, which provides Medicaid and welfare services to more than 1 million Hoosiers.
The committee was instructed to find ways the agency could run more efficiently.
It recommended the state outsource FSSA's current intake program, upgrade its technology and make changes to better serve FSSA clients, save taxpayer money and improve working conditions for overburdened workers.
Estimates put the 10-year cost to privatize at $1.6 billion. Compare that to the $2.1 billion it could cost to modernize the state agency on its own. Translation: Savings to the taxpayer.
Federal agencies that run the state benefit programs, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers food stamps, approved the deal last year. So in December, Daniels signed a contract with IBM to go forward.
Now the House federal farm bill stands in the way. Its restrictions could tube the privitization project and cost Hoosiers $125 million should the contract with IBM be broken.
Those who have for months complained about plans to privatize state government say they worry that services will decline and that state employees will find their jobs at risk.
Never mind the contract will likely create 1,000 new jobs in Indiana. Never mind that the 2,500 state workers will either remain with the state or take jobs with IBM at the same rate of pay and benefits.
The farm bill provides another stumbling block to making government more efficient instead of just more expensive.
August 8, 2007 Wednesday
“Counting on the Senate for further farm reform”
If we could measure the body-mass index of federal farm policy, we'd see a number that suggested an excess of flab and a dearth of lean muscle. But in the every-five-years effort to rewrite farm policy, the U.S. House of Representatives has not yet chosen the gym over the buffet line.
So now it will be up to the Senate - or, perhaps, the president, by way of a veto - to re-balance the effort.
The farm bill is a huge, multifaceted piece of legislation. In addition to crop subsidies, it includes food stamps, export programs, energy programs, rural development programs and more. It funds worthwhile efforts, including some subsidies to farmers. Because there's something in it for everyone - for strange bedfellows, odd couples, city cousins, country cousins - it's extremely difficult to amend in a substantive way. With Democratic control of the House in part hanging on how many federal calories individual members can bring home, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, from Minnesota's 7th District, was in a difficult spot. Consequently, the House made only some progress in reforming farm policy. Peterson should get credit for that progress. But it's not enough.
Farm policy reflects the idea that agriculture is so important to our nation that it requires protection. It's in the national interest to keep farmers in business. Because farmers are subject to such wide swings from year to year, from forces beyond their own control - weather, chiefly - the federal government helps manage some of the risk. That help takes a variety of forms, including direct subsidies.
The big problem is that too much subsidy goes to too many people who don't farm or who make enough money without a federal supplement. Given the prospect of continued high grain prices, thanks to the biofuels boom, the House missed out on an opportunity to reduce those subsidies.
As the Senate takes up the farm bill debate and as the Bush administration signals its intentions, we hope these priorities rise:
Tighter limits on subsidies for high-income farms and for people who don't farm. The marketplace, not the government, should be the greatest influence on what gets planted and on who ultimately stays in business and who doesn't. That idea has been a part of the critique of farm policy for so long it's a cliché. But for good reason. A safety net for farmers is good. A featherbed for people who don't need it is bad.
More emphasis on conservation. The ethanol boom - influenced by government on both the supply side and the demand side - is raising the incentive to pour on the chemicals, limit crop rotation and dig up dirt that, for the sake of water quality and erosion, might be better left undug.
Better recognition that farm policy really is about food - and not just about industrial production of crops for industrial production of food products. The local food movement, which seeks to encourage a more diverse local agriculture, easier, affordable access to locally grown vegetables and fruits, farmers markets and the like, has the potential to contribute to food security. The farm bill should support it more.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a former Nebraska governor and the son of an Iowa dairy farmer, says the House got a start on reforming farm policy - in a way that's ultimately better for farmers - but didn't go far enough. "I still think we can get a decent farm bill," he told us.
Advocates for the status quo on farm policy can make impassioned arguments in its defense - as can advocates for the status quo on energy policy or health care policy or poverty policy or anything else, for that matter. Those arguments tend to be narrow. That's understandable, but not OK. We're counting on the Senate to put those federal calories to better use.
August 10, 2007
“Help New York farmers”
Farmers in the Midwest have every reason to view the House agriculture spending bill as a major achievement. But farmers in the Northeast, and in New York particularly, have every reason to hold a different view. They are being shortchanged. It will be up to the Senate to set things right.
The House bill provides $33 billion for row crops like corn, wheat, soy, rice and cotton. But it gives short shrift to a conservation security program that would help farmers in New York who grow fruit, vegetables, field crops, beans and pasture grass. The same for dairy and livestock farmers.
Before the House acted, there was reason to hope that the new bill would gradually wean big farms off wasteful crop subsidies and replace the program with crop insurance that would help farmers weather market fluctuations. The Bush administration had also suggested phasing out subsidies, and would have denied them to farms with incomes of $200,000 or more. But the House voted to extend the subsidy program anyway, up to an income threshold of $1 million or more.
It's true, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi boasts, that the House bill contains major provisions that, among other things, reauthorize the food stamp program and increase spending for grassland preservation and wildlife habitat. But that money is hardly guaranteed. Republicans are upset because the House bill includes $4 billion in new taxes on multinational companies with U.S. subsidiaries. That could doom the bill in a House-Senate conference. Already the White House is sending veto signals if the House version winds up on Mr. Bush's desk.
As it happens, Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., had pushed for an amendment that would have phased out most subsidies, even as it provided more funds for food stamps and conservation programs without raising taxes. Called the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy amendment, it would reduce the deficit by up to $10 billion over 10 years and provide more funds to every congressional district in New York. Yet for reasons that are difficult to fathom, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport, voted against the amendment, even though farmers in her district stood to receive $15 million in added funding. By contrast, Rep. Mike McNulty, D-Green Island, voted for the amendment, which would provide $16 million more to farmers in his district.
Fortunately, Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton have expressed the need to improve on the House bill. Sen. Schumer wants more funds for land conservation programs. Sen. Clinton
also stresses the need to restore full funding for conservation and environmental programs. They would do well to embrace the Kind-Flake amendment as a major step toward crafting a farm bill that, in the end, would be good for farmers, good for taxpayers and good for New York.
August 10, 2007
“The Farmer's Nightmare?”
Only a few years ago, ethanol was just a line in a farm-state politician's stump speech -- something that went down well with the locals but didn't mean much to anyone else. Now, of course, ethanol is widely touted -- and, within reason, rightly so -- as an important part of America's search for energy independence and greener fuels. One day, we may be using cellulosic ethanol, the kind derived from grasses. For now, the ethanol boom is all about corn. And the real question is whether that will finally kill American farming as we know it.
Farmers in the corn belt have watched the coming of the ethanol boom with an ill-concealed excitement. They've invested in small-town processing plants, and they've happily seen the price of corn fluctuate steadily upward. But land prices have also moved steadily upward. Land set aside for conservation is being put back into production. And a bidding war has broken out over acreage, a war that farmers are sure to lose to speculative investors.
In short, the ethanol boom is accelerating the inequity in the rural landscape. The high price of corn -- and the prospect of continued huge demand -- doesn't benefit everyone equally. It gives bigger, richer farmers and outside investors the ability to outcompete their smaller neighbors. It cuts young farmers hoping to get a start out of the equation entirely. It reduces diversity in crops and in farm size.
For the past 75 years, America's system of farm subsidies has unfortunately driven farming toward such concentration, and there's no sign that the next farm bill will change that. The difference this time is that American farming is poised on the brink of true industrialization, creating a landscape driven by energy production and what is now called ''biorefining.'' What we may be witnessing is the beginning of the tragic moment in which the ownership of America's farmland passes from the farmer to the industrial giants of energy and agricultural production.
August 10, 2007
“Look before leaping; The rush to ethanol should be tempered by sober evaluation”
Ohio, with five corn-to-ethanol plants under construction, is about to enter a booming industry fueled mostly by government subsidies and hope.
The goals of cutting dependence on foreign oil and curbing pollution from carbon-based fuels are important, but whether corn ethanol is the way to achieve those goals is an open question.
The more Americans learn about corn ethanol, the more complicated this option seems and the less certain its benefits.
Ohio already has agreed to $450 million in state tax credits, grants, loans and bonds to help lure ethanol plants. The state would be wise not to pledge any more taxpayers' money until some of the more problematic aspects of ethanol production can be explored further.
The greatest rap against corn ethanol is that making it could consume more energy than the finished product contains. Partisans on opposite sides of the issue dispute the facts of the matter, but ethanol production unquestionably entails using diesel-fueled machinery for planting and harvesting, applying fertilizers and then burning energy at the plant that turns corn into ethanol.
Ethanol boosters claim that making ethanol from corn produces a 30 percent net gain in British thermal units and that making it from grass creates an energy gain of as much as 700 percent.
Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, however, recently reported that making ethanol from corn consumes 29 percent more energy from fossil fuels than the resulting ethanol contains. Their numbers, which take into account all the fuel inputs associated with ethanol production, are even worse for ethanol made from switch grass, wood biomass or sunflowers.
As more plants are developed and the industry matures, the technology and efficiency could improve, but policymakers should be sure to know the energy equation before committing additional public money to ethanol.
This fuel also comes with trade-offs in air-pollution equations. Ethanol burns more cleanly in cars than gasoline does, but producing it creates significant pollution, which could increase.
Part of the rush to accommodate ethanol includes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's recent move to raise the allowable level of ethanol-plant emissions, including volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, to 250 tons per year, from 100 tons. The Ohio EPA is considering adopting the same carved-out exception for ethanol plants. That would mean dirtier air around ethanol plants, in the interest of cleaner air in traffic-congested areas.
Beyond those direct ill effects, producing ethanol from corn affects the economy and the environment in countless indirect ways.
Increasing the land planted in corn increases fertilizer runoff and the pollution from farm machinery. In many cases, this industry also means less land set aside in conservation programs that are designed to keep streams cleaner.
Replacing other crops with corn can raise prices for products made with soybeans and wheat, and higher corn prices also can bring higher prices for the vast array of products made with corn byproducts, including near-ubiquitous corn-based sweeteners.
Some environmentalists say Brazil, which has achieved a great measure of energy independence by producing ethanol from sugar cane, is doing so at the expense of its nontropical forests.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, growing government support for ethanol production, paired with the massive subsidies for the biggest corn producers, are generating a frenzy of land speculation, lobbying and deal-making for production plants.
If the frenzy is based mainly on the subsidies and the lobbying power of corn growers, rather than on sound science that shows real advantages of making and using ethanol, then it will yield no benefit to the Americans who are paying all the costs.
Daily News Tribune (Waltham, MA)
August 13, 2007
“School Lunch, Globalized “
The federal farm bill recently approved by the House has been justly criticized for keeping in place a system that subsidizes millionaires and violates trade agreements. If there is to be reform down on the farm, it will have to come through the Senate.
But there are good things in the House bill, especially when it comes to nutrition and the poor. The bill boosts spending on food stamps and reverses a misguided 1996 bill that stopped indexing food stamps to inflation. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester, who spent a week living on the $3 per day the average food stamp recipient receives, championed the changes.
McGovern also led the effort to extend to some of the world's poorest children what has been America's most successful nutritional and educational programs: the school lunch.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 120 million children in the world's poorest countries do not attend school. Sometimes malnutrition keeps them home, and sometimes their governments or culture discourage children - especially girls - from attending school. This is doubly tragic for countries in the developing world: Children who are hungry don't learn and can't develop into productive citizens, and a countries with an uneducated population cannot thrive in a globalized economy.
School lunches address both these problems. They give parents a reason to send their children to school, and they give students the nutrition they need if they are to learn. The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program was designed to export this lesson. Through nonprofit charities and international organizations, it provides cash and food to schools that can do the most for some of the world's poorest children.
Named for two retired farm state senators, Sen. George McGovern and Sen. Bob Dole, the program done much good with limited resources. In fiscal 2005, it helped feed 3.4 million children in 15 countries on a budget of $91 million. For several years, Jim McGovern - a friend of George McGovern, but not a relative - has been trying to get the program the money it needs to do more.
This year, he succeeded, at least in the House. The farm bill adds $840 million to the Food for Education program over the next five years. The appropriation would rise to $140 million in fiscal year 2009, and reach $300 million by fiscal 2012.
While a significant expansion, that will still leave millions of hungry children around the world. But used strategically - the grants are geared toward countries and communities where the food will make a real difference in school attendance, especially among girls - the money can save lives, encourage education, and help some very dangerous countries become more stable.
Foreign aid has long been unpopular among American voters with limited horizons. But terrorist attacks and two wars should teach us that failed states and deprivation abroad can come back to hurt us here at home. Too much of American foreign policy is about sending guns and troops to places that are poor and troubled. Sending school lunches can pay off in healthier children, more stable nations and an improved American image abroad.
The Senate should fix the unfair, counterproductive subsidies and other flaws in U.S. farm policy, but should follow the House's lead when it comes to nutrition for poor people, both here and around the world.
August 13, 2007
“Plows and pollution”
Farm bill with funding for Chesapeake Bay escapes House, awaits Senate action
"EXCITING" AND "farm bill" are terms not often used together, but the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a farm bill with an allocation for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup has allowed those terms to be linked. That's because the lack of federal commitment to the bay has not only limited progress on the project, it has left the watershed states feeling abandoned and overburdened.
Depending on what happens as the bill winds through the Senate and across the president's desk, the House version earmarks $212 million over five years for the bay's restoration. The bill also provides access to another $292 million over the same period through other conservation programs.
This is good--even exciting--news for the individuals and groups who have devoted themselves to the bay's recovery. For years advocates have said that researchers know what needs to be done to save the bay, and that the necessary technology is available and ready to go. All that's needed is a consistent cash flow to get the job done.
The 2010 deadline for removing the bay from the EPA's dirty waters list is fast approaching, and the prospects for meeting that goal remain dim. All the so-called report cards show progress has virtually stalled. But between the farm bill commitment, Virginia lawmakers' generous budget allocation, and Maryland's ongoing programs, the appearance of a good faith effort is finally beginning to emerge.
Washington's wrangling over the farm bill's reauthorization this year has shed new light on how the billions upon billions contained in the bill are spent. The biggest question: Why are we paying astronomical agricultural subsidies to mega-farm operations when the money could be better spent on the myriad projects--like the bay restoration--that are crucial to the nation's environmental health?
If our leaders were indeed fearless when it comes to their dealings with the agricultural lobby, they would do away with the waste and reallocate the farm bill pie. To put it in perspective, the Associated Press reports that of the $286 billion farm bill, two-thirds, or $190 billion, goes to food stamps and other nutrition programs. Another $42 billion is spent on farm subsidies and other farm aid. $29 billion is set aside for "rural development, research and energy programs." Finally, $25 billion, or 8.7 percent, is spent on conservation programs.
In the bay's case, a huge contributor to its pollution is agricultural runoff. Farmers are very aware that fertilizers, pesticides, and manure from their farms are finding their way into waterways and are at least in part responsible for the bay's ill-health, and they have taken measures to cut back on their contribution. But they can't be expected to do more without the education and funding they need. It's about time Congress realized that this is the sort of worthwhile purpose a farm bill should have.
August 12, 2007
“Farm Bill: Saving grace”
The U.S. Senate must redeem Congress' sorry record on the farm bill. After a horrible, Nancy Pelosi-led fold by the House of Representatives on reform, the Senate stakes are high for consumers, public health and Washington's diverse farm economy.
The urgency of a healthier food system has never been clearer to local public health officials, activists and citizens. Witness the crowds at farmers markets, schools' efforts to promote healthier foods and the restaurants' local food offerings. And, on the dark side, the obesity and diabetes crises.
As King County's Acting Food Policy Council recently said, the farm bill will have "significant impacts on the health of our local communities." The council recommended, among other things, more emphasis on land and soil conservation, improvements in the food stamp program, and more funding for low-income families and seniors to buy fresh produce at farmers markets.
The House bill attempted to expand and initiate many good efforts along such lines. But the Democratic leadership, with ample and unhealthy support from farm-area representatives in both parties, ran away from fundamental reform. The House scandalously failed to make any serious inroads into the huge, wasteful, and unhealthy subsidies for the relatively limited numbers of farmers growing corn, soybeans and a few other commodity crops. The wildly distorted subsidy program spends most of its money in just seven states and supports producers who are rich or getting rich on the ethanol boom or, in many cases, are dead.
Political pressures could also block Senate actions on reforms proposed by health experts, environmentalists and, to a healthy degree, the Bush administration. Unless they hear a great deal from constituents, Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell may hesitate on reforms that would benefit the whole state (including numerous growers of fruits and vegetables), just to appease Eastern Washington wheat growers on subsidies.
One of the key reform groups, Environmental Defense, is calling for a new farm-income safety net system that would better meet international trade rules and provide funds when farmers really need help. Environmental Defense also advocates more support for voluntary conservation programs and programs that encourage fruit and vegetable production. Without such changes, the Senate and the House should expect President Bush to make good on his veto threats, for everyone's health.
August 18, 2007
“U.S. Farm Subsidies: Food for thought”
Bread for the World, an anti-hunger group, isn't often on the same side of an issue as the pro-globalization, conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation.
Toss Oxfam, Environmental Defense, and Taxpayers for Commonsense into the mix, and you've got one of the more diverse coalitions you'll see these days in Washington.
Too bad the House of Representatives wasn't paying attention when the farm bill came up for a vote last month.
A wide range of lobbyists has been working the Hill to persuade Congress to modernize U.S. farm subsidies, which disproportionately aid five crops in less than 30 congressional districts. More than half of all payouts go to large commercial entities, not the fabled "family" farmer the program was intended to help.
Since 1995, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org/farm/) has been poring over subsidies by zip code to determine who gets what. It's hard to ignore the wild inequities.
What was intended as a safety net for the nation's breadbasket has turned into welfare for some of the richest agricultural producers. That needs to change.
Still, Congress is reluctant to reform the system, which dates, in part, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Ignoring a solid proposal to overhaul crop support from Reps. Ron Kind (D., Wis.) and Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), the House chose merely to cap the income of current subsidy recipients - at an astonishing $1 million. This would exclude only 7,000 recipients. (The White House supports a $200,000 cap.)
The House did sweeten the pot for conservation, renewable energy, nutrition and specialty crops - all good steps, which confronted reform-minded lobbyists with a tough choice. Should they settle for these modest gains, or keep pushing for systemic change against long odds?
They should keep pushing. The Senate can and must do better than a $286 billion bill that "promotes protectionism, overproduction and market interference," as Taxpayers for Commonsense says.
The House bill still sends half of all farm money to about 20 congressional districts; stymies thousands of farmers wanting to protect land, water and wildlife habitat; and shortchanges fruit and vegetable growers. The massive subsidies leave the United States vulnerable to accusations at world trade talks of market manipulation.
The White House isn't happy, either. Under a presidential veto threat, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns urges the Senate to "take another course," when debate begins next month.
Beyond subsidy reform, the Senate should increase domestic hunger assistance, promote healthful school lunches, boost rural prosperity, and encourage sustainable farming.
A wide coalition supports change. The Senate needs only the courage to lead.
“Plow This Bill Under: Farm subsidies shouldn't go to millionaire landowners"
It goes against the grain for farm subsidies to be handed out to the rich. But that's precisely what the House version of the next farm bill does -- it continues big handouts to wealthy farmers and landowners. It's going to be up to the Senate to get it right when Congress resumes next month.
Under the current farm bill, which expires this year, subsidies to farmers are cut off if their yearly incomes are above $2.5 million. The $286 billion, five-year House bill lowers that limit to $1 million -- an improvement, but far higher than the $200,000 limit suggested by President Bush and the $250,000 cap contained in a "Fairness Amendment" that was defeated on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't support tougher reforms because she was trying to protect some first-term farm-state Democrats.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that lowering the limit to $1 million will only cut 3,175 farm owners from the program. And Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, which works to reform farm policy, said the cap will be easy to dodge because the House retained too many loopholes. "A millionaire with an enormous farm, half a brain and a cut-rate accountant will easily avoid" the cap, he said.
The need for change is clear. Just 10 percent of America's farmers claimed 66 percent of the farm subsidies between 2002 and 2005, according to Cook's group. Most payments went to just five crops: wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice and corn. A program started to help small farmers during the Depression did not remain true to its mission. It now favors large agribusinesses, landowners who don't farm and others who don't need any help. Former Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen, for instance, received nearly $79,000 in conservation subsidies from 2003 to 2005 for land he owns in Arkansas.
The last hope for the Fairness Amendment is the Senate. Along with the lower cap, that plan would limit subsidies to $250,000 per year. And subsidies would only go to those who actively farm. It also channels more money to conservation, nutrition and other programs. Another proposal co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would change how subsidies are paid out to make sure relief goes to the farmers who most need it.
We need a smarter, fairer farm bill, not one that helps rich people harvest more riches.
August 23, 2007
“Still plowing old ground: Politically expedient House Farm Bill fails to plant meaningful and necessary reforms"
Democrats in the House of Representatives again have made it clear their priority is politics over policy, re-election over reason.
The $286 billion Farm Bill, which will be debated by members of the Senate after their August recess, is a textbook example of disingenuous leadership.
It would continue to disproportionately prop up Midwest farmers and send billions of dollars a year to the wealthiest growers of five commodities - cotton, rice, corn, wheat and soybeans.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, managed to include more money for California specialty crop growers than ever - $1.5 billion over five years - but the Farm Bill remains rooted in Depression-era subsidies primarily benefiting the same old interests.
The 2007 bill is more a tool for retaining power in Washington than a fair and thoughtful approach to the evolving nature of U.S. - and California - agriculture. How else do you explain House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco so strongly supporting legislation that so stubbornly preserves the status quo?
She promised reform but delivered the same old partisan rewards.
Nine Democratic representatives elected for the first time in 2006 are on the House Agriculture Committee.
Pelosi supported crop subsidies that would benefit their constituents instead of legislation that finally would place meaningful emphasis on healthier foods, sustainable growing practices, conservation and more market competition.
The committee's members represent just 10 percent of the House membership, but during the past five years, their districts have reaped 42 percent of crop subsidies.
Cardoza is a committee member and, according to an analysis of the Environmental Working Group, obtained $96 million for California's 18th Congressional District. His specialty crop provision should add to that total if it's included in the Senate bill.
This Farm Bill has damaged Pelosi's credibility.
It also failed to significantly lower the ceiling for individuals receiving farm subsidies, dropping it to $1 million in adjusted gross income.
The proposal only would impact 3,100 individuals, saving just $55 million a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
As a counterpoint, the Bush administration has proposed a more aggressive land-conservation plan and tried to end such payments to anyone earning above $200,000 annually.
The Farm Bill, an American institution seemingly impervious to meaningful change, must be reauthorized every five years. October is the deadline.
If the legislation changed this little in the House - where representation is based on population - what chance will it have for meaningful reform in the Senate, where California's senators have no more power than Nebraska's or Iowa's?
Cardoza is worried the funding he included for nut, fruit and vegetable farmers will evaporate when the House and Senate versions are reconciled.
Cardoza's approach might have added to the bill's cost, but at least it represented more fairness and awareness.
Given a mandate for change and the opportunity to do something different, House Democrats essentially have maintained a 75-year-old crop-subsidy relic.
There's no reason to think the Senate will harvest anything better.
“The Farm Bill needs to feed more people”
You are forgiven for thinking that the federal Farm Bill is all about farms.
It isn't. It's about feeding the nation's hungry, too.
This fall, Congress must reauthorize the 2002 Farm Bill. The reauthorization has implications far beyond this nation's farms, reaching into the homes of many of this country's poor and near-poor. That's because the Farm Bill also contains funding for the major programs, such as food stamps, that feed the hungry.
In 1933, when a far greater proportion of this county's population was engaged in agriculture than now, the first version of the Farm Bill was passed, called the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Its purpose was to ensure growers that prices paid to them would not fall below a set level. From the 1930s through the 1940s, subsequent farm bills focused on protecting farmers and supporting the country's rural economy.
Over the years, the bill expanded into a mammoth, omnibus piece of legislation that included programs to address agricultural trade, conservation, promotion, credit, rural development and research and education.
Beginning in the 1960s, however, each Farm Bill's focus expanded further to include food and nutrition programs for this country's poor. They ranged from food stamps to what's called the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which distributes food in bulk to states that then distribute that food to hungry individuals and families through food banks and soup kitchens. More than half of the last Farm Bill -- passed in 2002 with a price tag of $286 billion -- was dedicated to paying for those food assistance programs.
In the 1990's, though, the movement to reform welfare brought limits on the food stamps' nutrition assistance programs. Eligibility and payments were curtailed.
So while the food stamp portion of the 2002 Farm Bill brought $160 million to the state last year in benefits for those 160,300 Mainers who qualify for them, those payments weren't enough to stem the growing hunger in this state. At an average allotment of $1 per meal, the benefits are insufficient; the 1990's reform provisions also cut families off of food stamps when they reached an income level that still wasn't enough to pay for feeding those families. Unintended consequence of that reform: a disincentive to get a job and get off food stamps.
The 2002 Farm Bill expires later this year. The House of Representatives recently passed its version of the 2007 Farm Bill, with support from both Maine Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud, who are Democrats. The House bill contains important provisions to strengthen food assistance programs, with a $4 billion increase over the last Farm Bill's outlays for those programs. The additional spending would expand both who is eligible for food stamps and the actual benefits a family can receive. Those are welcome advances for Maine's -- and this country's -- hungry.
Now, the focus shifts to the Senate. When Congress returns from its summer recess, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and their colleagues will consider several Senate versions of the Farm Bill. Neither Snowe nor Collins have so far committed to anything concrete that they'd like to see in the bill beyond a general support for food and nutrition programs. Yet already the issue is shaping up to be a partisan battle: The House bill funds increases in the food assistance programs with a tax on foreign corporations operating in the U.S., and the president has threatened to veto any bill with that provision. Most Republican House members similarly condemned the tax.
As we documented in our seven-part editorial series on hunger this summer (http://centralmaine.mainetoday.com/hunger.html), hunger in Maine is growing. Food stamps don't cover the cost of feeding a family, nor are they available to all who need them. Maine had the highest percentage growth rate of hungry people in the country between 2000 and 2005. Five years ago, we had 430 food pantries in this state; now we have 600. According to the University of Maine's Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, from 2002 to 2005 the number of Maine households receiving food stamps increased by almost 50 percent; nationally, food stamp use increased by only 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. Finally, the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program's food deliveries to Maine have been cut in half from 2003 levels.
As our two senators consider their positions, we hope and trust that, as has often been the case, they will set aside partisan considerations and, instead, recognize the pressing need among their constituents for help in getting food to their families.
The Farm Bill is a crucial and effective tool in feeding the hungry, but will only be able to adequately address the growing need in our state and country with expanded funding. This is not a partisan issue, an ideological issue or an issue of our nation's capacity -- it is simply a matter of finding the will to do the right thing. We hope Snowe and Collins agree.
August 27, 2007
“Our Turn; Shifting U.S. food aid would help save lives”
Crazy farm policies in the United States, and the crop subsidies that lie at their heart, create all sorts of distortions in the U.S. marketplace.
Far from being a safety net for the American family farmer, protectionist tariffs and subsidies amount to corporate welfare for some of the nation's biggest businesses.
When the Agriculture Department pays $1.1 billion in subsidies to dead people between 1999 and 2005, as a recent Government Accountability Office report disclosed, it's merely a nuisance to American taxpayers. But in poor countries, U.S. farm subsidies can be a matter of life and death.
Cheap, subsidized imports from the United States undercut farmers trying to build a domestic agricultural market in famine-prone areas of the globe. And without that market and people trying to take back the desert, those countries remain in a perpetual state of vulnerability and dependency.
Even well-intentioned efforts to donate American food aid in poverty-stricken nations can have unintended, negative consequences. So CARE, one of the world's largest charities, plans on phasing out its participation in a government program that provides subsidized American agricultural products.
"If someone wants to help you, they shouldn't do it by destroying the very thing that they're trying to promote," a CARE official told the New York Times.
It's a controversial move in the nonprofit sector, because the proceeds from the subsidized food sales help finance the anti-poverty budgets of humanitarian relief organizations. There is, however, a better way.
President Bush has proposed taking $300 million from the traditional food aid budget and instead giving it to the relief organizations to buy food directly from local farmers. That won't please the corporate interests that feed at the farm subsidy trough. But in the long run, it just might keep more people from starving.
September 3, 2007
“Welfare for farmers”
Sometime after this Labor Day weekend, the Senate will take up that legislative abomination known as the $300 billion farm bill, which the House passed in July.
It would be nice if members of the upper chamber opted for a more reform-minded approach on agricultural policy than did their colleagues in the House. But that's the stuff of dreams.
At the very least, however, the Senate - led by Nevada's Harry Reid - should heed the White House's advice and get tougher on weaning wealthy farmers off the federal dole.
Under the expiring bill, farmers who earn as much as $2.5 million a year are eligible for handouts. The House version of the new farm bill reduces the threshold to $1 million.
But the president and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns want an even stricter limit - $250,000.
"We've got to do something more robust on payment limits," Mr. Johanns, a former governor of Nebraska, told farmers during a speech last week in Illinois.
This would all seem pretty basic. Why should taxpayers be in the business of providing subsidies to corn growers or soybean growers who make 20 times that of the average American family? That's insane.
Unfortunately, insanity has been the primary characteristic of the federal government's foray into agriculture for more than 70 years. And farm state lawmakers who covet re-election more than rational public policy too often carry the day.
Bob Stallman, a Texas rice farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, listened to Mr. Johanns' Illinois address. Predictably, he opposes efforts to slow the farmer gravy train, saying, "We believe farm policy should support agricultural production and not some subjective and social goals."
But isn't showering farmers - especially rich ones - with Washington welfare in order to protect them from price or harvest fluctuations an example of attempting to achieve a "social goal"?
Mr. Johanns is correct. Abolishing the payment limits altogether should be the ultimate goal, but in the meantime, the president should stick to his pledge to veto any farm bill that allows producers who gross $1 million a year to suckle up to the federal teat.
September 3, 2007
“Farm bill lays an egg”
Every five years Congress passes a farm bill. Each time it promises to take a scythe to billions of dollars in subsidies to corporate farmers who don't need them. But somehow the reform effort always seems to wilt like corn in a summer drought.
The House in particular has stuck like a burr on a dog to this wasteful pattern. Earlier this summer, the House adopted a $286 billion, five-year farm plan that would continue to reward large, well-to-do growers even if they're not losing money because of weather, weeds, bugs or other vagaries of nature. A large portion of subsidy moolah will continue to be showered on corn farmers, the same corn farmers who are raking in record profits thanks to the ethanol-fueled demand for their crop.
The legislation made a token cut in the government's ludicrous income limit for commodity subsidies. Under the bill, the annual income cap for farmers to be eligible for direct crop payments would drop - from the current $2.5 million to $1 million. In a nation where the median family income is about $48,500, this isn't reform. It's an outrage.
Real reform, of course, would mean junking this welfare for the agricultural rich in favor of a system that hews to the purposes that led to the creation of the original crop subsidy programs during the Depression.
The idea was to help farmers in bad years so they could keep farming and be able to produce food in the future. Stabilizing farm incomes and production would also work to smooth out prices for consumers, eliminating painful volatility. Instead, what was supposed to be a helping hand has become an entitlement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has talked tough on reform in the past, yet she went along with the proposed pillaging of the taxpayers. In the process, she turned her back on a promising reform effort led by Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat.
His Fairness in Farm and Food Policy proposal would have begun seriously ratcheting down eligibility for crop payments and come much closer to creating a need-based system.
The fairness proposal would have saved as much as $10 billion over five years, money that could then have been used for worthier parts of the massive farm bill - increasing funding for land preservation and initiatives to encourage less environmentally damaging farming techniques, more money for food stamps and other help for the poor and the elderly and more fresh, local fruits and vegetables in school lunches.
The House didn't entirely ignore those worthy initiatives. Representatives boosted money for them, too. But the House bill threw so much money at crop welfare for non-needy farmers that it had to create an arcane new tax on foreign companies operating in the U.S. to make up $4 billion to pay for the good parts of the bill. The new tax has President Bush properly threatening a veto.
Food stamps and other aid to the needy and sound conservation programs shouldn't have to go begging when money is being thrown at agricultural barons who can more than support themselves.
It will be up to the Senate to bring some old-fashioned horse sense to the farm bill. Senators should follow the outline of Kind's fairness-in-farming blueprint.
Farm program reform is not a party issue, and it shouldn't even be a farm-state-vs.-urban-state issue. Two-thirds of the crop subsidies go to only 10 percent of all farmers, in years when they don't need them as well as when they do. It is time to plow that approach under for good.
Congress ought to junk welfare for the agricultural rich in favor of a system that hews to the goals of the first crop subsidy programs.
September 3, 2007
“Taxpayers deserve reform of outdated farm policy”
At the Kansas City Board of Trade on Wednesday, wheat for December delivery closed at $7.91 per bushel, yet another record. Corn prices are soaring. So are prices for cattle.
This is a banner year for the farm sector. Last week, the Department of Agriculture predicted net farm income would hit a record of more than $87 billion this year, a stunning increase of nearly 50 percent over last year's number.
Meanwhile in Washington, the House has passed another five-year farm bill that would perpetuate a system of subsidies that links payments with production, encourages farm consolidation and funnels the most money to the biggest operations.
Farming is notoriously cyclical; bad years often follow good ones, and even this year's rosy outlook is tempered by an 8.5 percent rise in estimated production costs.
Yet the House version of the bill, with a five-year price tag of $286 billion, does little to reform today's outdated farm policy.
Currently, for example, people with incomes of more than $2.5 million a year can't receive subsidies. The White House wanted the cap lowered to $200,000, which is still within the top 2.3 percent of incomes.
The House lowered the cap, but only to $1 million.
Now the bill goes to the Senate. In a year when farm income is expected to hit another record, the Senate should do a more responsible job of fixing a system that allocates two-thirds of agricultural subsidies to 10 percent of the farmers.
In its zeal to help certain farmers, Congress should remember its duty to protect taxpayers.
“Bigger farms or cleaner streams? Senators face a choice in 2007 farm bill.”
September 8, 2007 - In 2003 more than 900 Minnesota farmers requesting help for conservation projects were turned away for lack of federal funds, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. Its farm subsidy database can be found at ewg.org.
In 2005 the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent more than $100 million in crop subsidies to southern Minnesota, including $1.7 million to a single corporate farm. Meanwhile, scores of farmers who wanted help converting to organic and conservation agriculture were turned away for lack of funds.
This is a terrible expression of national priorities and an indefensible misuse of the taxpayer's money. It must change as Congress finishes work on major farm legislation this fall, and Minnesota's two U.S. senators are in a position to help as action moves to the Senate this month.
Very modest changes in the big farm programs could give Minnesota cleaner trout streams, improved wildlife habitat and a healthier food supply.
One version of the 2007 farm bill, assembled by Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, has cleared the U.S. House with important new funding for certain conservation programs and a stab at capping subsidy payments. But to get his bill through the House Agriculture Committee, Peterson had to satisfy a mob of competing industry and regional interests. As a result, its payment caps are inadequate and its funding for certain conservation programs is insufficient.
The Bush administration has proposed a novel and intriguing device to limit payments to large farmers, but Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in a recent interview that the White House would also support a fine bipartisan plan to cap payments that has been proposed in the Senate. That concept, developed by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, would cap commodity payments at $250,000 per farmer. That would free up billions of dollars for conservation assistance, valuable nutrition programs -- or simply reducing the stubborn federal budget deficit.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, has drafted an ambitious plan to consolidate and enlarge federal conservation programs in a way that would reduce paperwork for farmers and reduce the backlog of applicants for conservation assistance. Senate insiders say that Harkin will face a struggle getting that plan out of his own committee, which has plenty of advocates for traditional commodity subsidies. But in the interest of a more balanced and ecological farm policy, he deserves the support of Minnesota Sens. Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar.
Back in May, advocates hoped this might be the year for dramatic reform of federal farm subsidies -- crop prices are strong, farm income is high, and an unusual coalition of budget hawks and ecumenical groups were putting the heat on lawmakers. Now that lawmakers have entered a busy fall session, it appears that radical change is unlikely. But that doesn't mean progress is impossible.
September 3, 2007
“Stop subsidizing unhealthy foods”
California has been the top producer of the nation's healthiest foods since before Ronald Reagan was governor. But you'd never know it by looking at the federal farm bill, which is up for renewal this fall.
The lack of support for programs encouraging healthier eating habits is contributing to the nation's obesity crisis, which in turn is sending health care spending through the roof.
Congress should shift priorities in the next five-year farm bill to stop subsidizing unhealthy foods and to start helping schools purchase the healthy fruits and vegetables children should be eating. The bill should encourage all Americans to practice better nutrition. Until now, farm bills have done the opposite.
Federal policies for decades have financed overproduction of grains and oilseed crops in the Midwest, fueling the production of cheap sweeteners and the fats and oils that are making Americans fat. This poor use of taxpayer dollars must stop.
The farm bill instead should put money into getting more fruit and vegetable products before consumers and into schools.
California's fruit and vegetable growers can meet this need.
September 21, 2007
“Keep up the fight on subsidies"
Our position: The White House's leadership is critical to win reforms in the latest farm bill.
Sep. 21--The resignation this week of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns came at a critical time, with the Senate in the middle of crafting its version of the next five-year farm bill. Mr. Johanns was spearheading the Bush administration's effort to cut back on the costly, inequitable and inefficient system of federal farm subsidies.
While the administration has not proposed phasing out subsidies -- the ideal policy -- it has called for some worthy improvements, such as ending handouts to farmers making more than $200,000 a year. The House largely rejected reform in its farm bill, but there's still hope for the Senate.
President Bush has named Mr. Johanns' deputy, Charles Conner, to be the acting secretary. It's vital that Mr. Conner keep up the pressure for reform in farm policy.
September 24, 2007
“Keep up push for farm reform”
The timing of last week's resignation of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns was unfortunate. His departure to run for a vacant Senate seat in Nebraska came as showdown votes loom on the nation's next farm bill, which will guide farm policy for the next five years.
His deputy, Charles Conner, was tapped as a temporary replacement. Let's hope Conner shares Johanns' understanding of the need for fundamental change in farm policy as American agriculture retools to produce energy as well as food.
Growing crops for energy is raising prices and introducing new income streams for farmers. But it also increases the temptation to farm marginal land susceptible to erosion. Most farm payments should be targeted toward promoting stewardship, rewarding farmers who protect the nation's soil and water.
Johanns consistently pushed for limits on commodity payments to the wealthiest farmers, a step in the right direction but resisted by the most powerful farm organizations. Subsidies paid to corn, soybean, wheat, rice and cotton growers have accelerated the trend toward bigger and bigger farms, discouraged experimentation with other types of crops and sapped vitality from rural communities.
Top aides in the Bush administration haven't exactly earned a collective reputation for competence. Johanns, who grew up on a dairy farm near Osage, Iowa, stood out for his willingness to work hard himself to make the government work better. He led his department in an unprecedented outreach effort to gather citizen input on the farm bill, conducting 52 farm-bill forums around the country.
Conner appears well-prepared to take up the cause. He led many of the farm-bill listening sessions and worked closely with Johanns in developing the USDA's farm-bill recommendations. He'll need every ounce of Johanns' quiet tenacity and then some to help push through a farm bill that better positions American agriculture for a new era.
September 29, 2007
“Heed agriculture secretary and limit farm programs”
AGRICULTURE Secretary Mike Johanns' tenure at the Agriculture Department was brief; he was appointed in 2005 and recently decided to step down to run for the Senate.
But he deserves credit for focusing on the single worst feature of federal farm policy: Most subsidy payments go to the biggest and wealthiest operators.
Many of the lucky recipients aren't farmers at all, as most people understand the term.
In public appearances, Johanns would often display a map of New York City's Manhattan Island. The map was peppered with red dots, each marking the address of a person receiving farm subsidies. Several larger dots show the people receiving more than $250,000 a year.
Currently, recipients with incomes of more than $2.5 million cannot receive payments, which is far too high. With debate on a new farm bill looming earlier this year, the Bush administration proposed a drop in the income cap to $200,000.
Johanns pointed out that lowering the cap to $200,000 would affect only 38,000 recipients -- people who are in the top 2.3 percent of income-tax filers. As Johanns put it, it is time for them to "graduate."
He was right, and the next agriculture secretary should continue to press for that.
But the House, in passing its version of the bill, rejected Johanns' proposal. House members agreed to lower the cap, but only to $1 million, still absurdly high.
Given the porous nature of farm-policy restrictions, that cap can also be easily evaded. The legislation awaits action in the Senate, which surely can do better.
No matter which party captures the White House next year, the incoming administration should press for rational limits on federal farm programs. If more people are allowed to "graduate," maybe New York City would have fewer "farmers."
October 20, 2007
“CORN AND THE BAY”
The Senate is having great trouble matching a House proposal to help farmers cut the polluting flow of fertilizers into the Chesapeake Bay because senators are spending so much money encouraging farmers to grow crops that require heavy use of fertilizers.
Call it the curse of corn, exaggerated by the environmental illusion of corn-based ethanol.
Despite grand promises to the contrary, the farm bill emerging from the Senate includes only a small reduction in unnecessary subsidies for a booming industry. Yet, in the admirable cause of living within its budget, the Senate bill may run short of funds to offset the damage to the bay and other waterways caused by heavy corn cultivation.
If that weren't insult enough to the fragile ecology of precious national waterways, energy legislation pending in Congress would offer additional financial incentives to produce crops that can be converted into ethanol, which at this point is corn.
As Senate committees begin tackling the farm bill in earnest today, senators would best serve their constituents and the nation as a whole if they quit moving at cross purposes.
Farmers are vital to the economy and the ecology, and deserve a financial safety net to help them cope with the vagaries of nature. But they shouldn't be encouraged to plant every possible acre in corn. Corn will always be valuable as food for people and animals, and has a transitional role in the development of ethanol before other sources become available. Yet it is far from the miracle source of fuel that some in Congress claim.
Corn-based ethanol can never be produced in sufficient quantity to totally replace fossil fuels, and offers only marginal savings on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet federal policies have spurred an 18 percent increase in American farmland devoted to corn over the past year alone, and that's not healthy for the overused soil or the overburdened waterways.
Two recent reports warned of the danger to the Chesapeake Bay caused by heavy plantings of corn, which requires a lot of fertilizer. Nitrogen from the fertilizer washes into bay tributaries, feeding algae that cover the water surface and choke out life below.
The House version of the farm bill - a subsidy-bloated product, to be sure - nonetheless included the largest infusion of funds for bay recovery ever: $504 million over five years, including $212.5 million aimed specifically at helping farmers use cover crops and other strategies to keep fertilizer out of the water. Prospects for a matching provision in the Senate bill look uncertain at best.
If there has to be a choice, it should be to help farmers truly improve their environment, not encourage them to raise a crop that if left unchecked will only speed ecological and thus economic destruction of their way of life.
October 5, 2007
“Give farm bill new direction”
Oct. 4--Wanted: Champions of farm policy reform to stand up and be counted in the U.S. Senate.
Wisconsin Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, please apply.
By threatening to veto the $286 billion farm bill passed by the House, President Bush has given the Senate a warning worth heeding.
The United States needs a farm policy to give American agriculture a new direction, suited to a new era shaped by the global economy, growing demand for biofuels, an urgent need for conservation, and an imperative to rein in federal spending. Judged by that test, the House bill was a dismal failure. Now it 's the Senate 's turn.
At stake is the safety net that protects farmers from steep price declines. But also at stake is the cost to taxpayers of support programs, the prices consumers pay for food, and U.S. ability to sell agricultural products abroad.
The Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday began debating and rewriting its version of the farm bill, to govern agriculture for the next five years. Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is aiming for a bill that would be better than its House counterpart. But Harkin 's vision still falls far short of what 's needed.
Moreover, Harkin is having trouble assembling a consensus to go even as far as he wants.
The nation needs more senators to demand change, as Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind tried to do in the House.
Kind, a Democrat, joined with GOP Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona to promote a plan that would have phased out wasteful subsidies in favor of a more cost-effective method of protecting farmers.
Subsidies encourage too much production, which depresses prices, which requires more subsidies in a cycle that cost taxpayers more than $20 billion in 2005.
The Kind-Flake plan would have saved $55 billion over 10 years and spread the aid to more and smaller farmers. It also would have helped U.S. farm policy comply with global trade agreements, which some subsidies violate.
In the Senate, Republican Dick Lugar of Indiana championed the same reform that Kind-Flake proposed. But he found few allies.
The Kind-Flake-Lugar plan no longer stands a chance of becoming law in this farm bill. But there remains an opportunity for substantial reform -- if more senators are willing to stand up to the lobbies vested in the status quo.
Wisconsin Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, representing America 's Dairyland, should lead the call for reform.
Reform should include a phase-out of the dairy subsidy called the Milk Income Loss Contract, which Kohl helped to craft. The MILC subsidy served a purpose when it was created. But as the Kind-Flake-Lugar plan demonstrated, MILC can be replaced by a more cost-effective support system that encourages farmers to produce for consumer demand rather than to collect a government check.
Moving American agriculture into a freer marketplace that benefits taxpayers, consumers and farmers should be the theme of the 2007 farm bill.
October 8, 2007
“This little piggy “
That obese, waddling swine known as the farm bill just got bigger.
Apparently, $280 billion over five years just wasn't enough in handouts and other welfare for agricultural producers.
So on Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee magically conjured up an additional $16 billion for farmers by redefining the rules for tax shelters.
In other words, by raising taxes on many businesses.
About $5 billion of the extra money will go toward the creation of a weather-related agricultural disaster fund. The rest will go to "tax credits for conservation, rural development and other farm programs," The Associated Press reports.
It's worth noting that the Environmental Working Group, which has angered agricultural welfare queens by published a detailed list of subsidy recipients, released a study this week pointing out that most disaster aid goes to farmers in only a handful of low rainfall states, including North Dakota and Montana.
The Finance Committee that just approved the disaster fund includes Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and is chaired by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
At this point, nobody knows what the final version of this monstrosity will look like -- or cost. The final version of the Senate bill -- to be written in the Agriculture Committee -- has yet to emerge and must be reconciled with the House bill.
But the measure certainly isn't getting any smaller. And it has yet to include any strict limits on subsidy payments, a provision the Bush administration has demanded to ensure big agricultural producers aren't soaking up millions in taxpayer handouts.
The president has threatened a veto if subsidy limits aren't strengthened. He shouldn't back down.
Chattanooga Times Free Press (TN)
Oct. 9, 2007
“Snowballing subsidies”
The trouble with the federal government subsidizing various sectors of the economy with taxpayer dollars is that it creates a constant thirst for more.
Businesses in one sector of the economy look around, see others that are propped up by government in our supposedly free-market system and say, "Hey, where is our piece of the pie?" Then, under pressure from lobbyists for the excluded businesses, lawmakers cave in to demands for more spending.
When that happens long enough and often enough, government gets in deep trouble through deficits.
What's more, subsidies protect industries from the necessary check of competition. Instead of having to "build a better mousetrap" or otherwise meet consumers' needs to stay in business, protected industries become complacent and less productive.
They know they have a sure source of revenue and need not concern themselves as much with whether they are meeting consumer demand as efficiently as possible. That downward spiral is in play again in the area of agricultural subsidies.
Congress has pumped billions of dollars into farm subsidies for decades. Growers of staples such as corn and soybeans have often gotten the lion's share. But now producers of some "specialty crops" are making their case for high-dollar subsidies, too.
Growers of things such as watermelons, spinach and nuts are pushing for nearly $9 billion in the new farm bill. Watermelon queens sporting white sashes have been spotted making the rounds in Washington, The New York Times reported, and campaign donations from growers to lawmakers have doubled. They've gotten promises of nearly $2 billion in the House of Representatives, but they've made it clear they want more.
Congress ought to reject those requests and begin dismantling subsidies not only to the farm sector but to other sectors of the economy as well.
October 15, 2007
“Alternate Alternatives Glut gives Senate reason to rethink ethanol”
There's no quarrel about this point: Americans need alternatives to gasoline if we're going to stem the flow of foreign oil and curb pollution in Dallas-Fort Worth and other major urban/suburban areas.
But there's no reason Washington needs to bet so heavily on corn-based ethanol as that alternative. Not when reports show that the supply of ethanol is so great, believe it or not, that there's a glut of it on the market.
The most telling statistic shows the average ethanol price plunging from about $2.50 a gallon at the end of last year to about $1.50 now.
There are numerous reasons for the supply-demand problem. One is the overproduction of corn. You can thank the handsome subsidies Washington pays farmers to grow corn for the fact that we are on track this year to yield the largest crop in U.S. history.
All that production has to go somewhere, and ethanol plants are a main destination.
Actually, the glut presents a wonderful opening. Congress now has a clear and compelling reason to revisit its policies toward this cleaner-burning but energy-intensive-to-produce fuel.
The Senate Agriculture Committee can get things going by paring back corn subsidies. The committee is preparing a five-year farm bill now. Some members won't want to change anything, but we hope committee Chairman Tom Harkin sticks to his convictions and takes a swing at government payments to grow corn.
That would be a nervy stance for an Iowa Democrat to take, but Mr. Harkin can draw strength from other farm-state senators - like Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dick Lugar, R-Ind. - who also want to overhaul ineffective subsidies.
Smaller, entrepreneurial companies would be at Mr. Harkin's side, too, if he tried to shift money from corn subsidies to incentives for growing, say, switchgrass.
Companies like Earth Biofuels in Dallas are exploring new ways of producing ethanol. Switchgrass is one of the alternative-fuel sources that many entrepreneurs believe would prove superior to corn in lessening strain on natural resources. (For instance, corn's huge appetite for water is a real threat to our water supplies.)
The bottom line is the Senate Agriculture Committee has a compelling reason to encourage new ways to produce alternative fuels. The effort should start with taking money from shortsighted corn subsidies and investing it in incentives for switchgrass or other alternatives.
The current ethanol glut gives us an excellent opportunity to rethink our strategies.
The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
October 17, 2007 Wednesday
“Farm Bill waste”
Whenever the time comes to renegotiate the Farm Bill, there is great agreement in the U.S. House and Senate that it's built on policies whose time is long gone and then the politicians vote for it anyway.
The House has already passed its version. It follows the pattern of many previous decades, starting with the Great Depression. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., describes it as "an antiquated system of giant payments to a handful of farms that ignores the needs of most American farmers."
Now it's the Senate's turn, and hope springs eternal. Maybe this time, "the world's greatest deliberative body" will do what needs to be done, and set agriculture on a course that gets rid of the old subsidy system.
This is not a Republican vs. Democratic cause. It's an example of how hard it is to change an entitlement program, this one for farmers primarily those who grow corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat and rice.
As. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., put it, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back, and we'll save programs that are worthless." "Worthless" may be a bit too strong, but "wasteful" certainly fits.
One of the lawmakers pressing for change is Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.) For three decades, this has been his mission.
He and a few others are trying to bring equity to a system that currently favors big, corporate farmers over small, family farmers. The current system also hurts poor farmers in developing countries, because when our government encourages overproduction, then crop prices fall, and that drives down prices on the world market.
Also in the Farm Bill is money for the food stamp and nutrition programs. The House has approved a large increase, which is needed. The Senate is still negotiating on its version of the bill, but Kentucky's own Sen. Mitch McConnell, among others, has expressed concern about the cost.
If the approach Senator Lugar prefers won out, billions of dollars would be saved. That would leave plenty of money for nutrition programs.
Even farmers are divided on the Farm Bill's approach. Many are crusading for change.
For example, Dean Kleckner, president of the American Farm Bureau from 1986 to 2000, wrote in The New York Times this week, "It's obvious that we need to transform our public support for farmers." He objects to the cost of the system and points out that it insulates farmers from market forces. He also knows it hurts farmers in the developing world, and keeps putting this country on the wrong side of international trade rules (which allows our trading partners to retaliate with punitive tariffs).
Almost everyone knows what needs to be done. The Senate should just do it.
As one senator says, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back, and we'll save programs that are worthless."
October 18, 2007
“Curtail crop subsidies; Congress poised to fail again in attempts to reform Farm Bill”
In all of farm country, there is nothing more firmly rooted in the soil than the fiscally and ecologically ruinous agriculture subsidies paid out in the billions every year by the U.S. government. Attempts to plow these subsidies under once and for all were rebuffed in the House of Representatives and now, according to people who watch these things, are apparently nearing failure in the Senate as well.
This is a tragic situation that, sadly, carries no immediate political consequences for anyone. Even though federal subsidies direct billions of your dollars every year to fewer and fewer megafarms -- inspiring overwatering, overfertilizing and overproducing to a degree that damages the whole planet -- most people can't seem to get too concerned about it.
Those who do notice tend to be the receiving farm operations, their lobbying groups and their members of Congress. The vast majority of American farmers, especially those who produce anything other than wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and cotton, are mostly aware of the fact that another year has come and gone and they've received next to nothing in federal help.
And people who live in other nations may be too busy starving to notice that American overproduction depresses world prices for all commodities, destroying the market for hard-working small farmers around the world and putting largely agricultural nations at ironic risk of starvation.
The current set of farm laws and payment rules expires soon and the Senate is due to take up its version of its renewal. So far, there seems little reason to hope that its work will improve on the House-passed status quo measure, which would direct $25 billion over the next five years mostly to giant grain and cotton producers who are already among the richest farmers in the world.
One of those who wants to buck the tide is, encouragingly, a farm state Democrat, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who also happens to be chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. But the Senate's top leadership in both parties seems uninterested in joining the battle and may well stand aside for a measure that not only continues damaging subsidies but also cuts much healthier farm and soil conservation programs.
Farm prices are high right now so, even if that is a temporary ethanol-fueled bubble, it is a good time to throw out the subsidy entitlements and instead spend money to encourage more sustainable farm practices and to create a kind of farmer-funded insurance plan that will tide our farmers over when times really are bad down on the farm.
It's time to chop down this bean stalk once and for all.
October 20, 2007
“Last Chance for Farm Reform”
Last summer, the House approved a deeply disappointing farm bill that would perpetuate a lavish, outdated system of price supports that disproportionately rewards big farmers, complicates American trade policy and does little to help consumers. Unless the Democratic leadership shows some unaccustomed gumption, the Senate could wind up making the same mistakes.
President Bush, who has generally been on the right side of the farm issue, should think seriously about a veto if nothing better arrives on his desk. Otherwise, the country is in for another five years of bad farm policy.
The House bill provides billions of dollars in price supports and payments to producers of crops like wheat, corn and soybeans -- even though crop prices, fueled by the ethanol boom, are at or near all-time highs. These handouts also complicate trade negotiations and discriminate against poor farmers overseas who cannot compete against America's subsidized producers.
Tom Harkin, the independent-minded Iowa Democrat who runs the Senate Agriculture Committee, had proposed to slash these subsidies and reinvest as much as $6 billion in conservation programs. But farm-state stalwarts rose up in anguished, bipartisan protest and Mr. Harkin backed down. The result was that ideas for reforming the system from more adventurous thinkers like Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, went down the drain.
The Senate bill does have some positives. It would increase payments for the food stamp program and for an array of important conservation programs aimed at preserving wetlands and open space. It also provides money for biofuels. Yet this isn't the 21st-century farm program that reformers had hoped for. Mr. Harkin plans to make his case again when the bill arrives on the Senate floor, while Mr. Lugar and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey may offer alternative bills. We wish them well. We also hope that Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, gives them more support than Democratic leaders gave to similar efforts in the House three months ago.
October 21, 2007
“Farm bill comes a cropper”
THE FARM bill that Congress cobbles together every five years or so has more effect on the nation's land and water than most environmental bills. Farmers, ranchers, and private foresters own more than half of the country's open land.
The farm bill could promote wise use of this resource and limit the amount of petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticides that end up in the country's waterways. Or the bill can encourage the overproduction of crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice that underpin processed-food production and the fast-food industry. The subsidies for these food crops and cotton drive down international prices, hurting low-income farmers in places like Africa. They also leave inadequate funds for food stamps, conservation, and aid to vegetable and fruit farmers in small-farm states like Massachusetts.
Earlier this year, the Democratic-led House passed a $286 billion bill little different from the subsidy-laden one passed by the Republican-led House five years ago. If the Senate, which is about to begin work on its bill, cannot produce something substantially better than the House, President Bush should not hesitate to veto the final version.
Bush's own farm bill would have throttled down subsidies by denying them to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000. The limit now is $2.5 million. One Senate proposal would drop the cap to $250,000. The House lowered it to $1 million, which would still send billions in subsidies - at a time of record high farm incomes boosted by the demand for corn-based ethanol - into the seven big commodity crop states that get half of the subsidy program's largess: Iowa, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, and Illinois.
These subsidies starve the Department of Agriculture's conservation programs, which improve soil quality and protect drinking water resources and wildlife habitat. The last farm bill left conservation so underfunded that two out of three farmers applying for these funds had to be turned down.
Under the House bill, annual subsidies for the big commodity crops are expected to total $33 billion. But the more healthful fruit and vegetable sector gets just $1.6 billion to fund research and development, marketing assistance for farmers' markets and other outlets, and school fruit and veggie snack programs.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California had little patience for the reforms that could have produced a more balanced bill, because she feared this might hurt the reelection prospects of newly elected Democrats from rural states. But it is precisely such pork-barrel politicking that has soured the public on Congress. Bush should reject any farm bill from Congress that is as flawed as the House's.
October 22, 2007
“Farm bill bloated with good intentions”
Oct. 22--JANUARY COULD BE the beginning of a banner year for the Chesapeake Bay. The U.S. Senate is poised to finalize new farm legislation doubling conservation funds targeted at cleaning up America's waterways.
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be aimed directly at the flood of dirt- and chemical-laden runoff from farms, among the largest remaining obstacles to reaching Chesapeake Bay water quality goals a quarter-century in the making.
Without doubt, that gusher of new money is a triumph for the bipartisan group of legislators from across the Bay watershed who have made such funding a priority no matter who wields the gavel or who sits in the Oval Office. But every single vote cast in favor of redoubling efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay is also a vote to continue the wasteful and destructive government policies that helped turn the Bay into a storm sewer in the first place.
How's that? Well, the billion dollars in new conservation spending planned by the Senate and already passed by the House is dwarfed by other new spending in the farm bill, a new $5 billion disaster trust fund to take just one example.
"Disaster" payments are among the Department of Agriculture's most perverse and environmentally destructive programs because they don't have much to do with actual disasters as most regular people understand the term.
Nobody wants to see family farmers struck by the biblical trio of floods, droughts or locusts. Those heart-rending images are why disaster aid gets passed year after year after year. But for thousands of farmers across the U.S., disaster is the way of life, not farming.
Between 1985 and 2005, more than 21,000 U.S. farmers received disaster aid more often than every other year. Another 190,000 individuals got government disaster checks less than half the time, but more than once every three years.
When farmers' crops fail so often, it isn't because of bad luck, it is because they're farming in places where trying to grow things is bad business.
It just so happens that trying to make a living farming those places is also environmentally destructive. Farms on marginal land -- too dry, too wet or where the soil is poor -- have to slather their crops in vastly more pesticides and more fertilizer to have any hope of making a buck. All those chemicals disproportionately contribute to the destructive farm runoff that Congress is paying to clean up.
A smarter solution would be to stop paying people to farm in the wrong places. It would be nice if disaster aid were the only example of how taxpayers pay once to dump chemicals into the Bay and pay again to get the chemicals back out of the Bay.
For decades, U.S. farm policy has favored row crops that can be planted on an industrial scale -- corn, wheat and soybeans among them. These crops also happen to be among those that also need disproportionately large doses of fertilizer and pesticides to make a profit. So every year we give farmers an incentive to raise food from Mother Nature's bounty in the way that causes the most damage to her.
Policy experts on the right and the left have agreed that these policies were foolish for years. Every year groups like the conservative Heritage Foundation and the left-leaning Environmental Working Group point this out, congressional leaders promise reform and then, somehow between press conference and actual implementation, the programs never change.
Indeed, Republicans took power in Congress in 1994 in part on the promise to wipe out the whole sorry mess. They even managed to pass into law rules that phased out many federal farm programs. Unfortunately, they un-reformed the system a little bit more every year so that by the time Democrats took over Congress in last year's election, federal farm spending had doubled instead of going down.
So let's celebrate all the new money we're going to spend on cleaning up the Bay. It is the right thing to do, not least because we're the ones who pay to pollute it.
October 23, 2007
“Down on the farm”
Every five years Washington reviews a complex set of subsidies and policies contained in the farm bill. But this year the bread-and-butter topic includes a widening circle of issues: nutrition, conservation, industry consolidation and overseas trade.
This week the Senate is due to put its stamp on the $286 billion package following a dismally weak House package this summer.
California, the nation's biggest farm state, deserves better. Famed for innovation and risk-taking, this region may be handed a retread bill that doles out subsidies to big rice and cotton operations. Designed to prop up sagging agriculture 70 years ago, the system has become a check-printing exercise for major growers.
Ignored are the real entrepreneurs - the small crop experimenters and organic operations - who typify a nimble side of the sector that is changing the look of supermarket aisles and dining tables. These growers, who are pressing for research and marketing help but not subsidies, are getting left out.
The bill, which may be considered Wednesday in the Senate, dodges serious questions. Can it help ease obesity and poor nutrition by cutting subsidies for oil and starch laden crops? Do the billions in government aid violate free-trade agreements and invite retaliation? What can be done to slow trends in rural America that lead small farmers to sell to far-bigger producers who collect subsidies?
Though the House fell in line with farm state leaders - with an assist from Speaker Nancy Pelosi - the battle isn't over in the Senate. An alternative bill to slash subsidies could challenge another five years of poor farm policies.
California's two senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, have yet to be heard on the subject. They would be doing this state - and the nation - a favor by breaking with convention and voting to overhaul farm policy to reduce these wasteful subsidies.
October 23, 2007
“Veto the farm bill”
The Senate and the House are expected to soon finish haggling on final details of the five-year, $286 billion farm bill, with the measure possibly reaching President Bush's desk by the end of this week. We urge a swift veto - for three separate but compelling reasons.
The first: The bill is loaded with undeserved subsidies to corporate agribusiness and wealthy farmers (yes, there are plenty). Despite claims by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others that the farm bill is a bold reform, it is anything but. The 2007 version, like its predecessors, retains a complex system through which corn, wheat, soybean, rice and cotton growers concentrated in a handful of Southern and Midwestern states receive billions through price guarantees and direct subsidies. Pelosi says that because subsidies will now be extended to some new fruits and vegetables, this is an improvement.
No sale. Government subsidies have no place in an industry that racks up billions in profits.
The second reason - one both Pelosi and the Bush administration conveniently ignore - is the fact that many of the subsidies violate international trade agreements. Just last week, the World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. cotton subsidies are a blatant violation of rules the U.S. government agreed to abide by. It is grossly hypocritical for America to lecture China, India and other nations for their trade transgressions while committing its own.
The third reason to reject the farm bill deals with the distorting effect it has on U.S. food production. Farmers choose what to grow based not on what consumers want but on what is subsidized. The result is vast overproduction of three crops - corn, soybeans and wheat - which are routinely used to make inexpensive, high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie processed foods. As University of California Berkeley professor Michael Scanlon notes, "The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow." Nothing in the 2007 farm bill would change this fact - even though there is more concern about our national propensity toward obesity than ever. That's why a presidential veto would serve both the nation's fiscal and physical health.
Unfortunately, we suspect that hoping for sweeping change this time around is unrealistic, and that even should Bush veto the farm bill, he would accept a subsequent version with minor cost concessions. But it's not too soon to begin planning for a showdown in 2012 when the farm bill comes up for reauthorization again.
If fiscal conservatives, free traders, public health advocates and anti-obesity activists can work together, we may finally develop a farm and food policy that makes sense.
October 23, 2007
“The world needs visionary U.S. farm bill”
The Senate Agriculture Committee is expected to take up its version of the 2007 farm bill on Wednesday, nearly three months after the House passed its version.
Action has been delayed for weeks as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the committee's chair, has worked to line up the money he believes is needed to address priority needs for expanding food programs for the poor, conservation programs to protect the nation's soil and water, and research dollars and other incentives to speed development of renewable energy.
This is a pivotal time for agriculture, not only in the United States but also worldwide as farmers step up production of crops for fuel as well as food and fiber. That point was accentuated by the discussions conducted last week in Des Moines as part of the Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium on "Biofuels and Biofoods."
International experts on agriculture, science and nutrition worry that bioenergy crops will make it even harder to feed the world's hungry and may wreak environmental havoc by encouraging farmers to fell forests or plow up prairie.
Other experts counter that such fears are overblown. They contend that increasing yields will allow both feeding the world and helping fuel it, too. Biofuels crops such as perennial grasses could actually lessen erosion, they say.
There's truth in both arguments. What's clear is that development of the bioenergy industry must be done right, with attention to environmental stewardship and impacts on rural communities and the poor.
The United States, with its prowess in agriculture and technology, should show the world how it can be done. Unfortunately, the House version of the farm bill and outlines of the Senate bill released so far would not do enough to address this revolutionary change in agriculture.
A prime example: Lawmakers would continue to funnel billions of dollars into crop subsidies to the biggest, wealthiest operations without reasonable payment limits. The House version contains the laughable "limit" of restricting payments to those with $1 million or more in adjusted gross income. Negotiators for the Senate Ag Committee were still working on payment-limits language as of late Monday afternoon. If the committee's limits aren't tough enough, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley should press on the Senate floor for adoption of much tighter limits, as he has pledged to do.
On their face, virtually unlimited payments are a questionable use of taxpayer dollars. But they also distort and inhibit trade, hurting not only U.S. producers but poverty-stricken farmers around the world. The World Trade Organizations has issued a series of farm-subsidy rulings against the United States. The rulings allow countries to retaliate with tariffs on all sorts of products.
And most important, the dollars paying for subsidies can't pay for the expanded conservation programs needed to protect soil and water as farmers press more land into growing energy crops. The Senate bill would allow more working lands to be enrolled in conservation programs, Harkin's main goal as he scrounged for additional dollars. But the expansion is not nearly as much as he wanted - or America needs.
After weeks of delay, action could be rapid-fire now. Amid the flurry of votes, let's hope lawmakers address the fundamental changes transforming agriculture rather than perpetuating a status quo that serves the past, not the future.
October 23, 2007
“Plowing Old Ground; Congress gets ready to flub farm subsidy reform again.”
THESE ARE good times for American farmers. Net farm income in 2007 will be more than $87 billion, a record, according to the Agriculture Department's latest projections. And in 2006, the average farm household already earned $80,000, about 20 percent more than the average non-farm family. The boom is driven not only by federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol but also by strong demand for U.S. farm products overseas. The prices of corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat and rice are on the rise, as are farmers' land values.
It would seem an opportune moment finally to phase out the costly and irrational system of federal subsidies that props up the farm sector -- all in the name of a "safety net" for beleaguered yeomen, of course. A disproportionate share of the dollars goes to a relative handful of agribusinesses: In 2005, 9 percent of farms received 54 percent of all farm program payments, and the operators of those farms had an average household income of $200,000. Among the many perverse effects of this corporate welfare program are the distortion of international trade and a loss of U.S. influence in global tariff-reduction talks; environmental damage from subsidized farming of marginal croplands; and a transfer of income from middle-class Americans to well-off ones.
But Congress is not exactly seizing the chance. In July, the House passed a farm bill that retains the system of "direct payments," which farmers get regardless of production or market conditions, for another five years, at a cost of $26 billion. The House bill gave short shrift to soil conservation programs. In the Senate, Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) tried to correct the imbalance, but without success. His farm-state-dominated panel has instead struck a deal (set to be voted out of committee tomorrow) that retains direct payments. The Senate bill would give farmers the option, beginning in 2010, of getting paid $15 an acre only when statewide incomes from certain crops fall below targets set by law, a tepid reform that powerful agricultural lobbies oppose.
An alternative exists, in the form of a bill being prepared by Sens. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.). Their proposal would replace the existing array of subsidies for favored commodities with government-funded crop insurance that would cover all farms and ranches, whether they grow strawberries or soybeans. Farmers would get paid if, but only if, their incomes in a given year dropped at least 15 percent below the previous five years' average in their respective counties. This is still an incredibly sweet deal; what other American industry can count on federally funded protection from the vicissitudes of capitalism? But it would save $20 billion over five years, money that Mr. Lugar and Mr. Lautenberg propose to spend on deficit reduction, nutrition and a soil conservation program that pays farmers to restore wetlands and wildlife habitats.
Chances of the reform bill's passage are, alas, not bright. Nevertheless, the effort is a worthy one. By designing a true safety net for farmers and doing it for less money and with fewer perverse consequences than current policy, Mr. Lugar and Mr. Lautenberg raise a powerful question about Congress's apparent preference for business as usual: Why?
October 23, 2007
“New Farm Bill: Fresher Foods”
It's still possible to reform U.S. farm policy to feed more people, improve nutrition and better protect growers against disaster. That's the hopeful message of a bipartisan bill being introduced Tuesday.
Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg will introduce what they call the FRESH Act - the Farm Ranch Energy Stewardship and Health Act of 2007. They focus on health, conservation and nutrition in a fiscally responsible manner, something that earlier eluded the House of Representatives.
Supporters say the bill would phase out unending direct payments to big commodity producers. It would provide crop-failure insurance options to all farmers in a more economical fashion than now. And it would go some way toward boosting food stamps, expanding healthy school meal options and encouraging more fruits and vegetables, while saving $3 billion for federal deficit reduction.
The Senate must make big decisions on farm policy quickly. But the elements of the FRESH Act should appeal to the Bush administration, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, senators across the country, including Washington's, and most of all to a public eager for healthier food.
October 24, 2007
"Millionaire farmers don't deserve federal subsidies The Senate should revive a plan that would shift $12 billion to conservation, rural development and nutrition programs"
The U.S. Senate should scrap billions in proposed handouts to millionaire agri-businesses and divert the savings to vital soil conservation programs when it takes up a deeply flawed farm bill today.
Ideally, the Senate Agriculture Committee, which includes Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, should 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.
Much of those savings would have come by heeding President Bush's plea to limit subsidies to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 a year, or $400,000 for a couple. As passed by the House, taxpayer cash will flow like a river to farmers earning five times as much, up to $2 million a year for couples.
The House bill would thus perpetuate seven decades of failed farm policies that date back to the New Deal era. Under the House plan, 93 percent of all subsidies would go to just five row crops: wheat, rice, corn, soybeans and cotton, despite near- record prices for some of those commodities. Ranchers, fruit and vegetable growers and other key agricultural groups get little or nothing.
In the New Deal, the federal government paid farmers not to grow some of their crops, in the hope that restricting supplies of those commodities would raise their prices. When subsidies were thus aimed at reducing production, it made sense to give them to big producers because otherwise the large operators would go on producing surplus commodities and undermining prices.
But in 1996, Congress passed the Freedom to Farm Act and scrapped the requirement that farmers idle some of their acres in return for subsidies. Instead, farmers received fixed cash payments no matter what they did.
Without such production restrictions, there is no reason whatsoever to give taxpayer handouts to millionaires. Payments to farmers earning under $200,000 a year can be defended as helping small producers survive. But just cutting millionaires off the dole would allow $6 billion to be rechanneled to expand soil conservation programs and safeguard America's most vital physical asset, the land upon which we grow our food.
President Bush, backed by an array of environmental groups, has threatened to veto the farm bill if the Senate doesn't clean up the House excesses. We hope the Senate adopts the Kind-Flake reforms, but if it doesn't, we will support a veto by Bush.
Seven decades of subsidizing the destruction of our land are quite enough.
October 24, 2007
“Farming pay dirt”
What excuse does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat from Nevada, have for allowing the Senate Agriculture Committee to introduce an anti-reform farm bill today? In the first place, Democrats are likely to gain several Senate seats in next year's elections. In the second place, with the ethanol- and trade-fueled farm economy enjoying a boom that will send farm income and many commodity prices to record levels this year and farmland prices through the roof, when can taxpayers and consumers expect the costly, unfair farm-subsidy programs to be reformed?
Not that there isn't bipartisan pressure on the agriculture committees, which are populated by farm-state senators and representatives who want to keep the self-serving subsidy programs in place. About two-thirds of crop subsidies are collected by the wealthiest 10 percent of farmers, who, for the most part, are located in states whose members of Congress are disproportionately represented on the agriculture committees. Indeed, for the 2003-05 period, more than 50 percent of all farm subsidies were collected by farmers in eight states, where much of the subsidy-laden commodity crops (corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat) were produced. The subsidy system is so out of kilter that the Senate bill reportedly will allow part-time farmers with adjusted gross incomes as high as $750,000 to receive farm payments. That's 12.5 times the 2005 median family income of about $60,000.
"Direct payments," which were initiated in the 1996 Freedom to Farm reform bill as temporary, transitional subsidies to help wean farmers from the public payroll, probably represent the most egregious subsidy of all. The 2002 farm bill shamefully extended direct payments even as it eviscerated the historic reforms enacted in 1996. Because direct payments are based on past production, farmers receive these taxpayer-funded subsidies even when they are earning record profits. Direct payments over the next five years will likely exceed $25 billion.
These handouts are being made while Social Security payroll taxes paid by low- and middle-income workers are contributing to the current (and soon-to-end) Social Security cash-flow surplus. The federal government is using that surplus to finance other programs, including subsidies to wealthy farmers whose income dwarfs the income of low- and middle-income workers, millions of whom will be clobbered by Social Security's 75-year unfunded liability of $6.7 trillion.
The question for the Republican and Democratic leadership regarding reforming costly farm subsidies is one and the same: If not now, when?
October 25, 2007
“More green acres”
Oct. 25 -- The Democrats took control of Congress with a vow to end the Republicans' profligate ways. But the farm bill being debated on Capitol Hill proves they are as unwilling as the Republicans were to confront the barons of agriculture.
President Bush proposed earlier this year that subsidies be cut off for farmers whose adjusted gross income exceeded $200,000 a year -- a level reached by only 2.3 percent of Americans. That sensible reform sank without a trace. The House in July passed a five-year, $286 billion farm bill that maintains the status quo, keeping millionaire farmers on the federal dole.
What is emerging from the Senate Agriculture Committee this week -- a five-year, $ 288 billion farm bill -- will do nothing to challenge the status quo either. This means Americans will be stuck for another five years with an agricultural policy that pays too much money to too few producers and is unfair to consumers, taxpayers and our trading partners.
Farm policy now primarily rewards growers of just a few crops -- corn, cotton, rice, wheat, soybeans -- while farmers who grow just about everything else get nothing. Two-thirds of federal subsidies go to the richest 10 percent of farmers. It has been that way for years and this new farm bill crafted on the Democrats' watch means more of the same. This is a disgrace.
Senate Democrats are touting as reform this nugget: Non-farmers, those who make less than two-thirds of their income from farming, would be banned from federal payments if their annual income exceeds $750,000. Is this a joke?
If ever there was a time to challenge the status quo that has governed farm policy for more than seven decades in the U.S., this is it. Grain prices are at record levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that farm income will total $87 billion this year, a 50 percent increase from last year.
There is a better way to help farmers. A measure backed by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) would slash direct federal farm payments that aren't based either on crop production or prices. In exchange, the Lugar-Lautenberg proposal would expand free crop insurance, covering up to 85 percent of crop revenue, to all farmers with annual incomes below $250,000. Farmers would be eligible to tap this insurance only when they lose money. What a refreshing change that would be. Under current policy, many farmers get federal dollars whether they make money or lose money. The only constant is that taxpayers pay.
The barons of agriculture and their protectors on Capitol Hill don't want this change, or any change for that matter. They like things just the way they are. No surprise there. But the country needs to break the grip they have maintained over farm policy. If they don't, it will be up to Bush to puncture this bloated farm bill. His veto pen would be as good as a pitchfork.
The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts)
October 25, 2007 Thursday
“Very long row to hoe in updating farm bill”
As senators debate renewal of the farm bill in coming days, there'll be lots of talk about the need to give assistance to farmers in need. And there will be talk about subsidies and disaster relief. And there'll be talk - lots and lots of talk - about the need for change, for a new farm bill for a new era.
But at the end of the day, Congress is likely to pass a farm bill that closely resembles the bill that is currently in place, rewarding a few farmers and ignoring the needs of many, many more, including those in New England.
A couple of facts put things in perspective:
Two-thirds of the nation's farmers don't receive a single dime in commodity payments.
Over the course of the last farm bill, fully half of those payments went to just seven states: Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas and Indiana.
Just one in three farmers who apply for conservation money receives any funding at all.
The list goes on and on and on.
The farm bill, as it is currently constructed, rewards farmers who are already making money. Those who are growing wheat or raising cattle with great success can still receive money from the federal government. This probably makes good sense to those farmers who are able to rake in taxpayer cash even as they prosper in tilling the soil. And their senators and representatives apparently see this as a winning proposition, also. But for anyone who takes a realistic look at our nation's farm bill, the programs simply don't add up.
New England farmers and people in cities and towns across the land would benefit most if the new bill increased money for conservation. But the bill the Senate will be debating would add just $4 billion for conservation. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about specifics of the farm bill, but no one can fairly assert that it is good public policy to give money to those who don't need it at the expense of those who could benefit from a bit of assistance.
The Sun Times (Myrtle Beach, SC)
October 25, 2007 Thursday
“Farm Subsidy Now Not Sensible”
These are good times for American farmers. Net farm income in 2007 will be more than $87 billion, a record, according to the Agriculture Department's latest projections. And in 2006, the average farm household already earned $80,000, about 20 percent more than the average nonfarm family. The boom is driven not only by federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol but also by strong demand for U.S. farm products overseas. The prices of corn, cotton, soybeans, wheat and rice are on the rise, as are farmers' land values.
It would seem an opportune moment finally to phase out the costly and irrational system of federal subsidies that props up the farm sector - all in the name of a "safety net" for beleaguered yeomen, of course. A disproportionate share of the dollars goes to a relative handful of agribusinesses: In 2005, 9 percent of farms received 54 percent of all farm program payments, and the operators of those farms had an average household income of $200,000. Among the many perverse effects of this corporate welfare program are the distortion of international trade and a loss of U.S. influence in global tariff-reduction talks; environmental damage from subsidized farming of marginal croplands; and a transfer of income from middle-class Americans to well-off ones.
But Congress is not exactly seizing the chance. In July, the House passed a farm bill that retains the system of "direct payments," which farmers get regardless of production or market conditions, for another five years, at a cost of $26 billion. The House bill gave short shrift to soil conservation programs. In the Senate, Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, tried to correct the imbalance, but without success. His farm-state-dominated panel has instead struck a deal (set to be voted out of committee Wednesday) that retains direct payments. The Senate bill would give farmers the option, beginning in 2010, of getting paid $15 an acre only when statewide incomes from certain crops fall below targets set by law, a tepid reform that powerful agricultural lobbies oppose.
An alternative exists, in the form of a bill being prepared by Sens. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J. Their proposal would replace the existing array of subsidies for favored commodities with government-funded crop insurance that would cover all farms and ranches, whether they grow strawberries or soybeans. Farmers would get paid if, but only if, their incomes in a given year dropped at least 15 percent below the previous five years' average in their respective counties. This is still an incredibly sweet deal; what other American industry can count on federally funded protection from the vicissitudes of capitalism? But it would save $20 billion over five years, money that Lugar and Lautenberg propose to spend on deficit reduction, nutrition and a soil conservation program that pays farmers to restore wetland and wildlife habitats.
Chances of the reform bill's passage are, alas, not bright. Nevertheless, the effort is a worthy one. By designing a true safety net for farmers and doing it for less money and with fewer perverse consequences than current policy, Lugar and Lautenberg raise a powerful question about Congress's apparent preference for business as usual: Why?
October 24, 2007
“Farm bill pork: Congress should scrap bloated subsidies”
Federal agriculture subsidies are supposed to keep farmers in business when prices plummet or bad weather destroys crops. But instead, the farm bill has morphed into an entitlement program for big agribusiness that subsidizes rich investors, feeds the unhealthy American diet, distorts international trade and rapes the environment.
Congress should put an end to this. But instead, the House passed a new five-year farm bill this summer that mostly preserves the status quo. The bill that emerged from the Senate Agriculture Committee this week is almost as larded with pork as the House bill.
Soowee!
Federal agriculture subsidies are supposed to keep farmers in business when prices plummet or bad weather destroys crops. But instead, the farm bill has morphed into an entitlement program for big agribusiness that subsidizes rich investors, feeds the unhealthy American diet, distorts international trade and rapes the environment……..You know you've got a bad bill when the only ones defending it are the congressional stooges for Big Ag. Senators from both sides of the aisle, even some from farm states, together with the Bush White House, have rightly attacked the House and Senate bills for the shameless pork that they are.
We are happy to report, however, that Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch has signed on to the one bill we've seen that would actually plow under the old mess and plant something new. It would eliminate direct payments - which are not based on current crop production or prices - and replace them with crop insurance for all farmers.
By cutting back the bloated system of crop subsidies, most of which benefit growers of corn, cotton, wheat, rice and soybeans, the bill would direct increased federal funding to environmental protection, a critical issue in agriculture, and still reduce spending. It would do other good things, like support specialty crops and fruits and vegetables.
Remember that story in The Tribune July 29 about how billionaire Jim Sorenson, Larry H. Miller, former governor Mike Leavitt and lobbyist Cap Ferry were among the big recipients of farm subsidies in Utah? Well, that would end, too. Non-farming millionaires would no longer qualify, although other bills also would take a whack at that problem.
Nationally, only about one-third of farmers receive any subsidies, and 83 percent of the payments go to the top 20 percent of recipients.
Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., are sponsoring the reform bill. We hope this seed bears fruit.
Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA)
October 26, 2007
“Same old farm bill”
The $288 billion farm bill is a major test of the reform credentials of the Democratic Congress, a test that it seems likely to fail. An inability to stand up to entrenched interests and end welfare programs for big business is something that far too many Democrats share with far too many Republicans.
In updating the 2002 farm bill, Congress confronted a couple of measures that should have been slam-dunk reforms. Instead, the agriculture committee slammed the ball off the rim, declining to make the legislation compliant with international trading rules and refusing to cut off government payments to farmers who make more than $200,000 a year. While congressmen like to conjure up the Rockwellian image of the hard-working American farmer in defending farm bill giveaways, most of the big beneficiaries are agribusinesses that are more like corporations than farms. They give generously to political campaigns, as do corporations, and congressmen from districts that collect literally billions annually in crop subsidies aren't going to vote to end them, no matter how justified they would be in doing so.
Roughly two-thirds of America's farmers, like those who struggle to run the few remaining small farms of the Berkshires, do not receive any government subsidies. Two-thirds of the subsidies end up in just 30 congressional districts. The farm bill is not designed to help small farms but to benefit the agribusinesses that are poisoning America's land and sickening America's population.
The American Cancer project observed yesterday that the bill would channel billions of dollars a year in subsidies and price supports to producers of sugar, oil, meat, alcohol and feed crops used to fatten farm animals. These highly processed foods contribute not only to the development of cancer but to heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, and Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, are sponsoring the FRESH Act, which reduces those subsidies and increases them for fruit and vegetable production, but this alternative's fate is uncertain given the political realities.
Many of the subsidies go to large farms that contribute to land and water pollution. As always, they go to big producers of corn-based ethanol, which is an impractical alternative energy source, though it continues to be sold as one by Midwestern agribusiness and its Washington apologists. The farm bill is business as usual, something this Congress was elected to fight against. If this bill becomes law as currently written, Americans, particularly those in the Northeast, will be justifiably angry.
October 28, 2007 Sunday
“Farm Bill should offer more help for specialty crop growers”
A late freeze last Easter meant local apple growers have little to show for their efforts now. The same for growers of cherries and peaches. Early summer drought hurt the local blueberry harvest.
"It's all part of the business," an area apple farmer told the Kalamazoo Gazette. "But it's just real hard to swallow. It's like working all year and not getting a paycheck."
Growers of commodity crops like wheat, soybeans, corn, rice or cotton have received hefty federal subsidies -- to the tune of between $10 billion and $20 billion a year -- whether they made a profit that year or not.
It's a testament to the power of the farm lobby and members of Congress who represent farm states that represent commodity crop production. But the way commodity subsidies are handed out is rightfully criticized as one big boondoggle.
Yet growers of specialty crops -- fruits and vegetables that are the backbone of southwestern Michigan's agricultural sector -- can't expect much assistance from the federal government.
A version of the Farm Bill reauthorization, which moved out of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on which U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow serves, would provide funding for disaster assistance and $3 billion for healthy food programs, including $6 million for fresh fruit and vegetable snack programs in Michigan.
The Farm Bill had its roots in the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression, when families lost their farms and hunger was widespread. Every five years, the bill must be reauthorized.
The proposed legislation would provide more than $280 billion for agriculture and nutrition programs, leaving in place the most controversial aspect of the bill -- the subsidies to producers of major crops.
The current farm bill limits farmers to $360,000 in subsidies per year, but that ceiling is filled with loopholes.
The new legislation attempts to limit subsidies by eventually banning payments to "nonfarmers" whose income averages more than $750,000 a year. The bill defines farmers as those who earn more than two-thirds of their income from agriculture. But there would be no income-based limits on what a farmer could collect.
A new subsidy program would give farmers an option to collect payments when crop prices drop below a price-and-yield formula that would be calculated at the state level, as opposed to current subsidies that kick in when prices are low. This type of payment program has been proposed by the Agriculture Department and corn growers, who have seen record-high prices in recent years.
We believe farmers need a cushion against the vagaries of the weather and the markets. That's especially true in times like these when floods, severe drought and unseasonable temperatures are causing widespread crop failures. That's also especially true when American grocery stores are full of specialty crops grown in other countries that are competing with local farmers' produce. Growers of specialty crops aren't asking for the kind of direct payment that commodity growers receive even when they're making a profit.
And the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledges that growers of specialty crops are underrepresented under the policies that shape the existing Farm Bill.
The Farm Bill of 2007 is a work in progress. That means more help for specialty crop growers could be removed -- or added -- at any time. But that also means that Congress has an opportunity to reform the federal subsidy program for commodities to make it a safety net for farmers -- not a feeding trough.
October 29, 2007
“Don't create another farm-aid boondoggle”
Sometimes, in the sausage-making process of crafting legislation, the best way for lawmakers to serve the nation isn't to propose visionary reforms to make government work better for people.
Sometimes, lawmakers' highest possible service is to prevent things from getting worse.
Such will be the case this week or next when the 2007 farm bill reaches the Senate floor. A tax package from the Senate Finance Committee will be added to the bill, including creation of a $5 billion permanent trust fund for agriculture disaster-relief programs.
Finance Chair Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, which frequently benefits from disaster aid, has pushed for creation of the permanent fund. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, was desperately seeking more money for priorities such as conservation, and he agreed to the deal. The full Senate should just say no. The fund would further bloat subsidies to farmers in a handful of states, while neglecting needed investments around the country in conservation and rural development. And it would encourage growing unsuitable crops in low-rainfall areas where crop failures are far from rare. Indeed, they're routine.
Already, just a handful of states, including Iowa, have benefited disproportionately from disaster-aid payments over the past 21 years, according to a study released recently by the Environmental Working Group.
Most of the 2 million farmers and ranchers who collected disaster payments in that time received them infrequently, three or fewer years, the analysis found. But about 1 percent of recipients were chronic beneficiaries, receiving aid 11 or more years of the 21. They collected a whopping $2.5 billion, or almost 10 percent of payments.
The 10 states with the highest number of chronic beneficiaries have areas that are perennially dry, including Texas, the Dakotas, Oklahoma and Georgia. Iowa ranks high in the total amount of disaster payments collected, No. 6, according to the study. But with its abundant rainfall and good growing conditions, Iowa falls to 28th for the number of chronic beneficiaries. Just 69 recipients in Iowa got payments in 11 or more years. In Texas, which led the list, the number was 5,419.
"The concentrated, predictable, repetitive nature of agriculture disaster aid among a few states" would continue with a permanent fund, the report found.
A combination of flawed policies and market forces, including ethanol-driven increases in grain prices, already promote putting erodible land into production or growing crops not suitable for the conditions. Farm-program payments, including crop-insurance subsidies, partially drive decisions to convert grassland to cropland, according to a General Accountability Office study released last month.
Indeed, farm-payment programs and conservation programs may be working at cross purposes. In a 15-year period, farmers in South Dakota received taxpayer-funded conservation payments to take 1.69 million acres of cropland out of production. At the same time, they converted 1.82 million acres of grassland to cropland, the GAO found.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley could spearhead a significant improvement to this bill on the Senate floor if he can help secure approval of farm-payment limits to the wealthiest operators.
But job No. 1 should be halting creation of another farm program that will funnel huge dollar amounts to a select few states. Don't make a deeply flawed subsidy system even worse.
October 29, 2007
“Cultivating Success”
Oct. 29--With farm issues gaining momentum in the Senate, Texas Sens. Kay Hutchison and John Cornyn will soon get the rare chance to reverse decades of bad agriculture policies. By joining with reformers such as Sens. Dick Lugar and Frank Lautenberg when the Senate takes up a farm bill next week, the Texans can create saner priorities.
The proposal from Mr. Lugar, of Indiana, and Mr. Lautenberg, of New Jersey, would gradually eliminate crop subsidies to all farmers. The plan also would reinvest some of the savings into land-conservation incentives and into programs that help small farms sell products locally and grow alternative energy sources.
This alternative presents a refreshing contrast to the business-as-usual plan the Senate Agriculture Committee passed. It would maintain crop payments to farmers -- including those who earn up to a million bucks -- keep subsidies focused on big crops such as corn and wheat, and do too little to promote land conservation and alternative energies.
Texas' senators undoubtedly are hearing from big farm interests that favor the Agriculture Committee's bill. But more Texas farmers would benefit from the Lugar-Lautenberg bill.
For example, their proposal would replace subsidies for crops such as corn and wheat with an insurance program for all crops. The shift would lead to most Texas farmers with crop insurance paying much less for their insurance. While we don't like everything about this feature, farmers need some guarantee against the vagaries of nature and other risks. This would do it, and at a cheaper cost to taxpayers. What's more, a broader pool of Texas farmers would benefit.
Family farmers in East Texas, the Valley and elsewhere would benefit in another way, too. The reform bill would finance a program to help them sell their fruits and vegetables directly to schools in cities such as Dallas and San Antonio.
Also, the numerous Texas companies developing alternatives to corn-based ethanol stand to gain because the proposal invests substantially in such research. Companies in Dallas and elsewhere are hotly pursuing alternatives such as switchgrasses.
Finally, Panhandle farmers wondering how much longer the Ogallala Aquifer will supply water for their land will like that the bill gives incentives to turn farmland into grasslands. The latter can be used for grazing or hunting instead of corn, whose thirst for water takes a toll on the Ogallala.
Ms. Hutchison and Mr. Cornyn know that the current system has problems, but they're leery of the counter-proposal. We hope they move away from supporting the business-as-usual plan to one that creates a new day for farmers. Chances like this don't come around often.
WHY WE LIKE LUGAR-LAUTENBERG
- Replaces crop subsidies with less expensive crop insurance.
- Invests savings in priorities like land conservation and alternative energies.
- Gives a boost to local farmers trying to connect to nearby markets.
- Helps preserve the Ogallala Aquifer and other water resources.
October 28, 2007
“High Plains Grifters; A misguided Senate plan repackages agricultural welfare as disaster relief.”
EVERY SO often, nature turns its wrath on American agriculture. Even for very efficient farmers on prime land, drought, floods and frost are occupational hazards. And when extreme, unforeseeable weather conditions destroy crops and livestock, it's appropriate for the nation to provide financial aid to the folks who produce our food and fiber.
But what about farmers and ranchers who plant grain where unfavorable weather is the norm rather than an exception? Not much rain falls on Oklahoma, the Dakotas or the Texas panhandle. That's just the way it is. Between 1985 and 2005, more than 12,000 purportedly drought-stricken agricultural producers in those states claimed federal disaster payments at least every other year. This group collected $1.4 billion in all, about 60 percent of total federal farm disaster relief aid during those two decades, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
You'd think that Congress would have concluded that there are better uses for federal tax money than propping up the same relative handful of semi-arid farms year after year. Perhaps Washington could provide some modest assistance to convert marginal cropland to environmentally sustainable grassland. Instead, the Senate Finance Committee has voted to create a five-year, $5.1 billion permanent disaster relief trust fund. The logic of the bill, championed by Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana -- a state that is also one of the top 10 recipients of disaster payments -- is that farmers are entitled to a secure source of disaster relief, rather than having to ask Congress for it every year.
The program does offer some advantages over current law. To be eligible for disaster relief, farmers would have to purchase crop insurance; those who repeatedly experience crop failure might find themselves facing rising premiums, an incentive to reduce planting on the most marginal lands. Yet crop insurance itself is heavily subsidized by the federal government, so this requirement hardly takes the taxpayer off the hook.
The bill originated in the Senate's tax-writing Finance Committee, because the Agriculture Committee needed extra money for other farm programs, and the only way to get it was either through spending cuts or additional revenue. Mr. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman, came up with some tighter rules on alleged tax-avoidance schemes by business, and, with the backing of his committee, dedicated part of the resulting money to the disaster fund. Not even the House, which has already passed its own subsidy-rich farm bill, dared to do the same. Congress seems bound and determined to adopt a bloated farm bill this year. But it should at least stop this attempt to package agricultural welfare as disaster aid.
October 29, 2007
“Farm subsidies are a scandal; Instead of giving direct subsidies, Congress should provide insurance”
IN the 1990s, Congress finally bit the bullet and reformed welfare. Congress turned it from a lifetime entitlement back into temporary assistance for needy families. It is time Congress did the same with farm subsidies. And there is movement afoot to do just that.
The abuses of the Department of Agriculture are legendary. Sarah Cohen of the Washington Post reported in July that in a seven-year period from 1999 to 2005, the federal government distributed $1.1 billion to the estates or companies of deceased farmers.
But even if it were managed well, the farm subsidy program is crazy. It costs taxpayers too much money, it subsidizes some farmers but not others, and it discourages innovation.
Surprisingly, one of the people calling for a change is Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the new chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who called for a $4.5 billion cut, although the final version did not.
"We have to consider new ideas," Harkin said. "We should not cling to a system that channels ever larger commodity payments to a relatively few, with two-thirds of American farmers getting none at all."
Iowa is second only to Texas in subsidy payments.
An alternative bill would replace subsidies with a crop insurance program. While it is given little chance now of becoming law, taxpayers can always hope.
Sponsored by Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., that bill calls for an insurance program that would be open to all farmers and would pay benefits only when farmers lost money on their crops.
"We want to end out-of-date subsidies and provide a more equitable and less expensive safety net for all American agriculture," Lugar said.
The agriculture committees in both houses of Congress are filled with appointees from farm states. They have little incentive to rein in a program that has gotten too big and too abusive of taxpayers.
Lugar thinks the floor of the Senate might be a different matter. Here's hoping it is.
October 30, 2007
“Sugar's Sweetheart Deal”
Of all the government's farm-support programs, there are few as egregious as the tangle of loans, quotas and import tariffs set up to protect the well-connected club of American sugar producers at the expense of American consumers and farmers in the developing world. This year's farm bill will add American taxpayers to the list of casualties.
Under the current system, the government guarantees a price floor for sugar and limits the sugar supply -- placing quotas on domestic production and quotas and tariffs to limit imports. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, sugar supports cost American consumers -- who pay double the average world price -- more than $1.5 billion a year. The system also bars farmers in some of the poorest countries of the world from selling their sugar here.
The North American Free Trade Agreement is about to topple this cozy arrangement. Next year, Mexican sugar will be allowed to enter the United States free of any quotas or duties, threatening a flood of imports. Rather than taking the opportunity to untangle the sugar program in this year's farm bill, Congress has decided to bolster the old system.
Both the House bill, which was passed in July, and the Senate version, which could be voted on as early as this week, guarantee that the government will buy from American farmers an amount of sugar equivalent to 85 percent of domestic consumption -- regardless of how much comes in from abroad. To add insult to injury, both also increase the longstanding price guarantee for sugar.
The bills encourage the government to operate the program at no cost to the budget, by selling the surplus sugar to the ethanol industry. That's not likely. Ethanol makers will never accept paying anywhere near sugar's guaranteed price. According to rough estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, supports for sugar in the House bill could cost taxpayers from $750 million to $850 million over the next five years.
Big Sugar is not the only beneficiary of this corporate welfare. The farm bill is larded with subsidies and other rewards for agricultural producers. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn't have to pay the price.
President Bush has been on the right side of the debate over farm subsidies. Big Sugar's sweet deal gave him another good reason to veto the farm bill if it doesn't cut back on all the goodies.
October 30, 2007
“A disappointing farm bill”
The farm bill that has emerged from the Senate Agriculture Committee would make nutrition programs for the poor more generous, get more fresh fruits and vegetables into school cafeterias and expand conservation and economic development efforts in rural areas. The bill also advances an idea pushed by Sen. Sherrod Brown that attempts to wean farmers from the crop subsidies that have been the bedrock of federal policy since the New Deal. That's all good.
Unfortunately, too much of this bill - much like the House version passed in August - has been hijacked by lawmakers dedicated to the status quo. It needs major editing.
Brown, the Ohio freshman who sits on the ag panel, and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin had proposed replacing the old price support system with an income insurance program that would help farmers endure vagaries of climate and market, without dictating what they should plant. It could have saved billions and focused aid on growers who need it, rather than corporate farms.
The committee agreed to make the Brown-Durbin idea an option for farmers who could otherwise get price supports. But while Brown and Durbin had hoped that their plan would also lower crop insurance premiums, the committee bowed to pressure from the insurance industry and added language that will make that less likely.
To build a consensus, Chairman Tom Harkin also retreated from efforts to limit the amount of subsidy a farm can get and indicated that he would incorporate another bill on the Senate floor to set up a $5 billion disaster program. Most of that fund probably would go to drought-plagued states where crops often fail.
The Senate ought to reject that idea and rework the committee's version to truly reform the nation's partnership with its farmers.
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
January 9, 2007 Tuesday
“Expiring Bill Gives Congress Chance To Do Better”
The last time Congress took a long look at America's wasteful system of agricultural subsidies, we had to endure bushels of shallow rhetoric about how billions in largess would save the great American family farm. With this hefty crop of disingenuous sentimentality and equally hefty lobbying efforts from powerful agricultural interests, the result was a federal giveaway that did more to hurt small farmers than it did to help them.
The law that authorizes a range of unnecessary and ill-targeted agriculture programs is set to expire in September. So expect fronts for agribusiness, rural banks and farm insurers (and the members of Congress who accept their campaign contributions) to try and sell the same line again this year: Extend the programs or nail the coffin shut on America's heartland. It's about time to nail the coffin on that tired line instead.
The Washington Post's Gilbert M. Gaul, Sarah Cohen and Dan Morgan reported last month that federal agricultural payments are in fact fueling a rapid consolidation of American farms into enormous agribusinesses. Larger farms get much more government money, which they then use to buy up more land. This increases land prices, raising the financial barriers to starting a new farm and pressuring small farmers to leave the market.
The mere fact of farm consolidation is not objectionable; indeed, many large farms are pioneering technological and procedural improvements that increase efficiency. But decisions about who should be farming what and where should be left to the marketplace; the government should not distort the market to push smaller competitors out, especially at the price of $15 billion in annual subsidies.
Congress should overhaul the federal farm subsidy system. But that will not come easily. Recent installments of The Post's investigative series on agricultural payouts detailed the influence the farm lobby exerts on federal legislators, who have added a series of expensive giveaways to existing programs and successfully legislated away meaningful competition in certain agricultural markets, such as that for milk.
There are some signs that the lobby is losing strength. Democratic presidential hopeful and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack will campaign for subsidy reform, and groups such as the Club for Growth plan to spend millions for the cause. Perhaps this time a more reasonable farm policy will emerge.
Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nevada)
January 16, 2007 Tuesday
“No 'New Direction' On Farm Policy”
Because the current farm bill, written in 2002, expires at the end of this year, a Democratic Congress now contemplates writing a new one - while grudgingly entertaining sufficient Republican input to make sure President Bush will sign the thing.
The farm bill - really a series of federal programs - pays money directly to farmers and agri-business corporations to "supplement" their incomes, while making sure food prices stay high for consumers by involving Washington in complex schemes to buy and store surplus produce (rather than let it drive prices down), or to pay farmers to destroy food ("undersized" fruit, for instance) or to simply grow less in the first place.
It would be hard to imagine a weirder and more complex scheme. Yet nearly $18 billion in tax money was spent on these programs last year.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told farmers at the recent meeting of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Salt Lake City that the farm programs need an overhaul. "I will be the first to argue that the 2002 farm bill was good policy for its time," Mr. Johanns said. "But the agricultural and economic realities that influenced the development of the '02 farm bill - they simply don't exist."
Actually, the 2002 farm bill was a betrayal of earlier Republican promises to phase out the subsidies and price supports entirely. Farmers took big payoffs in the 1990s that were designed to cushion the blow of the coming "cold turkey" price-support withdrawal - and then marched right back to Washington and successfully demanded the whole mess be reinstated.
The United States and other prosperous countries are under pressure from around the world to reduce their farm subsidies, Mr. Johanns pointed out. Conflict over the issue led to the collapse of World Trade Organization talks last summer.
Without an agreement, American farmers face retaliatory high tariffs and other barriers when they sell their own crops abroad. The WTO, in a case brought by Brazil, has now ruled that some American cotton subsidies are illegal. And Canada is pursing a complaint against U.S. corn subsidies.
But Democrats, for all their recent talk about standing up to special interests, aren't exactly looking for a "new direction" on farm policy.
"What I think we're going to end up doing, you could say, is extending the farm bill," Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, told the Farm Bureau members in Salt Lake City.
Though we probably shouldn't give them ideas, Congress neither contemplates nor delivers any comparable five-year plan dubbed "the clothing bill" or "the computer bill" or "the truck and car bill," designed to funnel permanent taxpayer subsidies on anything approaching this scale to the inefficient manufacture at unlikely locations of excessive quantities of those products.
What is it that's unique about the market in food, alone, that forbids our delegates in Washington from simply allowing the free market to signal producers which products they can successfully grow and sell at the best profits?
Nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the fact that - back in the 1920s - farmers facing uncomfortable adjustments from the high demand and prices of a grain market temporarily warped by World War I discovered it was far less inconvenient to simply go to Washington and beg the newly more accommodating "progressive" representatives there to gather up some of those newly available income tax revenues and spend them on a "farm bill."
The best solution to the pending expiration of the farm bill would be to let it expire and pop some champagne corks - a sort of national version of a mortgage-burning party.
But that, of course, is the one approach now considered unthinkable by all the players in Washington, regardless of party.
Because no special interest will bribe them to do it.
January 21, 2007 Sunday
"Kicking Corn"
Jan. 21--American farmers already grow too much corn, and this year they're likely to grow more. Demand is at an all-time high -- but for all the wrong reasons.
Most of the corn produced this year will go toward ethanol production, feed for poultry and livestock, and processed sweeteners. But corn cultivation, because it is so reliant on fertilizer, exacts an unacceptable environmental toll. On top of that, there are better crops to make ethanol out of, there are healthier crops to feed to farm animals, and Americans themselves would be better off not consuming so much corn syrup. Corn's advantage is that it's abundant and therefore cheap; one reason it's abundant is that corn producers receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies.
This year, Congress will take up a new farm bill, and it's a good time for an overhaul. Here are a few ways to start:
- The program to encourage farmers to adopt sound conservation practices -- such as planting buffers along creeks -- should be greatly expanded. This is vital to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, among other bodies of water.
- Further investment in ethanol development is, politically, a given. It should go toward promoting heavier use of switchgrass and other non-food sources. These are more expensive to use than corn; the government should finance research into ways to bring that cost down.
- The government should do more to assist fruit and vegetable growers, rather than grain and cotton growers, because fruits and vegetables are more important nutritionally and less damaging environmentally. This would mean shifting farm subsidies from the Midwest and the Plains to California and the Mid-Atlantic, which can't happen overnight. Today, eight states, right down the middle of the country, collect half of all farm spending, with much of that going not to family farms but to large corporate operations. North Dakota receives more than five times as much federal money per dollar of agricultural production as do the states in the Chesapeake region.
- The government must begin to act on its 2005 promise to reduce farm subsidies overall because of the distorting effect they have on international trade, and especially the economic damage they inflict on farmers in poor countries. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns makes this point. He's right.
All this can be accomplished without spending more. In 2006, the government spent $19 billion on farm subsidies; that's too much, and it went to the wrong places.
February 4, 2007 Sunday
“Kernel of hope; Canadian complaints about U.S. corn subsidies could help iron out Washington's farm policies.”
THINKING ABOUT HOW much money Congress is gearing up to waste in the next farm bill makes us yearn for some help from on high. Not from heaven, mind you, but Canada.
The Bush administration last week unveiled its proposal for the 2007 farm bill, a blueprint spelling out U.S. agricultural subsidies and food stamp payments for the next five years. For anybody interested in fairness, government waste, free trade or economic growth, it was a deeply disappointing document, even if it is a major improvement over the trade-distorting porkapalooza that was the 2002 farm bill.
The trouble is, even this modest fix is being heavily resisted by the farm lobby and its backers in Congress.
Canada to the rescue, to cite a rarely uttered line. The Canadian government could prove to be the U.S. taxpayers' best friend in the upcoming legislative battles. That's because Ottawa has taken the initial steps toward a complaint against Washington at the World Trade Organization, claiming that U.S. corn subsidies violate international trade laws.
The corn case comes on the heels of a 2004 WTO decision, in a case filed by Brazil, that some U.S. cotton subsidies were illegal and ordered dismantled. Though the U.S. has been flouting the ruling, the Bush administration does seem more committed than Congress to making sure that farm subsidies don't run afoul of international trade rules.
Farm subsidies are a New Deal legacy once aimed at helping poor farmers. The program has become a form of corporate welfare for big agribusiness. The problem isn't just that these subsidies are unfair to farmers in other countries that aren't insulated from market realities by their governments. It's that many farm subsidies, with their built-in price supports, pervert those markets by stimulating inefficient production that affects global prices.
Say the price target for corn is $3 a bushel, but the actual price suddenly drops to $1 (and say the cost of production is $1.50 a bushel) because there's a glut. Normally, that would send a signal to farmers that they should stop growing corn and plant something else. But if the government makes up the $2 difference, they're encouraged to keep growing corn at an artificial profit. All that excess has to be sold on the world market at low prices. U.S. farmers don't care because they've got their subsidies, but corn growers overseas are wiped out.
So why should Americans care? First, because other nations retaliate against U.S. exports. Second, because subsidies kill competition with foreign growers that would ultimately lower prices on some produce in this country. Third, because taxpayers are shelling out roughly $20 billion a year in subsidies to an agribusiness juggernaut that neither needs nor deserves the money at a time of ballooning deficits. And fourth, because the poor countries most harmed by our trade policies are the ones most likely to become failed states, embittered by our hypocritical preaching on the merits of "free trade."
Members of the WTO have been trying since 2001 to pass a multilateral deal under the Doha round of trade talks that would lower trade barriers around the world, but the prime sticking point is high agricultural subsidies in the U.S. and, more so, in Europe.
Bush's farm bill doesn't go nearly as far as it should to spur a successful Doha round. It would cut farm subsidies by about $4.5 billion over the next 10 years, hardly enough to generate excitement among our trading partners. But it does do away with some of the more outrageous inequities of the current bill, such as paying corporate welfare to farmers making more than $200,000 a year, and it de-emphasizes price supports in favor of direct payments to farmers, which are far less trade-distorting and bring the country under compliance with WTO rules.
Most U.S. business interests would benefit from a relaxation of trade barriers worldwide, but the entrenched farm lobby is gearing up for a fight to protect its pork and to imperil Doha. So bring it on, Canada.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
February 04, 2007 Sunday
“Living Food: Healthy Reform”
President Bush wants modest cuts in direct subsidies paid to farmers and an end to payments to some of the wealthiest farmers. That would be a start toward the sweeping changes Congress ought to make in a system for overfeeding Americans unhealthy foods, overusing oil and degrading soils, water and wildlife.
The federal Farm Bill, due for congressional reauthorization this year, cries out for dramatic departures. Given the political power of the Midwestern farm states, a turn toward sustainability, fairness to the vanishing small farmer and health for the public may be difficult.
One challenge is getting the attention of more U.S. senators and representatives to policies traditionally left to Corn Belt congressional blocs. In this state, the strength of the agriculture sector, always first or second in total economic output in Washington, brings at least some attention.
Political leaders here would be wise to consider urban residents' increasing interest in food issues. At least 17 state organizations joined groups from around the country last month in calling for a more balanced Farm Bill. Among the groups are the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, the Cascade Harvest Coalition and PCC Natural Markets. They support promising proposals that encompass encouragement for new farmers, creation of more farmers markets and more emphasis on healthy, locally grown foods.
The interest among Western Washington residents springs from a variety of concerns. Support for local food has come to encompass a host of possible benefits: better economic returns for local farmers, fresher foods and foods grown in ways that minimize energy uses.
As author Michael Pollan and others have shown, farm subsidies have helped make foods tied to obesity, diabetes and other health problems the most affordable for low-income families. A Seattle P-I report last week examined the difficulties of trying to maintain good nutrition on a budget, sometimes even when carefully following the best federal advice. Farm subsidies also create market distortions, especially harmful when they undercut developing countries' farmers.
Pouring good money into bad food isn't working. Limiting and redirecting farm subsidies is only a start toward a bill that can bring out the best in farmers, the land and the food we eat.
February 6, 2007 Tuesday
“Undoing the damage”
Our position: President Bush's new farm plan is better for trade and spending.
Nearly five years ago, President George W. Bush signed a bill that soaked taxpayers for sharply higher farm subsidies and threw a wrench into U.S. trade negotiations. Last week, he proposed undoing some of the damage.
Mr. Bush's new farm plan would reduce subsidies and other agricultural programs by $18 billion over five years. Targets for cuts would include farm-loan programs challenged by other countries as illegal under world-trade rules.
The president's plan also would cut off federal subsidies to farmers earning more than $200,000 a year. Under current law, farmers making up to $2.5 million a year can collect government handouts.
While bringing down overall farm spending, Mr. Bush's plan would direct additional dollars to more worthy agricultural programs, including land conservation and alternative fuels.
If it becomes law, the president's plan could jump-start international trade negotiations. Talks have stalled amid pressure for the United States to cut its subsidies.
The problems with subsidies go beyond their cost and their hindrance to trade talks. They encourage overproduction and waste resources. They distort markets, and punish farmers in developing countries who can't compete.
Ideally, Mr. Bush would have proposed phasing out subsidies entirely. But even his modest plan faces resistance from lawmakers who consider it good politics to dump as many dollars as possible into farm payments, no matter what harm results. He'll need the support of other lawmakers more committed to good policy.
February 9, 2007 Friday
“Farm bill raises hope: Changes in crop subsidy policies should help independent farmers”
Feb. 9--U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns was the governor of Nebraska and a farm kid born and bred. Yet, to hear him tell it, he had to sponsor a 52-stop listening tour around rural America to have it explained to him that federal farm programs are, and long have been, a big weed.
The result is an administration proposal for a new five-year farm bill that, while not perfect, would be a huge improvement over 50 years of paying farmers to glut their own markets -- and other people's waistlines -- by growing far too much stuff.
The new idea is to pay farmers who have bad years so that they might live to plant again, rather than pay farmers who have good years so they can drive their new SUVs down the road to buy out their less-fortunate neighbors. The change would be more of a genuine safety net for independent farmers, less destructive of fair international trade and could save taxpayers a bundle.
Since the New Deal, federal farm programs have paid grain and cotton farmers enough in subsidies that they could stay in business even though their eternal overproduction forever pushed market prices below the cost of production.
If you grew a lot, you made a lot, if not from the marketplace, then from the taxpayer. In recent years, that lot added up to $16 billion a year in taxpayers' money, the vast majority of it to ever-larger agribusiness giants.
If you grew little, either by choice or due to weather or pests, you got little. Except, maybe, a buyout offer from your more successful neighbor.
Farmers grew more than they could export, in part because poor nations without farm subsidies couldn't compete with our prices and thus had no money to buy. And they grew more than America could eat, despite the food processors' prodigious ability to turn all that cheap corn, wheat and rice into high-sugar, high-carb snacks of all descriptions.
Johanns' proposal still subsidizes farmers, but saves billions by denying payments to those who make more than $200,000 a year -- cutting some 80,000 "farmers" from the federal dole -- and limiting payments to $360,000 annually. Much of the savings would go to encourage farmers to grow, and school lunch programs to serve, healthier fruits and vegetables; to pay for research on how to turn crops and grasses into alternative fuels; and to pay farmers to preserve sensitive wetlands and wildlife habitat.
Federal farm policy should do still more in land preservation and pollution control. And it should not bet so much on biofuels and exports.
But the bottom line savings to the taxpayer from this plan pencil out to $18 billion over five years, $10 billion of that in reduced subsidy payments. It could be the best $18 billion Washington never spent.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
February 10, 2007 Saturday
“Moving farm policy in the right direction”
Feb. 10--Every few years for the last seven decades, in a ritual known as writing a new farm bill, Congress has overhauled federal agriculture policy, and the theme has generally been "more" -- more aid to farmers, more new subsidies, more food production.
But the rural landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and this year, as lawmakers begin to write the 2007 farm bill, the theme must, in important respects, be "less." That is: less damage to the environment, less distortion of international markets, less drain on the federal budget.
The Bush administration's farm proposal, released on Jan. 31, is a good start on each front. Congress can improve on the details, but the blueprint developed by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns is a serious, thorough effort to push farm policy in new directions.
Why is that important? American agriculture has evolved. The family farm as most Americans knew it -- a few hundred acres where mom, dad and the kids derived a modest living from crops and a few cows -- has all but disappeared. Today a small number of highly capitalized operations produce most of the nation's food and earn annual revenues over $250,000. Meanwhile, a large number of small farms dot the countryside, but their owners earn most of their income in town.
It's still legitimate for Washington to cushion farmers against volatile market forces, but today it's equally important that farm policy achieve public goals such as healthy food and a healthy environment.
The plan outlined by Johanns recognizes these realities: It would cut farm spending by $10 billion over five years, or about 10 percent, and terminate subsidies to farmers with incomes over $200,000. Congress needs to study the fairest and most effective way to cap payments to large farmers, but this plan lays down an important marker.
In addition, Johanns proposes a much-needed increase in conservation spending and $1.6 billion for new research on biofuels. The agriculture committee chairmen, Minnesota's Collin Peterson in the House and Iowa's Tom Harkin in the Senate, will have important contributions to that conversation, but this plan advances the principle that public subsidies should achieve public benefits, such as clean water and wildlife habitat, while recognizing that biofuels research is still in its infancy.
Finally, the plan would revise crop subsidies to improve compliance with the World Trade Organization -- an important endorsement of the nation's free-trade philosophy and a gesture to developing nations that need access to world markets.
This plan isn't a radical overhaul of federal farm policy, but it's a realistic start toward admirable goals.
February 11, 2007 Sunday
“Fix the farm mess; Bush's proposed farm bill would make U.S. agriculture leaner, cleaner”
As the public debate begins around a new federal farm bill for 2007, the Bush administration's proposal takes some good steps: reducing subsidies, encouraging development of biofuels and rewarding conservation.
An epic battle looms, in which the champions of Big Agriculture will try to preserve the excesses of the expiring 2002 bill, which rained cash on a tiny group of the wealthiest growers of cotton, rice and other commodities. Those in Congress who favor a sane, market-based farm policy should fight to keep and expand on the most sensible provisions of the administration's proposal.
The previous bill, called "a horror show of pork" by one conservative commentator, was a big step backward for farm-policy reform. It completely reversed the momentum of the 1996 bill, dubbed "Freedom to Farm," which had tried to move away from subsidies.
But now, reformers say, the time is right to put farm policy on a track toward sanity. Crushing federal deficits demand tough scrutiny of all spending. The availability of information makes fat subsidies harder to hide from the public, and the need for global trade is pressuring the U.S. government to end agricultural subsidies that run afoul of international agreements and raise the threat of retaliation against other U.S. industries.
Change should center on an end to the convoluted system of subsidies that distorts farmers' behavior, by motivating them to plant (or not plant) what will generate the largest subsidy, rather than what the market demands. It certainly could start with President Bush's call to end payments to any farm operation that sees $200,000 or more in income, after expenses. The current income limit of $2.5 million is unjustifiable.
The administration's proposal to base subsidies on a farmer's revenue, rather than on crop price, also makes sense.
Low prices often are the result of high crop yields, so payments triggered by low prices sometimes go to farmers who enjoyed a bumper crop, while farmers who lost much of their crop might not see much payment because the price is high.
Money saved through subsidy reform can help reduce the federal budget deficit but also should support beneficial programs such as conservation.
Rewarding farmers who employ environmentally friendly practices benefits the public far more than subsidies that encourage unnecessary planting. But, to date, conservation programs have been the first to suffer in budget cuts.
The public would benefit more if the government would use this money for additional research into combating agricultural diseases, pests and contamination.
The appeal of these reforms seems obvious, but no one should underestimate the power of the farm lobby and its favorite lawmakers, who won't give up easily on a lucrative benefit that has been in place for generations.
Still, with millions of Americans alarmed by an out-of-control federal deficit, the time is right to reform this trough of waste.
Battle Creek Enquirer (Michigan)
February 14, 2007 Wednesday
“Target farm policies to do most good for nation”
As it does every five years, Congress soon will begin work on crafting a new farm bill. But there are many signs that when the current farm bill - actually a series of federal programs - expires at the end of this year, it will be replaced with legislation that will cut costs and provide more effective agricultural policies.
At least, we hope that is what happens. For far too long, the farm bill has been used to benefit relatively few farmers who grow a small number of crops, at a huge expense to federal taxpayers.
According to the Department of Agriculture, between 2002 and 2005, 93 percent of government subsidies went to producers in eight states who grew five crops: wheat, rice, corn, soybean and cotton.
Too often federal payments are targeted toward areas with the most political influence rather than where they can do the most good for the most people.
That needs to change with the new farm bill.
The Bush administration stepped up to the plate last month with its proposal to reduce farm payments by $18 billion over the next five years. The administration wants to eliminate farm payments for wealthy producers and limit subsidies to those who make less than $200,000 annually in adjusted gross income.
We think that's a good start.
But we also would like to see Congress create legislation that addresses issues of interest not just to farmers but to all Americans, such as food safety, nutrition, energy resources and a clean environment.
If Americans are serious about improving their health, why not target funds to encourage production of more fruits and vegetables? Shouldn't the government help promote farming practices that promote soil conservation and clean water?
According to an investigation by the Washington Post, in 2005, with the agricultural industry posting a near-record $72 billion in profits, the federal government provided $25 billion in farm aid. In addition to funds provided through the farm bill, Congress has allocated billions of dollars to farmers in drought, flood and storm relief in 16 of the last 17 years.
The new farm bill needs to be the product of bipartisan efforts to eliminate wasteful spending and target funds where they can do the most good.
February 17, 2007
"The Future of Farming"
Six months ago, it was an even bet whether there would be a new farm bill in 2007. The big commodity farmers, and the interest groups that represent them, were hoping that Congress would simply extend the 2002 Farm Bill, a regressive grab bag for big agriculture. These hopes have now been disappointed. Mike Johanns, the secretary of agriculture, has unveiled his proposals for a new farm bill, which on the whole seems remarkably promising.
Mr. Johanns seems to have little desire to protect entrenched subsidies and a very strong desire to improve the environment. The question is whether Congress will listen to him or to the lobbyists.
The problems with the current farm subsidy system are legion. At home, it drives small farmers out of business and compromises the environment. Abroad, it penalizes third-world farmers and jeopardizes international trade talks.
Mr. Johanns aims to change much of that, first by ending payments to farmers with an adjusted gross income above $200,000. There will also be money for small farmers and growers of specialty crops, loans and grants to poor rural communities and help for young farmers who want to get started in an industry that has grown gray with age.
The bill also calls for $7.8 billion over 10 years to help protect the environment — which makes it the most generous conservation program the Bush administration has offered in the last six years. The bill would make it easier for farmers to enroll in conservation programs and protect conservation acreage from the urge to plow it up when prices skyrocket. The bill could also turn out to be one of the administration’s more innovative energy initiatives. Implicitly recognizing that corn ethanol needs no more subsidies, it offers incentives to grow grasses that could be turned into another fuel called cellulosic ethanol.
There is much to applaud in this bill. Then again, there was much to like about the last farm bill, and we know what happened to that. Congress left many of the old subsidies intact, and failed to nourish the conservation programs. We are hoping the new Congress will have the good sense to reverse the policies that have done so much damage to rural America, and in doing so offer hope to its small farmers.
February 18, 2007 Sunday
“Sugar headache; Price supports and import quotas that insulate U.S. growers from global market realities hurt consumers.”
AMERICANS PAY ABOUT double the world market price for sugar, a hidden tax that hurts everyone with a sweet tooth. Many beverage and food makers catering to that sweet tooth have long used corn syrup instead of sugar because it's cheaper, but the price of corn syrup is beginning to rise. So now would be a good time for the U.S. government to revisit its destructive farm policies.
This is a classic case of a narrow, vocal lobby -- sugar growers -- benefiting at the expense of the larger economy. The latest victim of high-priced sweeteners is Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., the largest bottler of Coca-Cola products, which announced last week that it would cut 3,500 jobs because of a $1.1-billion loss in 2006. Other soft-drink makers, confectioners and food companies also pay a steep price for the complex system of price supports and import quotas aimed at protecting U.S. sugar growers by insulating them from global market realities.
More U.S. food makers probably would use sugar rather than corn syrup if they could pay the real market price for sugar and have access to more of the sweetener. Compounding the awful distortions created by the current quota system is the fact that corn syrup prices are rising so sharply because more of the U.S. corn crop is being diverted to make ethanol, which makes little sense because ethanol can be made much more efficiently from -- you guessed it! -- sugar. It's hard to even keep track of all the ways in which the nation's sugar protectionism is damaging.
Brazil produces a surplus of sugar-derived, low-cost ethanol. We import very little because, in order to protect corn growers, we slap it with a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff. Meanwhile, to protect our sugar growers, we impose import quotas on Brazilian sugar, which means we can't even make ethanol at home from cheap sugar.
This kind of mind-boggling waste probably won't end anytime soon. There was a glimmer of hope for improvement last summer, when the U.S. and Mexico settled a trade dispute that granted Mexico unlimited sugar exports to the U.S. starting in 2008. Normally, that would mean lower sugar prices for Americans. Yet under its proposed 2007 farm bill, the Bush administration is seeking new trade-distorting powers: When Mexican sugar enters the market, the government wants more power to order domestic sugar growers to cut production, reducing supply and thus keeping prices artificially high.
If there is any light at the end of this tunnel, it may come from President Bush, whose energy initiatives would boost production of ethanol and probably push corn syrup prices higher. That could prompt beverage and food companies in search of a cheaper alternative to corn syrup to join the fight against the sugar lobby. Common sense doesn't go far when it comes to farm policy; maybe corporate lobbyists can do better.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
“Subsidies were intended for small, family farms”
Everyone should read the article, “You Sow, They Reap,” which appears in the March “Reader’s Digest.” The article discusses the farm subsidy program which we taxpayers are paying for.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was instituted in the late 1930s during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Its original purpose was to be an improvement over previous agricultural policies. It was supposed to preserve the family farm and in those days there were millions of farmers whose sole source of income came from the farming operation.
Farmers today are in the unfortunate position of not being able to command a fair return for their investment and labor. The law of supply and demand does not work here. A local baker made this statement, “If I received free wheat, I would still have to charge the same price for a loaf of bread.”
Is the farmer’s product worthless? How much bread would be baked without it?
There was a plant here in Fergus Falls that manufactured products from milk and cream. The family dairy farmer had to quit the business because the cost of equipment and labor was too high. The lack of local raw materials closed the plant.
At one time there were hundreds of family dairy farmers here in Otter Tail County. There are only a few left.
The wealthy buy up the land, driving up the price of it and putting it out of the reach of the average person — and into the hands of a few. The family farmers have to quit and compete for what jobs there are. This pushes up unemployment and increases the numbers who have to go on welfare. Forty percent of Americans receive some form of welfare.
Destroying the family farm industry reduces job opportunities. Civil war is looming in Mexico because of the need for land reform. Why let it go that far here?
Corporate farms are taking the place of family farms. They are owned by people like Sam Donaldson, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. They receive millions of our tax dollars in the form of farm subsidies. They hire lobbyists to influence Congress to not only keep the plan in force but to also vote more money into the program.
The agricultural lobby is one of the most powerful in Washington. It is not saving the family farm.
Many foreign countries — Norway for instance — have farm programs which are much different from ours. They seem to be working. Perhaps we could learn something from them. At least the giving of millions to operators who live in Manhattan and Beverly Hills should stop.
The expenses of some programs such as food stamps, school lunches and excess commodities are listed as part of the agricultural budget. They have nothing to do with farm subsidies. They are a form of welfare for the poor and should be in a different budget.
Actually, these programs fall short of solving the hunger problems. Thousands and maybe millions suffer from hunger in this country where the surplus of food products is considered a problem. There is in fact no surplus problem but there is a management problem.
I have no quarrel with the family farmer. I wish there were millions more of them. I do have a quarrel with big business taking advantage of a program that was not made for them. Businesses subsidized by the taxpayers is not free enterprise.
Make your feelings known. Write to the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, 1301 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515.
“Farm Bill Deserves a Favorable Look”
Mar. 4--The Bush administration is proposing an $87.8 billion farm bill that would cut overall agricultural spending, boost funding of conservation programs and reduce the number of wealthy farmers eligible for taxpayer subsidies.
Congress should give favorable consideration to the legislation, which would authorize the nation's farm programs for the next five years. The measure would bring U.S. farm policy more in line with World Trade Organization rules.
Farm policies favored by many rich nations tend to link big subsidies and big crops: The more a farmer produces, the more the farmer gets from the taxpayer.
This is the vicious circle of farm policy, as practiced by most rich nations. One result is massive gluts and falling prices, making it impossible for poor-country farmers to gain a toehold in the global market.
The Bush administration's plan would move U.S. policy away from production subsidies by putting more emphasis on direct-income payments, rather than payments linked to the size of a crop.
The bill also proposes a beefed-up insurance plan to cover the full value of a crop, rather than the current 70 percent coverage. And the bill would change the rules for programs aimed at helping farmers when prices fall.
Under current policy, "countercyclical" subsidies provide more aid to farmers when prices are low. But farmers whose crop has been wrecked by drought or hail can't effectively access this aid. The administration proposes a shift, in which payments would be triggered by low yields rather than low prices.
In a telephone interview, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said such a change -- along with beefed-up crop insurance -- should reduce the need for future farm disaster payments.
The bill, which would boost conservation spending by $7.8 billion, has won praise from Oxfam, the international anti-poverty group, and the Environmental Working Group.
But the American Farm Bureau Federation has raised concerns. The group opposes provisions that would cut subsidies encouraging production of basic commodities, such as wheat, corn and soybeans. The administration, however, is right to press for changes that undermine the link between payments and production.
Another provision sure to be controversial would lower the income limit for farmers eligible to receive subsidies. Currently, farmers with adjusted gross incomes of up to $2.5 million can receive such payments. The administration would lower the cutoff to $200,000.
Johanns notes that families above $200,000 are still in the top 2.3 percent of Americans filing tax returns.
Since most farm payments go to the richest farmers, rolling back income limits makes eminent sense -- just as it makes sense to cut back on programs that encourage production of gluts.
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (Indiana)
March 6, 2007 Tuesday
“Farm bill 2007”
The Bush administration finally appears prepared to do something about the flawed U.S. farm bill. The existing farm policy fails to promote long-term sustainability for farmers or protect the interests of consumers and taxpayers. And existing crop subsidies run afoul of world trade policies.
The current law, adopted in 2002, expires Oct. 31. Congress is crafting the 2007 farm bill now.
"It's still early. We don't have any bills going through committees yet," said Sen. Richard Lugar's spokesman Andy Fisher. But he said Lugar is optimistic because "there's going to be a lot more informed debate this time around and there's some real possibilities for reform."
Fisher says Lugar is encouraged by the farm bill proposal from U.S. Agricultural Secretary Mike Johanns.
"It's a better proposal than we currently have, but not as aggressive as Lugar would want," Fisher said.
The proposed bill from the Bush administration is not going to make everyone happy, but there are several environmentally encouraging elements in the bill:
- Increased incentives for farmers to address air and water quality issues
- Rewards for wetland and wildlife habitat restoration efforts
- Increased dollars to protect farm and ranchland from sprawl
- $1.6 billion for renewable energy research
"It's a great leap forward from where we were," Fisher said. "Particularly the payment caps."
The most contentious issue up for debate is crop subsidies. The World Trade Organization is challenging U.S. crop subsidies because, in the WTO view, they violate fair-trade policies. There is a critical need to re-evaluate federal crop-subsidy programs but strong pressure to preserve the status quo from some influential farm lobby groups. Johanns reasonably proposes ending payment to farmers who have a gross adjusted income above $200,000.
Lugar is pushing for the final farm bill to include Whole Farm Insurance, which would be similar to current crop insurance in offering farmers some guaranteed income. But it would not be linked to specific crops, and all farmers in all states would be eligible to participate. He is also advocating for creating a Farm Savings Account program that would be similar to an IRA account for farmers. Fisher says these initiatives would provide farmers with a safety net but would not be as expensive for taxpayers and consumers.
The farm bill debate is only beginning, but it is a promising start toward something that will better serve all taxpayers, including farmers.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 11, 2007 Sunday
“Free-trade effects: The good, the bad”
American trade policy is at a crucial point. Proponents of free trade argue for more of the same. Doubters question the cost in American jobs and worry about a mounting trade deficit. These are the issues:
President Bush wants to revive world trade talks --- known as the Doha round --- that were supposed to boost the economies of poor countries (good). The talks have stalled because the United States and Europe cling to protective farm subsidies at home (bad).
Farm subsidies help:
- A few large operators
Farm subsidies hurt:
- Consumers
- Taxpayers
- Poor nations dependent on agriculture
1. Consumers lose to special interests
The White House claims free trade will keep low-priced goods flowing into the United States (good for consumers; bad for some workers and the national trade tab). But the administration doesn't always embrace free trade and bargain-price goods (bad).
Sugar:
- U.S. price is higher than world price.
- Quotas and tariffs limit imports, protecting domestic growers.
Ethanol:
- U.S. imposes a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on imports.
- Taxpayers subsidize less-efficient ethanol production from corn.
2. Imports go up, jobs go down
Bush wants lawmakers to extend the executive branch's power to negotiate trade deals that can't be altered after being signed (sensible). Congress would have the power only to approve or disapprove a treaty. Democrats want to provide more assistance (good) to American workers who lose jobs to global competition --- think textiles, apparel, autos, electronics, call centers. The government's current program covers too few displaced workers (bad) and is difficult to use (also bad). Democrats want trading partners to meet stricter standards on working conditions and the environment (laudable but difficult to monitor and enforce).
3. Over a barrel with foreign debt
And then there is the other cost of free trade and cheap goods: the IOUs we're racking up with other countries. When American consumers buy foreign oil and big-screen TVs and cars and underwear and toys, they send dollars overseas. China, for example, accumulates hundreds of billions of dollars every year and has become a major storehouse of American currency, giving it a lot of potential leverage over U.S. economic and foreign policy (bad). It also has the power to tamper with the U.S. economy (also bad).
4. China holds edge by ignoring fair playCheap labor is largely responsible for our huge trade deficit with China, but it's also widely believed that China unfairly manipulates its currency (bad) to keep the prices of its exports down and shipments up. The Bush administration prefers to cajole China into better behavior (a long-term process at best). Some members of Congress have threatened a hefty tariff (a drastic option but one worth keeping) against Chinese goods instead. Unless China is compelled to trade under the rules that everybody else honors, it will enjoy an unfair advantage that will extend to its next big export to the United States: cars built for DaimlerChrysler. China's Chery auto company is expected to start shipping the cars in 2009, while Chrysler is in the middle of cutting 13,000 jobs (bad) in North America.
The bottom line ...
Unless Americans lose their appetite for cheap goods and expensive oil (unlikely), it will be difficult to reach a better balance between imports and exports. But it's not impossible. Trade policy needs to open more markets for U.S. products and discourage imports from countries that don't respect human rights or the environment. Farm subsidies serve no useful purpose and should be eliminated. Displaced workers deserve more effective retraining, and employers an incentive to keep jobs at home. Congress should leave trade negotiations to the White House, but challenge unfair practices by trading partners.
Unless everyone works together, the U.S. economy will be shipping water instead of goods.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
March 11, 2007 Sunday
“Farm bill must serve many interests”
Mar. 11--A funny thing happened on the way to the farm bill this year. An obscure, even secretive, process by which Congress sits down every five years or so to divvy up billions of dollars in federal agriculture subsidies has been discovered by an extraordinary assortment of conservationists, nutrition advocates, renewable energy experts and even ecumenical leaders, who realize that federal farm policy affects everything from pollution in the Mississippi River to the control of global warming.
This is not encouraging for Minnesota's corn and soybean farmers, who have benefited hugely from federal subsidies, but it is a good thing for the broader public interest in agriculture policy and the wise use of public subsidies. What's crucial now is that leaders in the U.S. House recognize this broader interest as they write their budget framework for fiscal 2008 -- a document that will come together in the next two weeks and help determine the way this year's farm bill actually parcels out federal money to rural America.
Rep. Collin Peterson, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, points out one danger in the budget process: Valuable conservation programs and renewable-energy initiatives could be shortchanged purely because of a technical quirk in the way past budget "baselines" are defined. The House Budget Committee, which will write the chamber's annual budget resolution, should make sure that categories governing conservation, natural resources and energy are treated fairly alongside those that govern crop subsidies.
Allocating funds fairly is crucial because Congress doesn't have much money to work with this year, and Democrats show every sign of adhering to tough budget discipline now that they govern the House. Prominent budget hawks control key panels, including Peterson at Agriculture and South Carolina's John Spratt on the Budget Committee.
This doesn't mean that the farm bill, which Congress must produce by next August, should become a piggybank for every conservation and nutrition wish list. It does mean Congress should recognize the farm bill's contribution to the broader public interest in healthy food, a clean environment and renewable fuel sources.
FARM BLUEPRINT
President Bush's farm bill proposal would shift some funds from crop subsidies to conservation and research, and raise overall farm spending by about $5 billion over the next 10 years. It's at usda.gov.
Published: March 12, 2007
“A Bill Democrats Should Like”
The Bush administration’s new farm bill, one of the more sensible pieces of legislation to emerge from this administration in quite a while, faces its first big Congressional test this week. The House Budget Committee will vote on a budget resolution that, while non-binding, establishes spending priorities and sends a powerful signal to the authorizing committees about where the House leadership thinks the money ought to go.
In the case of the farm bill, the Bush administration has already made its own preferences crystal clear. It proposes a strict cap on payments to individual farmers as part of a larger effort to hold down traditional subsidies. It seeks to help smaller and younger farmers and poor rural communities.
And it includes the most generous conservation program ever offered by this administration: increasing spending by $7.8 billion over 10 years on land conservation and investing an additional $1 billion a year in a bold new program to develop renewable fuels other than corn ethanol from farm crops.
All this represents a significant break from past farm bills, which have traditionally provided heavy subsidies for big growers of corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice who are concentrated in a handful of states. Half of all farm spending, which amounts to about $12.5 billion annually, now flows to just 22 Congressional districts.
The problems with this system are legion. At home, it drives small farmers out of business and compromises the environment. Abroad, it penalizes third-world farmers and jeopardizes trade talks.
John Spratt, the South Carolina Democrat who runs the Budget Committee, will be under heavy pressure from the farm lobby to preserve the old system. But this is one administration program that the Democrats can and should support. Mr. Spratt and other House leaders would be doing the environment, small farmers and the cause of free trade a great favor by embracing it.
Friday, March 16, 2007
“Farm Aid: An opportunity to reform subsidies and boost trade”
CONGRESS IS gearing up for one of its twice-a-decade fights over a farm bill. Past battles have not produced sensible policy, and this year's debate already is off to a troubling start.
President Bush has submitted a farm bill that contains a number of desirable reforms. He proposes to eliminate commodity subsidies for farmers with annual incomes of $200,000 or more. He offers a series of common-sense changes to the way the government calculates and distributes farm payouts, alterations that backers say address international concerns over anti-competitive American subsidies that have held up global trade talks. Commendably, he also would shift money to conservation efforts.
In the House, the Agriculture Committee will battle over the particulars. But first the Budget Committee must set the total amount that the Agriculture Committee can appropriate to particular programs, and that figure is significant, in two ways. Too much generosity will enable lawmakers to siphon money into all sorts of pet projects while declining to trim subsidies; a smaller total will give Congress less opportunity to expand wasteful programs and more incentive to consider many of Mr. Bush's proposals.
Many want a large increase, justifying it by dubious logic. High commodity prices mean the government has been paying farmers less in income support than it has had to until recently. Pressure groups, counting on this trend of lower payouts to continue, are lobbying Congress to capture these "savings" for their favored projects. But their projections assume that commodity prices will remain high, which is far from certain and apt to be impossible if corn-based ethanol fails to take off. Congress should not budget on the assumption that these projections will materialize.
Moreover, if the extra money is spent unwisely, it could complicate international trade talks, indirectly costing Americans even more. The Doha round of global trade negotiations has foundered on U.S. and European subsidies for domestic farmers, which lower world agricultural prices and so prevent farmers in the developing world from earning a living. If Doha is to be revived, the United States has to show leadership by cutting such subsidies. The House Budget Committee should approve no more than the president's relatively modest increase.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
March 18, 2007 Sunday
“A jolly idea for the Green Giant"
Walz's bill on vegetables is a step in the right direction.
An hour southwest of the Twin Cities, where Hwy. 169 descends toward the Minnesota River, one of the great icons of state history towers above the leafy bluff: A friendly green figure who welcomes you to the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant and marks the entrance to one of the nation's great vegetable-producing regions.
These days, however, local vegetable processors warn that the number of vegetable farmers is dwindling, and one reason is that federal farm policy tends to reward the production of "program commodities'' such as field corn and soybeans while discouraging everything else.
Last week Rep. Tim Walz, the Democrat who represents southern Minnesota in Congress, joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers to introduce a bill that would untether farmers from those planting rules. It would help Minnesota's vegetable industry, save money for taxpayers and reinforce the idea that markets, rather than regulations, should guide farmers.
For decades, most federal farm subsidies were tied to the nation's five dominant crops: corn, wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton. The idea was to put a safety net beneath farmers, but the result was to discourage experimentation with other perfectly good crops such as oats, sunflowers and vegetables. The last two major farm bills, in 1996 and 2002, began delinking payments from specific crops, but they still penalize a farmer who tries fruits and vegetables.
Walz's "Farm Flex'' bill would take a step in the right direction: Farmers who shift some acres from subsidized commodities to fruits and vegetables for processing would receive no subsidies on the new crops, but neither would they have to pay the financial penalties required by current law. That would not only help Minnesota's vegetable industry, it would save money for taxpayers by reducing subsidy payments, improve soil conditions by encouraging crop rotation and let farmers respond to economic signals and plant what the market demands.
It just so happens that "Farm Flex'' comes along as Congress is writing the 2007 farm bill, overhauling all of federal agriculture policy, and there might be better ways to achieve planting flexibility. But the concept should advance, for it would produce a form of agriculture that would be better for farmers, better for the land and better for consumers.
HO HO HO
Soybeans and field corn are Minnesota's dominant crops. But the state also is the nation's No. 1 producer of sweet corn - with a third of the national total - and a leading producer of peas for the processing industry. More at mda.state.mn.us.
Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
March 21, 2007 Wednesday
“Shifting subsidies: Ky. senators should back farm resolution”
Mar. 21--Seldom does an elected official get to cast a single vote that would be good for his home state, restore sanity to national policy and help feed the world.
Kentuckians Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning will have that chance as Congress begins debating this year's farm bill.
The Senate should set the tone for that debate by approving a bipartisan resolution that calls for shifting more than $1 billion over 10 years out of taxpayer-funded subsidies for wealthy farming interests into conservation, energy, rural development and food programs.
It has been obvious for quite a while that U.S. farm policy is soaking taxpayers and is on a collision course with international trade agreements, all to the detriment of small, family-operated farms here and around the world.
The hundreds of millions of dollars in government payments to growers of grains and cotton spurs overproduction. The glut depresses prices so severely that it's impossible for small farmers to compete even in their local markets.
The resulting loss of farms and farmers diminishes the capacity for local food production, spreading poverty and making it harder for poor countries to feed themselves.
The Bush administration has proposed a farm bill that moves agricultural policy in a more responsible direction.
The Senate should signal support for that new direction by approving a budget resolution offered by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D, which caps annual subsidy payments at $250,000 a farm.
The shift in agricultural funding priorities away from subsidizing a few crops into conservation programs would be good for Kentuckians, both those who own farmland and those who care about conserving land and water.
A few large Kentucky farms do clean up on the current system, but the vast majority of this state's farmers -- 74 percent -- collect no government subsidy payments.
And 81 percent of the money that comes to Kentucky goes to just the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients.
McConnell, the Senate's minority leader, has made the case for farm policy reform in the past. It would be great this time to see him lead the charge.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
March 22, 2007 Thursday
“Spend farm money where it's needed”
Mar. 22--In the next few months, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the top agriculture authorities in Congress, will write an overhaul of federal farm policy that is expected to keep a safety net under farmers, accelerate the nation's transition from oil to biofuels, feed the nation's poor, preserve wildlife habitat, improve rural soil and water quality and shore up the struggling small towns of rural America.
Frankly, that's an impossible job, given the budget constraints that majority Democrats have placed on the proposed farm bill in an effort to show that they can govern without being spendthrifts.
But this week they got some help from Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who have a plan to cap excessive subsidy payments to large farmers and use the savings to fund other valuable conservation, energy and nutrition programs in the farm bill. That amendment should come to a vote by week's end, and while it will face any number of small objections from narrow interests, it deserves the support of Minnesota's delegation.
The Grassley-Dorgan plan, which would cap commodity payments at $250,000 per farmer, always was a good idea. Payments above that level are simply the wrong use of taxpayers' money and, worse, they accelerate the consolidation of America's farms into ever-larger operations. President Bush included a similar idea in his farm bill proposal.
This year, however, the cap is an even better idea. The 2007 farm bill, the first major farm legislation since 2002, presents a crucial chance to shift some of the government's billions away from payments that subsidize excess commodity production and spend the money instead on valuable public goals: conserving fragile soils, protecting the heartland's rivers from agricultural chemicals, preserving habitat and encouraging new forms of sustainable agriculture.
Democrats, who took control of the House and Senate in January, will face a lot of tough votes in coming months as they press for new social priorities while sticking with a plan to balance the federal budget. This vote, however, should be easy.
CAPPING SUBSIDIES
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed cap on large farm subsidies would save $1 billion over the next decade, money that could fund important conservation, energy and nutrition programs. Crucial budget votes will take place in the Senate today and Friday.
March 26, 2007 Monday
“End the Big Ag subsidies”
Mar. 26--If you go into one of the countless small farming communities in Illinois and mention cutting farm subsidies, you might find yourself facing the business end of a running combine.
American farmers are the most efficient and productive growers in the world. This competitive advantage will ensure that American agriculture remains at the top of the global food chain, regardless of subsidy levels. However, since the New Deal, American farmers have also enjoyed a massive, government-supplied, competitive advantage in the global agriculture market because Washington has subsidized them out the ear. That advantage for the U.S. translates into a crippling disadvantage for millions of poor farmers around the world. And, with regard to trade talks, it's the reason why things are All Quiet on the Doha Front.
Finally, after years of Democratic and Republican administrations pushing bloated subsidies and catering to Big Farming, the White House is taking a few steps in the right direction.
The president's plan would make it harder for large, wealthy farms to receive government handouts. It would do this by lowering the highest subsidized annual income level from $2.5 million to $200,000. In the words of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, "After $200,000, you should graduate from taxpayer subsidies." In addition, the president's farm plan would limit a large agriculture corporation's ability to game the system by breaking into several, smaller entities to receive more subsidies. These are good ideas to ensure that federal assistance goes to the farming families that need it most.
The plan includes more than $1.6 billion to fund renewable energy ideas and cheaper biofuel production. The latter is a real must, considering that ethanol takes more energy to produce than it yields; not exactly the model of efficiency.
The Bush plan also includes a substantial cut in subsidies that distort international trade--subsidies the World Trade Organization categorizes as "Amber Box." They will be scaled back to $7.6 billion a year from roughly $19 billion.
Better that Amber Box subsidies be reduced to $0; but a 60 percent cut is an ambitious step toward a true market for global agriculture. Let's hope that the Democratic leadership in Congress will see the tremendous potential in this to revive the Doha round of WTO negotiations to ensure world market access for American farmers.
The bill offers $250 million to market U.S. food products overseas in tandem with non-profit, domestic, agricultural trade associations. If the American Soybean Association wants to market its members' products in, say, China, it would have a big new funding source to tap.
Home to the most efficient growers in the world, the U.S. should lead the way in creating a market in which farmers from all over the planet can compete and sell their products to as many hungry nations as possible.
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
March 31, 2007 Saturday
“How about no subsidies at all?”
President George W. Bush wants Congress to cut off payment of federal farm subsidies to any Americans who make more than $200,000 per year. The maximum today is $2.5 million.
We'd prefer that Congress would end the subsidies altogether, without regard for income level, because they are an unconstitutional intrusion on the free market at taxpayers' expense. But setting a lower limit would at least be a step in the right direction.
Americans have been disgusted to read about federal subsidies going to many wealthy "farmers" such as media mogul Ted Turner and TV personality Sam Donaldson.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns pointed out in an interview with The Associated Press that 29 percent of American "farmers" with gross annual income higher than $200,000 live in Washington, D.C., not exactly a farm area.
New Jersey, scarcely a rural state, comes in second at more than 13 percent.
It seems unlikely these are the hard-working family farmers trotted out as an excuse for continuing subsidies. More likely, as Secretary Johanns noted, they are "investor-owners" rather than farmers in the traditional sense.
Neither they nor traditional farmers should be getting subsidies from the taxpayers any more than plumbers or autoworkers or others should.
Gabriel Valley Tribune (California)
April 4, 2007 Wednesday
“Cropping Subsidies”
ONCE in a blue moon, Americans get a glimpse into the enormousness of the programs they support with their tax dollars. It is not reassuring.
Take farm programs. The federal government created programs in the 1930s to stabilize farm prices and farm income. These programs have since grown explosively.
In 2005, taxpayers subsidized farmers - mostly those who grow corn, soybeans, wheat and rice - by about $20 billion. Farm subsidies cost taxpayers $105 billion over the past five years.
Critics have long questioned the wisdom of the policies and the eligibility requirements. Big corporations are pulling down huge amounts of money.
Arkansas rice producer Riceland Foods, which got $16 million in subsidy payments, was the largest single recipient in 2005. Farmers in Iowa collected more than farmers in any other state -
$2.3 billion in 2005. Farmers in Texas collected $2 billion, farmers in Illinois $1.8 billion and farmers in Nebraska $1.4 billion.
The Environmental Working Group has increased the pressure for reform by posting on its Web site the names of the recipients and the amounts they received.
"The information is raising tensions between smaller farmers and bigger producers in otherwise neighborly farm communities," wrote Nate Jenkins of The Associated Press after visiting Nebraska. "And it may be turning some people against the subsidy program as it now operates."
It's easy to see why. Currently, just 9 percent of U.S. farms collect 54 percent of all commodity payments.
The Bush administration proposes to stop subsidies to many big farmers by lowering the income eligibility cap from $2.5 million to "only" $200,000.
But even if Congress went along, that would cut the cost of farm subsidies to "only" $87.3 billion over the next five years.
Farmers vote, and both Republicans and Democrats seeking Electoral College votes have long been attentive to their interests.
The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico)
April 15, 2007 Sunday
“Farm $$$, Rural Frivolity: Can't Lick 'Em, So Join 'Em”
At its majestic Washington headquarters, significantly located just across 14th Street from where money-printing is led, the United States Department of Agriculture has long been a bastion of big-bucks giveaways.
Besides being famed for paying farmers not to grow this or that, we see in a Washington Post article carried last weekend in The New Mexican that the Ag Department's beneficence extends to places where nary a turnip grows.
At the posh destination of Martha's Vineyard, the Black Dog Tavern, a watering hole for the rich and famous, was able to expand and add a clothing store, thanks to a $4.5 million loan guarantee from the grateful taxpayers of the nation.
Not far away, the municipal dock at Provincetown has just been redone to receive the touristic hordes of Cape Cod. A low-interest loan of couple of million bucks made that possible. Agricultural grants and loans also renovated an historic home and provided gallery space to that artsy resort. And so it goes, in beach resorts and in New York City suburbs; all part of something called the Rural Development program. "Rural," for these purposes, is in the minds of the USDA -- and members of Congress who pack our nation's five-year Farm Bill with lard of varying viscosity.
We'd like to think that, someday, taxpayers will rise up and demand an end to at least the sillier excesses of agricultural spending.
It won't happen, of course; the Farm Bill is one of our nation's finest examples of the Milo Minderbinder Principle: In Joseph Heller's brilliant war novel, Catch-22, mess officer Minderbinder built an enterprise from which everyone stood to gain -- even the enemy. So who could oppose it?
And who among America's 535 senators and representatives might actually lead a meaningful offensive against the farm bill?
So let's just agitate for our share -- or more than our share, since we, along with all the other states and U.S. possessions, already get some of this post-Dust Bowl bounty.
Mora County comes quickest to mind: Let's turn the fish hatchery into a vast aquarium where visiting Texans can cavort with underwater wildlife, as the first step toward reversing real rural poverty in that lovely setting.
In Los Alamos, we could restore the beanfields of Frijoles Canyon -- and become the world's leading producer of glow-in-the-dark legumes.
Chama might be one terminus of a fine old steam-train line -- but it's also where the Unser boys hang out; so why not build a car-racing course combining the sylvan charms of the NŸrburgring and the unremitting noise of the Indianapolis Speedway?
But Taos, too, could stand a strong shot of rural-development money -- to develop newer, bigger strains of sagebrush -- as backdrops attracting ever more artists, who in turn might want a Purple Coyote Tavern in which to slake the thirst they develop while depicting such animal amid mammoth purple sage.
And some stretches of Santa Fe -- Canyon Road, quizá s; not exactly rural, and hardly poor for the most part, but badly in need of a subway line to relieve stress among those who crowd it.
How 'bout the beauty of the bosque through Los Ranchos and Corrales? To complement the wineries blossoming along the Río Grande, let's get the Ag Department to spring for a water-ski resort? Or maybe a processing plant for fried silvery minnows, like the ones they sell along Mexico's Lake Pá tzcuaro?
It's clear from the Post report, which sent bureaucrats scurrying to hide, or censor, rural-development reports, that our state simply isn't using its imagination.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
April 20, 2007 Friday
“A chance to agree"
The nation needs Congress and the White House to reach consensus on a way forward for U.S. trade policy. The world simply won't wait.
Charles Rangel, the irascible Harlem Democrat, and President Bush, the stubborn Texas Republican, can barely agree on the time of day.
Yet there are hopeful signs that these most unlikely of partners can craft a new bipartisan direction for U.S. trade policy.
It will be a test for both men, one that we hope they are up to. The United States simply cannot allow trade to go dormant for the final two years of the Bush presidency. If the U.S. declines to negotiate new trade deals, our partners will push ahead and work out arrangements among themselves. By some estimates, eliminating the remaining trade barriers to U.S. products would boost the nation's income by as much as $500 billion annually.
Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has consistently supported sensible trade deals. But others in his caucus reflect the uneasiness that many Americans feel about globalization.
Congress could help by expanding the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income support and training to workers who lose their jobs as a result of competition from imported goods. Bush should be willing to support additional aid for American workers and require trading partners to adhere to certain standards for working conditions and the environment.
But Bush's "fast track authority" expires June 30. Fast track allows the president to reach a binding deal with the 150 nations of the World Trade Organization and to submit bilateral deals to Congress for an up- or-down vote. Congress should renew this authority if the president needs more time to reach a global trade deal or bilateral deals that contain acceptable provisions.
Congress can also help by passing a new farm bill that reins in the overly rich subsidies to American farmers - a key reason the last round of global trade talks collapsed last year. The deal the U.S. reached recently with South Korea prompts hope that global trade talks can be revived.
Additional safeguards for workers, here and abroad, are needed. But Congress must not overreach in a misguided attempt to protect workers. The advance of global trade will continue, whether the U.S. is in the game or not.
April 24, 2007 Tuesday
“Ending an addiction; Time to move away from farm subsidies”
Many in Congress talk the right talk when it comes to protecting the environment, fighting obesity, helping developing countries compete in a global market and ending taxpayer subsidies to rich U.S. corporations.
Yet when they rewrite the farm bill -- as they are doing this year -- those principles tend to fly out the window.
For decades, Congress and the White House have perpetuated a system that subsidizes U.S. farmers to grow an excess of certain crops -- particularly corn, wheat and soybeans. Last year, those three crops received a staggering $25 billion in U.S. subsidies. Those subsidies help the major parties when it comes to winning elections in key Midwest states, but they result in terrible outcomes, both worldwide and at your local grocery.
As the author Michael Pollan has written, subsidies for corn and soybeans have helped buttress an American diet that is awash in cheap sugars (such as the corn syrup in soft drinks and cereals) as well as cheap fats such as milk, meats and vegetable shortenings.
Concerned about their health, consumers are increasingly demanding more healthy produce, but the price signals aren't swinging in their direction. From 1985 to 2000, the real price of fruits and vegetables increased nearly 40 percent, while the real price of soft drinks declined by 23 percent, largely because of corn subsidies, according to Pollan.
Subsidies also are hurting efforts to find cleaner sources of ethanol, an alternative to petroleum that could be crucial in the fight against global warming. Subsidies make corn an attractive feedstock for ethanol, yet those subsidies squeeze out other sources, such as switch grass, which can be cultivated with less energy and fewer fertilizers than corn.
Hoping to level the field, groups that support alternative sources of ethanol, organic agriculture, wetlands preservation and other causes are lobbying to win a larger piece of the 2007 farm bill. While there may be a need for Congress to invest more in broadly beneficial agricultural research, it needs to move away from subsidizing one farm sector over another. Ultimately, that means it must end commodity subsidies altogether.
California's congressional delegation could be crucial in writing a more sensible farm bill. Two years ago, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer helped vote down a bipartisan bill to reduce farm subsidies, apparently because it would reduce aid for California rice and cotton farmers.
Those votes were indefensible. Such subsidies, particularly for cotton, hurt poor farmers in Africa who can't compete against U.S. cotton that is priced artificially low. In 2004, the World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. cotton subsidies were illegal, yet, because of resistance in Congress, the United States hasn't yet provided the trade relief demanded by some of the world's poorest countries.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, to his credit, is pushing to reform how the United States purchases and distributes food aid to famine-stricken regions. Instead of buying only American-grown food and shipping it across the globe -- with the food sometime arriving too late to do any good -- Johanns wants to use a quarter of the Food for Peace budget to purchase food in poor countries near the famine regions.
Such a change would help bolster local farm economies and help poor nations avoid future famines. But the biggest prize would be a phaseout for subsidies of cotton, corn and other commodities. Congress can start that transition in 2007.
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
April 24, 2007 Tuesday
“A Bumper Crop of Boondoggles”
First the bad news: Congress is expected to write a massive multi- year farm bill this year, which is sure to be loaded with more subsidies, price supports and pork than you can shake a pitchfork at. Now some good news: most members of Congress read The Washington Post, which has been doing an admirable job exposing the massive misuse of money in existing farm programs.
The newspaper in the last year has done a blistering series of stories highlighting the abuse of U.S. farm programs, striking again recently with an expos of how rural development funds are flowing to affluent urban areas due to the vague and elastic way state and federal agencies define "rural." The loophole means untold millions have been diverted from farm programs to fund projects that benefit affluent urbanites.
Will getting flayed at the hands of the hometown newspaper prompt Congress to do a more responsible job re-writing the next farm bill? We doubt it. But you know the situation's truly scandalous when the shaming is done by the famously government-friendly Washington Post.
Monterey County Herald (California)
April 25, 2007 Wednesday
“Fat Profits From Empty Calories”
If nutritionists rather than politicians wrote the farm bill, the twice-a-decade exercise in the slicing of federal pork, we might be getting ready for big times on Monterey County's farms.
Rather than watching the federal government hand out $25 billion each year to Midwestern farmers as reward for growing too much corn, too much wheat and too many soybeans, we'd see more logical policies encouraging production and consumption of nutritious and less-fattening lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots.
We'd see more money spent on research and food safety, less money on high fructose corn syrup. We might even see cleaner feedlots, more federal support for organic production and soil conservation, and cheaper loans for small farms and cooperatives.
The farm bill, soon to be rewritten, has created surpluses of grains and promoted suspect farming practices while fostering a national diet heavy on calories, light on nutrition.
Michael Pollan, the Berkeley-based professor and author who has taken on the food and farming industries, recently calculated that the real price of fruits and vegetables increased nearly 40 percent in the 15 years leading up to 2000, while the real price of soft drinks dropped by nearly 25 percent. Why? The sugar in most sodas comes from corn, and Uncle Sam has a bad habit of subsidizing corn -- and, by extension, milk and meat.
For the most part, farmers no longer are paid not to plant, though that actually was more logical. Instead, to the delight of warehouse workers, silo makers and seed salesmen, government payments are based on the number of bushels or bales produced.
In a recent New York Times Magazine article, Pollan wrote about a University of Washington researcher who calculated the cost of buying calories in their various forms. He found that his dollar went farthest if he bought processed foods and soft drinks.
A dollar spent in the snack aisle could buy 1,2000 calories of cookies, but a dollar in the produce section could buy only 250 calories of carrots.
A dollar's worth of soda: 875 calories. A dollar's worth of orange juice: 170 calories.
Watch for the produce industry and supporters of organic farming to push for larger shares of the federal pie as the farm lobby and legislators start getting serious about the next farm bill. Others, meanwhile, will urge Congress to put more money into research and less into subsidizing corn and cotton, a perennially unsuccessful effort.
Don't look for subsidies to go away any time soon. In the farm states of the Midwest, opposing subsidies is akin to opposing the U.S. auto industry. Even California's senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, have fought to keep subsidizing cotton. Why? Maybe because cotton producers in the San Joaquin Valley long ago learned the connection between sowing campaign contributions and harvesting subsidy checks.
It stopped making sense a long time ago.
April 30, 2007 Monday
“Too Sweet A Deal; Sugar Subsidies Are Costly. As It Did With Peanuts And Tobacco, Congress Should Consider Quota Buyouts.”
IF YOU ADDED the combined annual revenues of the 75 corporate giants, trade associations and lobbying firms that jointly urged Congress last week to reform U.S. sugar policy, they would surpass the gross domestic product of most countries. Yet when stacked against the political power of the $3.8-billion-a-year U.S. sugar industry, even the combined forces of Coca-Cola, Unilever and the United States Chamber of Commerce look like pedestrians trying to stop a tank. We wish them the best of luck.
American consumers pay about twice the world market price for sugar, thanks to a complicated system of price supports and import quotas. It isn't just sugar prices that are affected -- any food or beverage maker that uses a sweetener faces higher manufacturing costs, which they pass on to their customers. That's why such a vast collection of corporate interests is lining up against the government subsidies.
Congress is negotiating the 2007 farm bill, which will set U.S. agricultural support levels for the next five years. So far, the bill is not shaping up to be much of an improvement over the 2002 version, a $20-billion-a-year extravaganza of agribusiness welfare. Despite the heavy damage that sugar policy has inflicted on consumers and the environment, the odds of reform this year are slim. That's because, for the anti-sugar lobby, this is just one concern of many; for sugar growers, it's a life-and-death battle. Sugar is grown in 19 states, and growers contribute heavily to congressional campaigns.
But even if Congress can't find the courage to beat sugar growers, it might be able to buy them out. Not long ago, peanuts and tobacco enjoyed similar protections -- the government artificially inflated their prices by restricting imports and setting quotas on how much domestic producers could grow. But in 2002, the government bought back production quotas from peanut farmers, then made a similar deal with tobacco growers in 2004. In essence, these farmers gave up all market protections in exchange for set payments over a finite number of years.
Such agreements shift the burden of farm protection from consumers to taxpayers, which isn't much of a bargain in the short term. But once the payments run out, taxpayers are off the hook. It's an investment in sane agricultural policy, lower food prices and fair trading partnerships.
Sugar policy remains one of the worst examples of U.S. protectionism. Congress should give quota buyouts a closer look.
Monday, April 30, 2007
“Farm Reform”
Economic principles get steamrolled by politics as usual every five years in passage of a gargantuan farm bill. The 2002 measure expires in September.
The enormous subsidies benefit primarily the biggest, wealthiest agribusinesses. The estimated cost to consumers over the past two decades: $1.7 trillion.
The farm bill should be vetoed. That won't happen. So, the best taxpayers can hope for is agricultural aid reform -- something on the same scale as welfare reform in 1996.
Before 2002, U.S. net farm income (less government aid) averaged $30 billion. Now it's reportedly twice as high. The most undeserving must be lopped from the public dole.
And consider government's bitter harvest: billions in unceasing allocations annually, increased taxes and food costs for consumers and the interminable cycle of subsidies.
And while the fat cats grow fatter on government's farm handouts, the little guys are forced into consolidation -- or out of business.
Perhaps the most pressing requisite for reform is the coming storm from two threatening fronts: Social Security and Medicare. Both are on pace to pulverize taxpayers by 2050. The projected tax increase per household to sustain both (adjusted for inflation): $11,651.
Stacking another grotesque farm bill on top this mounting burden would be utterly irresponsible.
Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin)
May 4, 2007 Friday
“Change Priorities In Federal Farm Bill”
When Wisconsin has weighed in on the federal farm bill, it has usually been to defend the crop and dairy subsidies worth nearly $3.2 billion to state farmers and landowners over the past decade.
But as Congress prepares the 2007 farm bill, Wisconsin is helping to lead a growing campaign for a new priority -- conservation.
Congress should follow through.
It's time for a new kind of farm bill, with more money for programs to promote land and water conservation and less money to subsidize crop and dairy production.
Conservation programs serve the public interest by protecting natural resources that benefit everyone - land, water and wildlife habitat. By providing money and technical assistance, the programs encourage farmers to take marginal land out of production, preserve wetlands, prevent erosion and protect rivers and lakes from polluted runoff.
In contrast, crop and dairy subsidies are often at odds with the public interest. By propping up the prices farmers receive for their production, subsidies encourage more production than the marketplace demands, keeping prices low. That leads to more subsidies in a self-defeating cycle that is costly for taxpayers.
Yet, subsidies have received priority in past farm bills. From 1995 through 2005, Wisconsin farmers and landowners received about $4 billion in revenue from farm bill programs. About $2.6 billion was in crop subsidies, chiefly for corn, and more than $600 million was in dairy subsidies.
Only about $500 million was in conservation funds. Most of the remainder was in disaster aid, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group of Washington, D.C.
Gov. Jim Doyle went to Washington on Tuesday to urge the Senate Agriculture Committee to expand conservation programs in the 2007 farm bill.
Conservation is also the theme from Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who has more than 100 co-sponsors for a bill that would nearly double, to more than $5 billion a year, funding for federal farm conservation programs.
Conservation deserves a big increase in funding. But Wisconsin should be willing to help pay for the expansion by accepting a comparable decrease in crop and dairy subsidies.
May 7, 2007 Monday
“Bloated Boondoggle”
Our position: Congress should ditch its wrong approach to farm subsidies.
In the next few weeks, Congress is planning to take up a new, five-year farm bill. The time is ripe for members to get U.S. agricultural policy out of the farm-subsidy furrow it's been stuck in for decades.
What's wrong with farm subsidies? Where do we start? They cost U.S. taxpayers at least $20 billion a year, yet primarily benefit large farms, often corporate owned. Nearly 90 percent of subsidies go to farmers of five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. Two-thirds of U.S. farmers don't get a nickel; they manage to rely on the market instead of the government. Less than 1 percent of payments between 1995 and 2005 went to Florida farms.
With payments usually based on the amount of crops grown, farm subsidies fuel overproduction, wasting limited resources and adding to environmental damage from pesticides and fertilizers. They promote the processing and consumption of fattening foods from subsidized crops while neglecting healthier fruits and vegetables.
The negative impact of subsidies goes far beyond U.S. borders. They undermine negotiations on trade agreements that would open more international markets to U.S. goods and services. They doom farmers and deepen poverty in countries that can't afford to pay their own subsidies; U.S. taxpayers end up sending more foreign aid to those countries to compensate. Subsidized U.S. corn has helped drive millions of Mexican farmers off their land and added to the flow of illegal immigrants heading north.
Farm subsidies have always made more political than economic sense. They are jealously guarded by members of Congress from states where subsidized crops are grown.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the last farm bill -- a bloated measure that nearly doubled subsidies. But earlier this year, the president proposed a new and better plan that would reduce subsidies and other payouts by $18 billion over five years. Mr. Bush's plan would cut farm-loan programs that have been challenged as illegal under world-trade rules, end handouts to farmers earning more than $200,000 a year, and hike funding for land conservation and farm-grown fuels.
Meanwhile, fruit and vegetable growers and environmental groups have joined together to lobby Congress to put more money for produce as well as conservation in the next farm bill. Those changes, along with others backed by the president, would mark an improvement over the current policy. They would benefit Florida in particular, one of the major fruit- and vegetable-producing states.
But with all that's wrong with farm subsidies, it would be far better for Congress and the president to begin phasing them out instead of getting more growers hooked on government handouts. The United States would reap a more bountiful harvest without farm subsidies.
May 13, 2007 Sunday
“Hunger and Food Stamps”
If you think people do not go hungry in America, you're wrong. At last count in 2005, 35 million low-income Americans -- about a third of them children -- lived in households that cannot consistently afford enough to eat. Since 2005, the situation has most likely become worse. Last year, real wages for low-income workers were still below 2001 levels. This year, job growth is slowing and prices are rising.
And each year, the federal food stamp program -- the bulwark against hunger for 26 million Americans -- does less to help. In large part, that is because a key component of the formula for computing most families' food stamps has not been adjusted for inflation since 1996. Over all, food stamps now average a meager $1.05 per person per meal.
Bolstering food stamps must be Congress's top priority in this year's farm bill, the mammoth legislation that covers the food stamp program.
Most important, lawmakers must stop the erosion in the purchasing power of food stamps, either by pegging the benefit formula to inflation or by making a big increase in the formula's standard deduction. In 2002, when the last farm bill was passed, Congress improved the benefit formula for households with four or more people. But nearly 80 percent of all food stamp households have three or fewer members. It is unacceptable that their food stamps buy less food each year.
Congress should also repeal the provision that imposes a five-year residency requirement on otherwise eligible adult legal immigrants. (Illegal immigrants are not eligible for food stamps.) The children of such immigrants -- 80 percent of whom are United States citizens -- can receive food stamps without waiting. But confusion over the rules keeps many of them out of the program. The Department of Agriculture reports that of the children of immigrant parents who are citizens and eligible for food stamps, only 52 percent got them in 2004, compared with 82 percent of eligible children over all.
Taken together, those two reforms would cost roughly $3 billion over the next five years. In the competitive frenzy of a farm bill, that is money lawmakers would be inclined to fight over. But Democrats and Republicans alike must realize that improving food stamps is a moral and economic necessity. Food stamp allotments were cut in 1996 to free up money to ease the transition from welfare to work. But since then, food stamps themselves have become a crucial support for working families. Among food stamp households with children, twice as many work as rely solely on welfare.
Inadequate aid affects not only the amount of food a family can buy, but also the types of purchases. With too few dollars to spend, junk food becomes the best value because it is calorie dense, cheap and imperishable.
Adjustments around the edges of the food stamp program will not be enough. President Bush has proposed exempting families' meager retirement savings when calculating whether they are poor enough for food stamps. He also wants to allow families to deduct their full child care costs from the benefit calculation. Both changes would be helpful and Congress should embrace them. But Congress also needs to make much bigger changes, now.
The Times Union (Albany, New York)
May 13, 2007 Sunday
“Congress and Farming”
The last time the White House sent Congress a farm bill was in 1971, when Richard Nixon was president and Earl Butz was his secretary of agriculture. Perhaps it was Mr. Butz's fate - he was forced to resign after telling a racist joke - that has made succeeding administrations wary of proposing farm spending bills. Or maybe not. In any case, the Bush proposal, while not perfect, has much to recommend it.
Congress will craft its own farm spending bill, of course, as it does every five years. But lawmakers shouldn't be too proud to overlook some of the White House suggestions, such as eliminating crop subsidies for farmers with incomes of $200,000 or more. Moreover, government support payments would not be targeted at just the five major commodities - corn, wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton - but would also include a range of specialty crops, fruits and vegetables. Again, a good idea.
Just as important, the Bush bill would encourage younger Americans to take up farming by providing access to credit, while also giving established farmers incentives to keep their lands in production and off the market to developers.
Perhaps the most enlightened aspect of the Bush bill is the emphasis on so-called cellulosic ethanol made from such sources as switch grasses, corn husks and wheat chaff, rather than a strictly corn-based program. The emphasis on corn-based ethanol has driven up corn prices, and even at peak production would not be enough to fill future demands for fuel.
Two other issues will require strong leadership by Congress, however. One is how to help dairy farmers, particularly in the Northeast, who are facing financial struggles. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport, has the right idea in proposing so-called marker legislation that would enable more dairy farmers to qualify for government support payments. New York's dairy farmers are, by and large, far more in need of help than the "gentleman farmers," with incomes of $200,000 a year and more, who have received billions of dollars in commodity subsidies over the years.
Congress must also improve on Mr. Bush's proposal for the Conservation Security Program, which provides farmers with federal incentives to be good stewards of the environment by reducing the use of pesticides, improving soil and water conservation, and other measures. The White House plan does provide funds for these objectives, but not nearly enough to go to all farmers nationwide. The money can be found, however, by redirecting more crop subsidy funds to conservation security. Congress should make that happen.
May 14, 2007 Monday 10:32 PM GMT
“Congress Must Revamp Nation's Farm Policy”
U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., is trying to shut off the juice to the political third rail of agricultural states farm subsidies.
What was created as the nation's "safety net" for farmers dates back to the New Deal Era in the wake of the Great Depression, but it has over time become an ineffective and costly program that works against itself and farmers by encouraging overproduction.
Kind and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are proposing to end the farm subsidy system and replace it with a system of risk management accounts that would be available to help farmers through hard economic times.
There is probably no better time for the United States to tackle this outdated and ineffective program since, by several barometers, the nation's farms have been doing well.
A Heritage Foundation column last week by Brian Riedl noted that net farm income totaled $279 billion between 2003-2006, the highest four-year total ever. He cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture report that found "on average, farm households have higher incomes (29 percent above the national average), greater wealth and lower consumption expenditures than all U.S. households."
Yet despite that prosperity, Congress has continued to heap more tax dollars on the pile of farm subsidies and crop and livestock disaster assistance as well. Riedl's column says that subsidies have grown from an average of $14 billion per year in the 1990s to more than $25 billion in the current decade.
Kind's bill would wean farmers off the subsidy program and its direct payments over a period of several years and in the process save the country $55 billion over the next ten years. And Kind is not goring someone else's ox Wisconsin, too, would feel the pinch of reform since it would take dairy farmers off the Milk Income Loss Contract program. Over the past ten years state farmers and landowners have gotten some $3.2 billion in federal subsidies.
In rolling out their proposal last week, Kind said, "We intend to introduce a new vision for American farm policy. You can think of them like farmer IRA accounts."
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, another supporter of subsidy reform put it bluntly: "The current farm subsidy system is inequitable, inefficient, and disconnected from the core goal for maintaining a family farm safety net. It is self-perpetuating in that it stimulates overproduction and stagnant pricing that produce calls for greater government support."
It is time to put an end to that self-defeating cycle and develop a new system that adequately safeguards our farmers from unexpected economic hard times, but also encourages a competitive agricultural industry.
May 15, 2007 - 11:56PM
“Field Of Schemes; Ethanol Empire Is Built On Subsidies”
No doubt about it: the ethanol craze has been a boon to some farmers in Colorado and elsewhere. Government production mandates of the corn-based fuel are pitting food producers against energy producers, driving corn prices to record highs. This is a blessing for farmers, who are rushing to cash in by planting more acres in corn, but a curse for consumers, who will see prices climbing not just on corn flakes but on a host of products, including meat and poultry, connected to corn.
The prices may moderate as farmers meet soaring demand by planting more acres in corn, as a report in last Wednesday’s Gazette indicates. But given the number of subsidized ethanol production plants on the drawing board, and the technical challenges involved in producing non-corn-based ethanol, we’re betting that the inflationary effects will continue.
In time, ethanol will be exposed as a huge boondoggle with illusory benefits for “energy independence” and the environment. But the boom’s beneficiaries will try riding the gravy train as far as they can, using bogus defenses of the fuel. One of them was trotted out in last week’s story.
Colorado Corn Growers Association President Doug Melcher told The Gazette that higher corn prices will make farmers less dependent on government subsidy programs to make a living. We wish it were so. But direct subsidies to farmers represent only the tip of the ethanol iceberg.
We’ve heard no talk about reducing corn subsidies when a five-year farm bill is negotiated by Congress this year — though that’s the least Congress could do, given all the other taxpayer support the ethanol industry receives. Washington is notoriously reluctant to push anyone away from the federal trough: corn farmers won’t be the first.
Not only do taxpayers subsidize farmers, but they shell out 51 cents in tax credits for every gallon of ethanol produced. Although tax credits have fluctuated in value over the years, one estimate puts the revenue losses to government, and the benefits to industry, at as much as $12.6 billion in 2006 dollars. And those numbers will increase thanks to a sizeable boost in federal ethanol mandates included in the 2005 energy bill.
The pump price of ethanol is also kept artificially high due to a 54 cent-a-gallon tariff Washington slaps on ethanol imports, protecting the U.S. industry from competition. Ethanol producers also have received federal loan guarantees, leaving taxpayers holding the bag if projects go bust. Tax credits go to automakers who build vehicles that burn E85, a fuel made up of 85 percent ethanol (as opposed to the usual 10 percent blend). These tax credits help automakers, but they also benefit ethanol producers, by promoting use of their product.
A small ethanol producer’s tax credit of 10 cents a gallon was approved in 1990, applying to the first 15 million gallons a company produces each year. But the rules were changed in the 2005 energy bill, extending the credit to cover the first 60 million gallons produced annually. That many dimes adds up to a lot of dollars. The Department of Energy has funded research and development for the industry. And states offer a host of their own subsidies or tax breaks to ethanol makers.
It’s true that other energy sources are subsidized. But as “Biofuels — at what cost?” a recent report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows, the subsidies for ethanol, per BTU of energy produced, are by far the highest. They’re more than 10 times higher than subsidies for oil, even counting the costs of protecting shipping in the Persian Gulf. The second most highly subsidized energy resource, nuclear power, gets only half the subsidies, per unit of energy produced, as ethanol. According to the report, the ethanol craze annually costs taxpayers $8.2 billion in outlays and $7.3 billion in forgone revenues (in 2006 dollars). And that, according to the report, is a conservative estimate.
Thus, it’s dishonest to claim corn farmers will become less dependent on subsidies if direct price supports are eliminated. Without the scaffolding of subsidies that prop up the entire ethanol empire, from top to bottom, at taxpayer and consumer expense, corn farmers wouldn’t be reaping the windfall they are.
Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
May 18, 2007 Friday
"Ending Subsidies"
In the three quarters of a century since President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal, a great deal has changed on America's farms - and on the farm bills that New Dealers fashioned to rescue the American farmer from the depths of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
The legislation that was designed to put American farm families back on their feet has now become massive giveaway programs to mega-corporations that manage factory farms. The Farm Bill - which must be renewed every five years - is hopelessly bloated and outdated.
The Farm Bill's subsidies have accelerated the growth of corporate farms. They dictate what crops are grown, and they aren't necessarily the crops we need or that will be support farm families. The Farm Bill is a burden on the American taxpayer and it puts the U.S. out of compliance with international trade agreements.
This country needs a new agricultural policy and a diverse group of congressmen are putting it together. A coalition of conservatives and liberals is supporting FARM 21, the Food and Agricultural Risk Management for the 21st Century Act. The Farm Bill is up for renewal this year.
The main Senate sponsor is Sen. Dick Lugar, Republican of Indiana. On the House side, where farm legislation will be considered in committee next week, Rep. Jeff Flake, a conservative Arizona Republican, and Rep. Joe Crowly, a New York liberal Democrat, are teaming with others of varied political stripes on the same idea.
The bill they are all supporting would move the United States away from today's monstrous farm subsidies that are counterproductive. Over the next five years, subsidies would be phased out. In their place, the government would create farm "risk management accounts." According to Rep. Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, these accounts would help farmers "weather the ups and downs, make investments and plan for the future."
For the taxpayers, there'd be some $5 billion saved over the next five years and $20 billion saved by 2017. That's real money, and the bill's sponsors propose to direct it to other farm and food-related programs.
American farm policy is enormously inefficient and, in some ways, self-defeating. It encourages the growth of crops we do not need and cannot sell at a good price. It discourages other crops that we could use. The current Farm Bill also limits the international selling options of American farmers.
Change comes slow in Washington. That's why America still has a Great Depression-era farm policy. It needs to be replaced, in favor of something more modern, and FARM 21 looks like a good approach.
May 19, 2007 Saturday
“THOUGHT FOR FOOD; Hungry For Change; The Average Food Stamp Payout Is Just $3 A Day. We Could Increase That By Cutting Agricultural Subsidies.”
IF YOU THINK the U.S. government is too generous to the poor, try surviving on the food stamp diet, as four members of Congress pledged to do this week. They have to feed themselves on $21 a week, or $3 a day, which is the average payout to food stamp recipients.
For most families on food stamps, that amount hasn't changed much since 1996, when Congress undertook a major welfare overhaul and added restrictions to the program aimed at cutting the number of people who could qualify. Because the key formula for computing food stamps for most families isn't indexed to inflation, the amount one can buy with them has been falling for the last decade.
Congress is now negotiating the 2007 farm bill, a five-year blueprint for the nation's agricultural supports that also includes the food stamp program. The pairing is a relic of the Depression era, when food stamps were created as a way of feeding the poor using American farmers' surplus crops. Though that's no longer the case, farm subsidies and food stamps still have one thing in common: Both are forms of food welfare. The difference is that while the poor and hungry are losing ground, wealthy agribusiness giants continue to hog their billions.
The average monthly household income of the 26 million Americans who receive food stamps is $648. Two of the members of Congress taking the food stamp challenge -- Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) -- have introduced a bill that would provide for small yearly increases in the payout and would revive benefits for some of the groups excluded in 1996. This would add about $4 billion a year to the $33-billion annual cost of the program. Such an increase could be offset by breaking the culture of dependence of a group that is genuinely getting fat off the government trough: farmers.
The U.S. spends about $20 billion annually on agricultural subsidies, the vast majority going to large commercial operations, not family farms. These payments distort trade, heighten poverty in the Third World and raise food prices for U.S. consumers. Continuing this porkfest while the neediest Americans go hungry is more than nonsensical -- it's immoral.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
“Farm Sense Can Congress write a farm bill without wasteful subsidies?”
EVERY HALF a decade or so, Congress considers what to do with a massive system of federal handouts that enriches a narrow band of American businessmen. Too often, after a fair amount of acrimony and spectacular displays of local-interest, pork-barrel politics, the system is altered -- sometimes for the good, sometimes not -- but not reformed as dramatically as it ought to be. The issue, of course, is American farm subsidies, an inefficient, trade-distorting program of price and income support included in the expiring farm bill; a new one is being prepared. How the new Democratic leadership decides to handle the coming debate will be a critical test of its commitment to responsible spending and to a range of worthy social programs in the agriculture budget that deserve federal money more than subsidy programs do.
The contours of the debate are beginning to emerge. Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, says that subcommittees will begin marking up a draft farm bill this week. So far, it appears that the draft will not include a transfer of money from subsidy programs into conservation projects, which many lawmakers would like to see. Mr. Peterson has also said that his committee, which critics generally regard as subsidy-friendly, will draft the legislation alone; he insisted that any tampering on the House floor "would be a recipe for chaos." This makes it likely that fundamental reform of the subsidy system will not happen.
In contrast, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Reps. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) have proposed to curtail farm subsidies. The group favors setting up "income stabilization accounts," to which the government would direct money currently going into certain subsidy programs. These payments would then phase out over several years. Highly generous federal farm insurance programs would remain to protect American farmers from major problems, while money from the accounts could be withdrawn to pay for minor income fluctuations. The resulting savings -- $55 billion over 10 years, according to supporters -- would go into debt relief, renewable energy, environmental stewardship and neglected programs such as food stamps.
Mr. Lugar and his allies in the House are on a sensible track, and it is critical that their ideas get a fair hearing. The farm bill can be a vehicle for investing heavily in important priorities such as rural conservation or food stamps for low-income Americans, without depleting the federal bank account or violating the Democrats' responsible pay-go budget rules -- but only if Congress is willing to make agriculture spending more rational. If the House Agriculture Committee does not move in that direction, the full House should.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
May 21, 2007 Monday
“Finally, A Chance To Reform Farm Subsidies; Congress Could Make Historic Progress This Year”
For as long as anyone can remember, fair-minded reformers in Washington have been trying to wean American farmers from government subsidies, design a more sensible rural safety net and let market signals, rather than federal regulations, guide the nation's food supply
Last week a big, bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a remarkable bill to do just that. It even saves money for taxpayers and speeds up the development of renewable biofuels. The Food & Agriculture Risk Management Act is a radical break from past farm policy, and it sidesteps the normal process for writing agriculture legislation. But it points farm policy in exactly the right direction, and if it doesn't exert some influence on the big farm bill that Congress will write this summer, then the process will be a failure
At the heart of the "Farm21'' bill is a dramatic overhaul of the farm safety net. The government's three big payment streams would be gradually phased down and converted to "risk-management accounts,'' held and managed by farmers to cushion themselves against the annual swings of commodity markets
Because agriculture really is an unusually volatile business, farmers deserve some sort of economic stabilizer. But most commercial farms today are well-capitalized, well-managed small businesses; given the right tools, they can afford to manage market risk much the way other business owners do
The bill's authors estimate that converting traditional crop subsidies to these risk management accounts would save $20 billion over the next five years, enough to fund increased research on renewable biofuels, expand rural conservation programs that are now badly underfunded, boost funding for nutrition programs and even make a contribution to reducing the federal deficit
What's interesting is that the bill's chief sponsors come from the heart of farm country. The Senate author is Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana, where corn is king. A lead House sponsor is Democrat Ron Kind from the great farm state of Wisconsin. They're not anti-farmer. They just want government money spent fairly and wisely. "Too many farmers are producing for the government paycheck, not for the marketplace,'' Kind said in an interview last week
The bill's biggest drawback is that it did not originate in the House or Senate agriculture committees, traditionally the drafting places for major farm legislation, and it hasn't earned the embrace of the two powerful committee chairmen, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa
But this bill addresses so many urgent national priorities - energy and resource conservation, deficit reduction, a fair and orderly international trade policy - that no one on Capitol Hill can afford to ignore it
POTENTIAL SAVINGS
Authors of "Farm21'' say they could reduce farm subsidies by $20 billion over the next five years, then use the savings to accelerate research on renewable biofuels, expand conservation and nutrition programs, and pay down the federal deficit
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
May 21, 2007 Monday
“Living Food: Time For A Change”
A committee in the U.S. House of Representatives this week is beginning to reshape farm conservation programs, a key to improving the country's environmental health. But Congress will have a hard time financing changes if it ducks the kinds of fundamental farm policy changes supported by Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.
In a refreshing example of much-needed suburban interest in farm policy, the Eastside Republican has joined with a dairy-farm state Democrat, Wisconsin's Ron Kind, and others in both parties to propose the Food & Agriculture Risk Management for the 21st Century Act. Besides better conservation, the FARM 21 proposal hits key themes that must emerge in a new farm bill: better support for domestic and international anti-hunger programs, more encouragement for organics, encouragement of farmers markets and new emphasis on fruit and vegetable growers.
The bill's big difference is its plan to transition from welfarelike subsidies for the biggest farmers to a system of individual risk-management accounts that protect farmers when prices drop. The plan would encourage savings while ending the protectionist practices that hold back farmers in Africa and other parts of the Third World.
Reichert realizes his district is attuned to the environment, food, health and trade. Preservation of agriculture is a national concern, and a local one where some of King County's remaining farms have held their ground.
It is just that type of political dynamic that makes it possible to hope for a farm bill that benefits the whole country, not a few wealthy growers and agribusinesses. Other bill sponsors include Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., and environmental, humanitarian, food and fiscal-conservative groups. The FARM 21 concepts are a good start toward sustainable farming, food and trade.
May 24, 2007 Thursday
“Farm Bill Offers Opportunity”
For six years, the Bush administration and environmental groups have been at loggerheads in Washington. But global warming and the need for renewable energy resources have now caused Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and veteran environmental lobbyists like Scott Faber of Environmental Defense to join forces to work for the "greenest" - and most economically rational - farm bill in U.S. history.
Farm bills have been the nation's most consistent policy failure ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal tried to stabilize rural America in the 1930s by paying farmers to idle parts of their land. Conceived as an emergency measure, the tactic of paying farmers not to grow crops prompted public ridicule and ultimately did little to aid the small farmers it was supposed to help.
Assailing "six decades of failure," Congress passed the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996, dropping the requirement that farmers idle acres in return for fixed cash payments. But a dip in farm prices a few years later prompted Congress to again hurl billions in subsidies without even asking for acreage reductions in return.
The Bush administration's new plan seeks to end what is now seven decades of failure by reining in some of the giveaways while harnessing the power of American farmers to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil. The heart of the Bush plan trades the failed commodity subsidies for a more reliable farm income maintenance system, coupled with a rural development program and an expanded food stamp program for needy Americans. The administration proposals also include advanced environmental policies, including:
Increasing funding by $7.8 billion over 10 years for the Conservation Reserve and creating a new Environmental Quality Incentives Program and a Regional Water Enhancement Program.
Increasing the Wetlands Reserve Program funding by $2.1 billion.
Providing $1.6 billion in new funding over five years for renewable energy research, development and production - targeted for cellulosic ethanol - on top of $2.1 billion in guaranteed loans for cellulosic projects.
It's an ambitious agenda and one that offers special benefits to rural Colorado. We urge the state's two members on the House Agriculture Committee, Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Democratic Rep. John Salazar, to continue the support they are already giving to these progressive reforms that will benefit Colorado farmers while protecting the state's environment.
The Times Union (Albany, New York)
May 26, 2007 Saturday
“Politics on the Farm”
If this is the year when Congress finally gets farm subsidies right - and from all appearances it seems that way as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle work together on a new five-year agriculture bill - then Rep. Collin C. Peterson, D-Minn., is standing in the way of progress. Trouble is, Rep. Peterson is also chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and a powerful one at that. And he's bent on keeping the status quo, warning his colleagues that "chaos" will result if they attempt to challenge the spending bill his committee is drafting.
Threats aside, Rep. Peterson should not be allowed to prevail. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should remind him and all congressional Democrats that they have an obligation to voters to deliver on their campaign promise of change. There's no better way to demonstrate their good faith than by crafting a spending bill that puts the nation's interest ahead of the small cadre of farmers who have been benefiting for years under the government's generous subsidy program.
While Rep. Peterson seems intent on preserving that program, some members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, are trying to enact real reform. And President Bush, in a move not seen since the Nixon era, has sent Congress proposed legislation that would eliminate crop subsidies for farmers with incomes of $200,000 or more.
More important, the reform measures would take the savings from subsidies and pour them into an array of worthwhile programs, including conservation and environmental initiatives. The Bush bill, for example, would provide incentives to farmers to keep their lands off limits to developers, reduce the use of pesticides and combat soil erosion. But it provides too little in funding to reach all farmers, a deficiency Congress must address.
A bipartisan bill winding its way through Congress appears to be the best vehicle for setting the right agricultural priorities. It is sponsored in the Senate by Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and in the House by Reps. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y.; Dave Reichert, R-Wash., Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
By contrast, Rep. Peterson is targeting the conservation program by denying any new applications in the next five years, and shifting more than $1 billion to other projects, including one that would benefit hunters.
Congress gets only one chance every five years to get the farm bill right. That's the point Speaker Pelosi needs to drive home to her colleague, Rep. Peterson.
May 28, 2007 Monday
“An Even Better Farm Bill”
For years, reform-minded legislators have been trying to rid the country of a farm subsidy program that lavishes huge amounts of money on relatively few producers, compromises the environment, penalizes third-world farmers and fouls up trade negotiations. With the farm bill set to expire this year, the Bush administration has already proposed several excellent reforms. Now legislators in both houses are offering another approach that actually improves on the administration's.
The architects are respected farm-state legislators, led by the Senate's Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and the House's Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat. Their matching bills threaten entrenched interests, and that is exactly why they deserve a close look and wide support.
At the heart of their approach is an overhaul of agricultural subsidies. Four major subsidy programs -- crafted to reward big growers of traditional crops like corn, wheat and soybeans -- would be phased out and replaced by a single ''risk-management account'' whose main purpose would be to cushion farmers from annual price swings. Crop insurance would still be available for major disasters.
The estimated savings -- $55 billion over 10 years -- would be used to expand rural conservation programs, encourage the production of renewable biofuels, provide more money for food stamps and help smaller farmers of specialty crops who are now frozen out of the system.
One reason the bill faces uphill sledding is that it did not originate in the House and Senate agriculture committees, with their cozy ties to big agriculture. Their lack of enthusiasm helped scuttle the administration's efforts to reform the subsidy system five years ago.
But with so much at stake -- energy, conservation, rural development, the health of smaller farms and fair trade -- and with the administration and influential centrists demanding reform, the full House and Senate should pay attention even if the committees do not.
May 31, 2007 Thursday
“The 2007 Farm Bill; Cultivating saner policy”
Congress isn't very good at big bills - those phone-book-sized proposals to transform policy on energy, transportation, immigration, or Social Security. It's especially tough when new thinking is required.
In complex bills, everybody wants something. Interest groups ramp up; lobbying is intense. Priorities fall victim to horsetrading. In the end, bills often are drained of meaning, and bloated fiscally. Reform hopes evaporate.
Those dangers lurk as House and Senate subcommittees craft the 2007 farm bill, which must pass by Sept. 30. Too much is at stake for Congress to revert to bad habits this time.
The farm bill covers aid to farmers, fair trade, nutrition for the poor, conservation, agricultural research, energy policy, forestry, and rural development. Predictably, various interests are competing for a cut of a limited pool of money.
What's different this year is the diverse coalition of politicians, farmers, taxpayer groups, environmentalists, and international nongovernmental groups jointly demanding changes to traditional farm subsidies. Ninety percent of farm-subsidy payments are channeled to growers of just five crops: wheat, rice, corn, soybeans and cotton.
That means fruit and vegetable growers in states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and fecund California get next to nothing. Commercial farms, though just 17 percent of all farms, received 56 percent of the pot in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The system is unbalanced and unfair.
Current policy distorts international and domestic commodity prices, drives small and family farmers out of the market, favors crops of poor nutritional value, transfers billions in tax dollars to a select few producers, and condones poor land use. That must change.
Over the past year, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, a former governor of Nebraska, toured the country, listened to farmers, and embraced practical reforms.
In January, initial bills focused on improving America's food supply and environmental stewardship.
But beginning work this month, the agriculture committees seem to be plodding down a conventional trail, seemingly oblivious to cries for a radical shift from the 2002 bill.
In contrast, Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) and Reps. Ron Kind (D., Wisc.) and Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) offer a sensible subsidy overhaul. Their bills replace four major subsidy programs with a "risk-management account" controlled by individuals to guard against steep price fluctuations. Farmers also could buy federally subsidized crop insurance.
The program would save $55 billion over 10 years, sponsors estimate. Some money would wisely go toward deficit reduction. The balance should be used to provide more food stamps, expand land conservation, research and commercialize biofuels, and shore up specialty crop markets.
This country needs better farm policy - to provide a farmer safety net, to protect the land, to rectify international trade inequity, to feed the poor. Congress should nurture the good seeds that have been planted.
June 2, 2007 Saturday
“End Farm Subsidies”
Our position: Money from the program should be used for the deficit, other efforts.
Federal subsidies to farmers began as emergency relief during the Great Depression. Seven decades later, they have metastasized into a budget-busting entitlement of at least $15 billion a year. They disproportionately benefit a select group of prosperous farming operations, waste resources by encouraging overproduction, and snarl U.S. trade negotiations.
Congress is now working on a new five-year plan for farm policy. It's an ideal time for lawmakers to commit to phasing out costly and wasteful farm subsidies.
Currently, almost 90 percent of subsidies go to farmers of just five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. At least two-thirds of U.S. farmers don't get a dime. Florida farms collected less than 1 percent of subsidies doled out between 1995 and 2005.
President Bush, to his credit, has proposed a series of improvements for the next farm bill. The president's plan would trim farm-bill spending over the next five years by $10 billion compared to the past five. It would end handouts to farmers earning more than $200,000 a year. It would boost funding for land conservation and production of farm-grown fuels.
Unfortunately, the president's plan would maintain the primary subsidy programs. It also would leave virtually intact the sugar program, which raises costs for U.S. consumers because it props up prices for U.S. growers.
In the House, a bipartisan group has introduced a better plan. Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dave Reichert of Washington, and Democrats Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Joe Crowley of New York would gradually replace the primary subsidy programs with a system of accounts to stabilize incomes for farmers. The sponsors say the switch would save $20 billion over five years and $55 billion over 10 years.
Those savings would be plowed into rural-development programs, land conservation, renewable-fuels production, food stamps and other programs to fight hunger and promote better nutrition. There would still be billions left over for deficit reduction.
Phasing out farm subsidies would remove a major obstacle to new trade agreements. U.S. farmers could end up better off if more international markets open for their products.
As another sweetener, the House bill would end the sugar program. U.S. consumers would save, and U.S. food manufacturers would be more competitive with their rivals in other countries.
Any attempt to overhaul farm policy is bound to run into resistance from members of the House and Senate agriculture committees. Most have been staunch guardians of the status quo.
But advocates of reform have the broader national interest on their side. Congress needs to seize this chance to plant the seeds for a more economically and environmentally responsible farm policy.
Journal-World (Lawrence, Kansas)
June 4, 2007 Monday
“Farm Future: Two former senators have proposed a new direction for federal farm programs.”
Jun. 4--The federal farm bill is up for renewal this year, which is of no small concern to Kansas and other states whose economies are closely tied to agriculture.
Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle last week released a plan for reforming the nation's agricultural policy. They proposed eliminating direct subsidy payments to farmers but retaining countercyclical payments that provide supplemental income when commodity prices are low. The plan would save the U.S. Treasury about $4.7 billion, the former senators said.
To help farmers stay afloat, Dole and Daschle's plan would encourage them to take part in emerging markets such as renewable fuels.
Both Dole and Daschle have served on the Senate Agriculture Committee and Daschle was a key player in writing the last farm bill, which was passed in 2002. That doesn't mean, however, that they necessarily are on the same page with current members of Congress, including Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, who is a senior Republican on the Agriculture Committee and has been outspoken in his opposition to trimming farm programs.
Much has been written about abuses of federal farm subsidies. Although most farmers aren't getting rich off U.S. Department of Agriculture payments, some corporate entities have found ways to profit unfairly from federal farm programs. The Dole-Daschle plan would cap individual farm payments at $250,000 and close a loophole that allowed corporations to obtain farm payments through multiple entities.
The pair said last week that in a global market, farmers must look for new sources of income. Their program would encourage farmers to get into ethanol production and other renewable energy sources, such as wind power. The traditional 3-F farm program that supports food, feed and fiber, Daschle said, now should include a fourth F: fuel.
Dole and Daschle both come from states with a heavy reliance on agriculture and have some expertise to offer on this topic. The proposal offers some out-of-the-box thinking and deserves consideration by current policy makers. Many farmers probably would applaud the opportunity to respond better to market forces for food and fuel.
However, in an effort to branch into other areas, those writing agriculture policy shouldn't neglect the primary mission of American agriculture to be a stable and safe source of food for the nation, as well as key exporters. It's good to respond to market forces and move into new ventures, but we can't lose sight of the vital role American farmers play in feeding the nation.
Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin)
June 5, 2007 Tuesday
“Seize Chance To End Subsidies”
If Wisconsin agriculture is to prosper over the next decade, it is imperative that federal farm policy pursue a new direction.
A bipartisan proposal to be introduced on Capitol Hill, perhaps as soon as this week, offers that direction.
The plan, co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., would gear U.S. farm policy for a new era shaped by the global economy, growing demand for biofuels, a sense of urgency about conservation, and an overriding need to rein in federal spending.
Called the Farm and Agriculture Risk Management for the 21st Century Act - FARM-21, for short - the proposal should guide Congress as it prepares the 2007 farm bill, which will govern agriculture for the next five years.
At stake is the safety net that protects the nation's farmers from steep declines in the prices for their products. Consumers also depend on the net to ensure a consistent supply of food at reasonable and stable prices.
For the past 70 years the U.S. farm safety net has been dominated by a flawed system of subsidies, supply and price controls, and import restrictions.
The subsidies have encouraged too much production, which depresses prices, which requires more subsidies in a cycle now costing taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.
Supply and price controls and import restrictions have distorted markets and limited foreign competition, increasing consumer costs, undermining Third World economies and producing retaliatory barriers against U.S. exports.
FARM-21 proposes a radical departure that benefits farmers, taxpayers, consumers and international trade.
Under the plan, subsidies would be phased out, replaced by a more cost-effective method of protecting farmers.
At the center of the proposal are risk management accounts, which the government would fund. Farmers could tap the accounts when their revenue declined or to buy crop or revenue insurance.
The plan saves $55 billion over 10 years. The plan would use about $20 billion of savings to reduce the federal deficit. Most of the remainder would finance biofuel development, conservation, rural development and nutrition programs.
Moreover, risk management accounts would help bring U.S. farm policy in compliance with global trade agreements, which are hurt by subsidies. That would help lead the world toward freer trade, benefiting U.S. exports.
The redistribution of federal aid resulting from FARM-21 would require adjustments. Wisconsin farmers would lose crop and dairy subsidies worth nearly $3.2 billion to the state over the past decade.
But it's time for American farmers to produce for market demands, not to collect a subsidy check.
It's time for Congress to incorporate the principles of FARM-21 in this year's farm bill.
June 6, 2007 Wednesday
“Make Conservation Top Farm Bill Priority”
Perhaps the best measuring stick for the worth of the eventual 2007 farm bill will be its success in increasing funding for protecting the nation's soil and water.
Crop subsidies draw increased criticism with each farm bill. They're hard to justify when the United States pressures other potential trading partners to cut theirs and when they go disproportionately to the largest farms.
Conservation programs, in contrast, do more than funnel federal money to a fraction of farmers. They provide clear benefits to all Americans, by reducing erosion, improving air and water quality and enhancing wildlife habitat. Iowa's Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, is pushing to increase conservation spending by about $6 billion over the five-year life of the farm bill. That's the right idea, but it won't be easy.
Hurdles include pay-as-you-go spending rules and competition with other popular programs, such as biofuels development and food-buying assistance, which gets the biggest chunk of farm-bill spending.
Plus, there's a philosophical standoff over conservation-funding priorities between Harkin and Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who chairs the House Agriculture Committee. Last month, Peterson proposed cutting funding from a working-lands conservation program that Harkin wrote into the last farm bill, the Conservation Security Program, to increase funding for other conservation programs, such as wetlands protection. Peterson thinks Harkin's creation is too complex and has wasted money by paying farmers for conservation practices they already were following.
Harkin crafted the program as an entitlement, meaning as much money would be paid out as farmers were qualified to receive. Despite the legislation's clear intent, the Bush administration and previous Republican-controlled Congresses consistently cut its funding, so that relatively little land around the nation has received dollars.
Harkin concedes the program needs to be simplified, but believes it will work well if funded properly. He has countered with a proposal to combine it with other working-lands programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which primarily helps livestock farmers pay for pollution controls. That would allow a streamlined, one-stop-shopping application process.
Preserving and expanding the concept of the Conservation Security Program is important because it's a step toward rewarding farmers primarily for conservation practices on working lands. Payments from federal conservation programs have typically required idling land. Instead, the Conservation Security Program rewards farmers for improved stewardship of land still in production.
The program offers a template for a sustainable farm program for the 21st century. Instead of boosting farm income with crop subsidies -likely to be outlawed by international trade rules at some point - the nation could offer farmers a safety net based on how well they take care of the land.
Producers still do need a safety net, to protect them against the extraordinary risks of farming, from erratic prices, bad weather, pests, diseases or other calamities. But there are tools other than crop subsidies, such as crop insurance, to lessen risk. Support appears to be building for tighter limits on subsidies, and sustained high corn prices would dramatically reduce payouts. But it's highly unlikely they'll be eliminated altogether this time around.
Their continuation should be accompanied by tougher rules requiring farmers to follow standard conservation practices to retain eligibility for any government assistance. So-called conservation-compliance rules apply now only to certain parcels of highly erodible land and don't cover all types of assistance.
The growing crop of ethanol plants is gobbling up more corn and pushing up prices, tempting farmers to put more and more land into crop production and increasing the potential for soil erosion. That's another reason why this farm bill, above all, should champion conservation.
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
June 13, 2007 Wednesday
“It's Your Money!”
The American people pay trillions of dollars in taxes to the federal government each year, most of it for important, necessary and constitutional purposes. That's part of maintaining our American freedom and our advantageous way of life. But unfortunately, even as annual budget deficits continue, we are being forced to pay many billions of dollars for unnecessary, wasteful, frivolous and unconstitutional things. It's overdue for the people to do something remedial about that.
You've heard a lot about "earmarks" in recent years. Earmarks are mostly unnecessary and often ridiculous spending items that members of Congress attach to necessary spending bills, as special favors for their constituents and special interests in their home districts, to buy votes at taxpayers' expense.
It is reported that earmarks currently are costing taxpayers more than $64 billion a year!
Responding belatedly to growing complaints, Wisconsin Democrat Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, commendably has announced that one month before earmarks come up for final approval, each item -- and the name of its sponsor -- will be printed for all the world to see in the Congressional Record. No more secrecy!
That won't stop earmarks. It won't end waste. But with ridiculous items and ridiculous congressional sponsors connected in public view, there should be enough public expressions of disdain to shame some members of Congress and at least reduce the waste of your tax money.
While we're talking about that kind of federal waste, it is also appropriate to talk about "subsidies." There's nothing in the Constitution that says the American people should be taxed to pay subsidies to certain favored people, businesses or farmers or anything else. But billions of tax dollars are being spent that way each year -- wrongly.
Every farmer deserves a fair price in the market for whatever he provides for consumers who want to buy it. Every business deserves a fair price for each product purchased in the marketplace. But the prices should be set by free market supply and demand, not be subsidized by tax money or at prices fixed by government.
It is reported now that, for the first time, names and amounts of farm subsidy recipients are going to be listed in public so there will no longer be any secret about what individuals and corporations are being subsidized by American taxpayers.
This is just a start. Every earmark and every subsidy should be fully revealed. Then let's demand the wasteful, unnecessary, frivolous, unconstitutional ones be ended.
That would save a lot of your tax money and reduce annual federal budget deficits.
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
June 14, 2007 Thursday
“Why Not Stop All Subsidies?”
The Tongass National Forest in Alaska is a huge and beautiful expanse of nature. As is the case in most national forests, it is advantageous for the health of natural growth, fire control, wildlife management and economic benefits to have some regulated logging.
But an issue before Congress has involved the payment of tax money to subsidize road-building in Tongass (and in some other national forests) to facilitate logging. The cost in Tongass since 1982 has been a staggering $1 billion, with about $40 million more being paid each year.
American taxpayers should support reasonable logging in national forests for sound woodland management -- but they also should insist there be no taxpayer subsidies.
In fact, why should taxpayers allow government to subsidize any private operation -- farms, logging, businesses or whatever?
All government subsidies should be ended, saving taxpayers' money, letting free enterprise operate on its own, limiting government to its proper constitutional functions.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
June 14, 2007 Thursday
"Take bull by the horns"
It's time to wrestle with the federal government's bloated farm subsidy program, but some in Congress don't seem interested in change like that offered by Rep. Ron Kind.
The last time Congress wrote a farm bill in 2002, it showered billions of dollars on key farm states during an election year. The result was predictable: an out-of-whack program that sent the wrong economic signals, rewarded people who didn't need the help and wasted taxpayer dollars.
Now, Congress has a chance to get it right, and the House and Senate agriculture committees, where the bill-writing takes place, should be listening to Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.).
A bill introduced Wednesday by Kind would create a framework for a saner system of farm support. Along with President Bush's own ideas, announced in January, there are sensible alternatives to the illogic of the current system.
But are the agriculture committees, led by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), listening?
It would seem not. Peterson recently brushed aside Kind's bill with "we've been down this road before," saying it was "to some extent ideology run amok."
An attitude like that is about as useful as a milk bucket under a bull.
It's time for change. Half of all farm spending goes to just 22 congressional districts. And a new database compiled by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group showed that billionaires like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen and Texas oil man Lee M. Bass were receiving subsidies meant for struggling farmers. The overly rich payouts have consequences beyond our shores: They are a key reason global trade talks stalled last year.
Kind and his co-sponsors, including Wisconsin Republican Reps. Paul Ryan and Tom Petri along with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), have a different idea.
In place of subsidies, the bill would phase in "income stabilization accounts" that farmers could draw on during hard times. Backers believe they can save $55 billion over a decade compared with the current bloated system. The savings would be plowed into the federal food stamp program, renewable energy, rural development and other programs. The bill would replace the MILC program with dairy income stabilization accounts. Although MILC has been useful, the Kind proposal deserves serious discussion.
Unfortunately, there are signals that discussion will not occur. And that could well result in another expensive, poorly conceived bill. Farmers and taxpayers deserve better.
June 17, 2007 Sunday
“End The Farm Subsidy Scam"
War Funding, Energy, Immigration - You'd Think Congress Has Enough On Its Plate. But No. Still Ahead Is A Farm Bill.
Farm subsidies are an abomination that, politically, are nearly impossible to get rid of. It is time to try something new. We like the proposal of the libertarian Cato Institute to end future subsidies with lump-sum cash payments now - a buyout, if you will. CATO suggested 70 percent of the value of payments over the next seven years, perhaps in ``Individual Farmer Accounts'' like IRAs with the money not taxed until withdrawal (but usable for any purpose).
Farmers would grow what would sell, not something grandpop did a half-century ago. Food prices would fall. The United States would get a huge boost in international trade talks, where poor countries resist all kinds of liberalizations because their farmers are shut out of U.S. markets and must compete with subsidized U.S. commodities.
Having dismantled almost all of its own farm trade barriers, Australia is in a good position to study others. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics estimated that U.S. farm income would fall by the equivalent of $65 billion over 10 years if subsidies were ended. The counterpart savings to the federal budget would be $120 billion. In other words, taxpayers could compensate farmers fully and have $55 billion left over.
Farm-state members of Congress may trot out the old ``family farm'' tearjerkers and Willie Nelson may threaten more Farm Aid concerts, but the rest of us should remember that it's the rich that get the bulk of the help. Two-thirds of farmers get nothing. An update of its farm subsidy database by the Environmental Working Group found that 10 percent of farmers got 66 percent of the money in 2003-2005. (The top 1 percent got 17 percent of the money.) Retired banker David Rockefeller got $29,615 for a farm in Hudson, N.Y. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the fifth-richest American, got $30,687.
The median farm household has five times the median wealth of all households. It is time for the Rockefellers and Allens to make it in farming on their own.
Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City)
June 17, 2007 Sunday
“Congress Wallows in Pork”
Recent opinion polls show that, despite how little Americans regard President Bush right now, they regard Congress even less. One survey put lawmakers' approval rating at 27 percent.
To understand this, look no further than an old standby of politics-as-usual -- pork. The more the Information Age allows easy access to the details of what Congress does, the worse things look.
Last week, the Agriculture Department released new data that actually attaches names to specific dollar amounts granted under the farm subsidy program. The list doesn't include a lot of struggling folks trying to hang onto the family farm. It does, however, include former NBA star Scottie Pippen, who once helped Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls defeat the Utah Jazz in the finals. He owns land in Arkansas and received $78,945 in taxpayer funds between 2003-05. It also includes billionaire Lee M. Bass, who got $242,787 during that same period.
There really is nothing new in this information, other than the well-known names. Twelve years ago, when Republicans took over Congress, the Department of Agriculture released a study that showed the largest farm subsidies at that time went to the wealthiest 5 percent of farmers.
The only thing shocking here is that neither the contract-with-America reformers of that era nor the new anti-corruption Democratic majority of this era want to do anything about it.
But farm subsidies are only one form of pork. Congress almost ground to a halt last week because Democrats refused to allow a floor vote on the many individual pet projects being attached to unrelated bills. Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said he wants the House to pass all spending bills now without earmarks, then his committee will disclose a list of those earmarks right before a conference committee meets with the Senate in late summer to hammer out final spending bills.
Republicans say this will give Obey control over which pork projects are approved. The conference committee's final version cannot be amended by either house.
To most voters, we imagine, these issues aren't so terribly complicated. Both parties are guilty of secretly padding legislation with expenditures that violate rules of good governance. And both parties have allowed farm subsidies to go on far too long.
The free market should rule over food prices and the profitability of farms. Any congressional handouts for pet projects should be debated and aired openly, with their sponsors having to speak in their defense.
That's just common sense, something the public apparently believes Congress lacks.
June 18, 2007
“Cut Subsidy to Wealthy”
Many correctly question the effectiveness of the present U.S. farm subsidy system, and a report last week gave Americans another reason to doubt its success.
The Environmental Working Group’s Internet database shows that some of America’s rich and famous are receiving farm subsidies. News groups accessed the data to report that former basketball superstar Scottie Pippen received $289,000 in subsidy payments and talk show host David Letterman $8,000.
Letterman gave his subsidy payment to charity, but his $8,000 should have gone to struggling farmers, whom the subsidy payments are supposed to assist.”
A spokesperson for the American Farm Bureau Federation defended the subsidy system, saying, “We would rather see a few billionaires slip through the cracks and get payments versus seeing hardworking farmers not get the payments that they need."
Oklahoma subsidies
Recipients in the top 10% averaged $21,562 in annual payments between 1995 and 2005. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients saw only $567 on average per year. More on local subsidies below.
But that’s the kind of thinking that has allowed a poorly conceived subsidy system to become even more ridiculous.
Farm subsidies are supposed to stabilize food prices and aid farmers who are struggling not because of their ineptitude, but because of fluctuating markets here and abroad.
It’s doubtful that the subsidy system accomplishes either efficiently or fairly, and the latest news only confirms those doubts.
Brattleboro Reformer (Vermont)
June 19, 2007 Tuesday
“Fixing Farming”
In the roller coaster world of dairy farming, it looks like Vermont's farmers are about to benefit from higher milk prices. But it may not be enough to offset the higher prices that farms are paying for feed, fertilizer and energy.
A combination of increased global demand for dairy products and droughts in New Zealand and Australia have forced European markets to turn to American producers. That has driven up milk prices in this country.
Last May, Vermont farmers were getting about $12 per hundredweight of milk. Today, prices are in the $20 per hundredweight range and may stay in that price range for another year or so.
Another reason prices are up is because milk production is down. Many farms in the Northeast have gone out of business due to the lethal combination of bad weather, low milk prices and high production costs. With fewer producers and higher demand, the price of milk can't help but go up.
For the 1,152 dairy farms still left in Vermont (as of the end of 2006, down from 2,720 in 1986), higher prices are a godsend. Unfortunately, farmers can't count on them over the long term. The volatility of milk prices makes the difficult work of running a dairy farm that much more difficult.
Congress is currently working on a reauthorization of the Farm Bill, a massive and complicated piece of legislation that touches upon food, energy, trade, environmental issues and anti-poverty policy. The hope is that there might be changes in federal agriculture policy to smooth out the market's drastic peaks and valleys for small farms.
When the federal government first tackled farm policy in the 1930s, the overriding idea was to manage supply, conserve the environment and smooth out price hikes and slumps. By managing prices and production through a system of loans, target prices and stored surpluses, farmers had the stability they needed to stay in business.
Supply management was replaced in the 1990s by a system that decoupled subsidies from production. The hope was that farm subsidies could be eliminated over time. The volatility of the market and the inherent unpredictability of farming proved that doing this was impossible, so the subsidies continue, but without supply management.
Change is certainly overdue. Current federal farm policy benefits corporate special interests -- with 70 percent of agricultural subsidies going to the top 10 percent of farmers, while 60 percent of the nation's farmers get no support at all.
Corporations like the international grain traders Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, and the highly concentrated commodity producers and proceessors such as Tyson or Smithfield or Dean Foods benefit. Current policy ensures high profits for a select group of commodities and the large processors that handle them, while other commodities and smaller processors get next to nothing.
In the next farm bill, there needs to be a return to supply management. Conservation projects need to be expanded and sustainable farming practices need to be promoted. Local agriculture needs to be supported and the stranglehold that agribusiness has on the American food supply needs to be loosened.
Farming is not like other businesses. It is something that is essential to our lives, and in this state, it is a big part of why Vermont looks like Vermont. A Vermont without dairy farms would be a very different place.
The corporate farm lobby is powerful and will fight to the death to keep the billions of dollars of government subsidies it receives. But for the future of farming and the future of our planet, a new direction is needed. We need an agricultural policy that serves all farmers, protects the environment and ensures a steady supply of safe, healthy food for all Americans.
The Kansas City Star (Missouri)
June 20, 2007 Wednesday
“Trade authority Needs Renewal”
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab travels to Germany this week for consultations on global trade talks, which have been stalled for months. The biggest problem is lack of agreement on how to curb agricultural subsidies, but Congress isn't helping matters much.
Lawmakers are so far refusing to renew President Bush's trade-promotion authority, which expires at the end of this month. Under the key points of the law, trade agreements submitted to Congress cannot be amended and must be voted on within a set period of time.
These rules are essential to prevent lawmakers from rewriting trade deals and upsetting the results of delicate negotiations.
With trade-promotion authority expiring, America's global commerce agenda is shrinking fast. The latest initiative involves talks with Rwanda covering investment _ helpful, perhaps, but hardly earth-shaking.
The real prize would be a global breakthrough on farm subsidies, a move sought by poorer countries _ which would in turn pledge to import more manufactured goods from rich countries. A reduction in agricultural subsidies would benefit U.S. taxpayers as well.
Schwab says that even if trade-promotion authority expires, negotiators will continue to meet in the hopes of progress. Yet few countries will believe the United States is serious until Congress renews the president's trade-promotion authority.
June 22, 2007 Friday
“Farming in a New Century”
Jun. 22--Former Agriculture Secretary John R. Block once said U.S. farm policy reform "should be evolutionary, not revolutionary." It certainly has been that: For 70 years farm subsidies have been largely unchanged, often providing government benefits to wealthy landowners. It's time for a revolution.
President Bush has proposed a dramatic change in farm policy. He wants to cap subsidies to individual farmers who make more than $200,000 a year. He would cut subsidies by 60 percent -- a savings of roughly $11.4 billion per year. Some of that savings would go to renewable energy initiatives.
The president's proposal is good, but Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and four members of the House have an even better idea.
Their proposal, the Food and Agriculture Risk Management for the 21st Century Act, would phase out all farm subsidies in favor of something called Risk Management Accounts.
As subsidies are phased out, government funds would be placed in RMAs, something like Individual Retirement Accounts. Farmers could contribute up to $8,000 a year to their accounts, and they could draw from the RMAs in years when factors such as bad weather lead to a drop in crop prices. They would still be able to turn to the government for help when catastrophe strikes, such as a severe and extended drought.
But traditional farm supports would end, along with them the perverse incentives to overproduce staple crops that qualify for the highest government payments.
FARM-21 also would end what always has been a troubling bias in U.S. farm policy: Five crops -- corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat -- get 90 percent of the $19 billion a year in U.S. farm subsidies. All farmers would be eligible for RMAs.
FARM-21 would cut U.S. agricultural subsidies $20 billion over the next five years and $55 billion over the next decade. (The House version would eliminate subsides in six years, the Senate in seven.) That revolutionary change would help to revive World Trade Organization negotiations that have been stalled, in part, because of international objections to U.S. farm supports.
FARM-21 faces a rough road, particularly in the House. There's a reason that farm subsidies have survived: farm state lawmakers desperately want to preserve them.
But they have to end.
U.S. farmers are the most productive in the world. They are smart, they are adaptable and they are resilient. They can stand on their own--and FARM-21 acknowledges that. It is the best agriculture reform plan to come out of Washington in a long time.
June 22, 2007 Friday
“Cut Crop Subsidies: Latest Farm Bill Keeps Federal Supports That Help Big Agriculture, Hurt Others”
Jun. 22--A House of Representatives subcommittee Tuesday poked its head out of its cash-lined burrow, voted to funnel billions more of your tax dollars into a program that helps some of the nation's largest farmers at the expense of, literally, the rest of the world, then went back into its hole for, it hopes, another five years.
The move was a bit of a surprise, given that leaders of both parties, including the White House, multinational bankers and global advocates for the poor all had been pushing for changes in federal agriculture policy that range from significant to profound. Or it was no surprise at all, considering the fact that the 18 congressional districts represented on the House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management raked in more than $8 billion in subsidies over the last three years. That's almost a quarter of the total paid out over that time.
The current system of farm subsidies -- which directs billions of dollars to a relative handful of large-scale producers of wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and cotton -- is rapidly becoming unpopular with anyone who doesn't get paid by it. The system distorts the global market by glutting the planet with those privileged commodities, filling the bellies of rich nations with starches and sugars while starving the farmers of smaller nations of any market opportunities that might drag them out of poverty.
U.S. farm subsidies, a stubborn leftover from a New Deal experiment that was never intended to become a way of life, are an increasing embarrassment to the administration, as they were to its predecessor and will be to its successor if nothing is done. Trade talks and tariff wars more and more turn on the fact that the American farm subsidy system gives our agriculture sector, if not always our farmers, an insurmountable advantage in global commodity trading.
Meanwhile, farmers who grow fruits and vegetables or who run operations too small to qualify for big subsidies derive nothing from the taxpayer-funded system other than an offer to sell out to the big-subsidy operation down the road.
The traditional don't-talk-with-your-mouth-full argument offered by defenders of the status quo -- that food prices would rise if subsidies were ended -- is utterly bogus. Money paid to a farmer for his grain or meat is but a tiny fraction of the bar-coded price at the grocery store. The rest is processing (often unhealthy), transportation (usually inefficient) and marketing (frequently insulting).
The farm bill still has a ways to go in Congress. Whatever happens, ideas to replace warn-out subsidy programs with risk management and savings plans for farmers and conservation programs for the land they care for are still out there, and still vastly superior to the same old thinking that crawled out of one congressional committee.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 24, 2007 Sunday
“Subsidy Check: Worth or Waste?; New Deal Holdovers Need to be Expired”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt probably didn't have the likes of former NBA star Scottie Pippen or Gov. Sonny Perdue in mind when he proposed government subsidies to rescue failing American farmers in the 1930s. Even so, the two have collected farm subsidies: almost $79,000 for Pippen and just over $116,000 for Perdue.
That's the trouble with government subsidies; beside being expensive, even well-meaning programs have unintended consequences or outlive their usefulness. Others --- the worst of the lot --- are invented to pander to a constituency or to funnel benefits to the chosen few.
Of course, what one taxpayer curses as a waste of public money, another welcomes as a well-deserved assistance. And almost everyone gets some sort of subsidy. You and your mortgage-paying neighbors, for example, cost the federal government about $75 billion a year by claiming the interest deduction. That's a subsidy, too, and it's worth several times more than what's doled out to farmers every year.
Subsidies are back in the news because lawmakers are looking for ways to promote alternative energy sources by creating various "incentives" --- a euphemism for the "s" word. With billions of taxpayer dollars at stake, voters need to let lawmakers know what if any subsidies should be continued and which ones deserve to disappear. Here are some of the biggest government subsidies, separated into three categories.
THE GOOD
Education subsidies, from Head Start to the college loan program, pay dividends. The former give the children of low-income families a better foundation for their school years, for example. Loan subsidies reduce the financial burden of college and encourage more youngsters to continue their education beyond high school.
Total = $6.7 billion (Head Start)
Housing subsidies work on several levels. The deduction for home mortgage interest encourages home ownership, which in turn contributes to the economy with construction jobs and demand for products from lumber to housewares.
For those too poor to buy a home, a subsidy in the form of Section 8 housing vouchers helps families move out of public housing and into privately owned homes as renters.
Total = $16 billion a year (Section 8)
THE BAD
As an incentive to domestic ethanol producers, the United States levies a 54-cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol and gives domestic producers a 51-cent per gallon tax credit. That's difficult to defend when the United States is trying to increase ethanol use.
It has also become increasingly questionable because the race to make more corn-based ethanol is driving up the price of many foods --- everything from steak to corn flakes. It doesn't help that corn is already the nation's most heavily subsidized crop and ranks poorly compared to other biofuels as a substitute for gasoline.
TOTAL = $6.3 billion
Despite raking in windfall profits, the oil and gas industries continue to be one of the biggest winners in the federal subsidy sweepstakes. Among the overly generous giveaways they were granted in the 2005 energy bill was in direct payments to encourage drilling in deepwater wells, accelerated depreciation on property owned by natural gas companies and waivers that lower the amount of royalties they pay for drilling conducted on federal lands. The current energy bill approved by the Senate last week would end some of those subsidies.
Total = $12 billion
THE UGLY
Agriculture prices were so low during the Depression that farmers couldn't pay their bills. As a result, so many farms were foreclosed on or abandoned that President Roosevelt worried the country would lose the ability to produce an adequate and dependable supply of food. Equally troubling, penniless farmers couldn't afford to buy goods that American factories could produce, so factories closed too.
Prosperity has returned to farming, but the subsidies hang on, inviting fraud, distorting international trade and principally rewarding a relatively few operators and major corporations, such as Archer Daniels Midland, who run large farm operations.
Total = $22 billion a year
"Clean" Coal Technology: As expensive boondoggles go, this one's a doozy. Although technologically feasible (Hitler used it successfully during World War II), converting coal into a liquid fuel on a large scale would undoubtedly exacerbate the effects of global warming by racheting up carbon emissions, which means it's not so clean in the first place. Fortunately, the Senate rejected a measure that would have upped the ante for clean coal development to $10 billion in subsidies over ten years.
Total = $5.7 billion a year
It's worth noting that President Roosevelt's first stab at farm subsidies, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of the most wasteful subsidies ought to suffer a similar fate at the hands of Congress.
June 24, 2007 Sunday
“The Fat Of The Land; Whom To Help -- Wealthy Cotton Growers, Or Just About Everyone Else In The World?”
APROPOSAL making its way to the House floor would hurt everyone from the average American taxpayer to the struggling African farmer. It would enrich a small number of big businesses in a few dozen congressional districts. It would claim money that could otherwise go to priorities the Democratic majority supposedly champions: environmental conservation, student loans, Head Start, food stamps or children's health insurance. Even President Bush wants to reprioritize the spending.
So what will the Democratic leadership do about it?
Last week a panel of the House Agriculture Committee snubbed a growing group of lawmakers critical of federal farm payouts by reapproving a massive system of subsidies in place since 2002, the last time Congress thoroughly examined agricultural policy. The 2002 farm bill is a monument to craven interest politics and federal waste. Its commodity supports are too often misdirected: High-income farmers collect increasing shares of the largess, and, by The Post's calculations, between 2000 and 2006 about $1.3 billion went to Americans who do not farm at all.
These payouts distort domestic markets for crops and cropland to favor large agribusinesses over smaller outfits. They affect international crop prices, undercutting poor nations' economies and derailing vital world trade talks. Indeed, Brazilian and Indian trade negotiators recently indicated that even Mr. Bush's proposed cap on subsidy spending would not be enough to get the Doha round of talks back on track. And the system has cost more than $70 billion since 2002 -- hardly the model of good government on which the Democrats ran in 2006.
The panel's vote suggests that the farm bloc in the House plans to "circle the wagons" to defend subsidy programs, as Rep. Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.) put it Tuesday. On the other side are lawmakers such as Reps. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who introduced a much more attractive proposal to phase out certain farm payouts. This could lead to a bloody battle on the House floor this year.
The question is whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and others in the Democratic leadership can craft a compromise that reflects common sense, not political pressure from the farm bloc, as they try to avert a caucus-cleaving floor fight. At the least, that means moving money out of commodity support to fund other priorities in the Agriculture Department budget, such as conservation and nutrition. A "compromise" that contains little meaningful subsidy reform, on the other hand, would be a failure of policy and of leadership. So would temporarily extending the current farm bill as time to reauthorize the legislation runs out.
Mr. Bush, who proposed a series of solid changes to the crop payouts system this year, can and should assist by pushing harder to slash subsidies and funnel the savings into worthier programs. Will the House Democratic leadership and the president stand by their principles, or will the crop subsidy racket continue?
June 24, 2007 Sunday
“Farm Folly: Time To End Wasteful Subsidy Policies”
Jun. 24--CRITICS of the 2002 federal farm bill said it represented a return to wasteful, 1930s-style subsidy policy, skewed toward large growers of just a few crops, the top 10 percent of which would get nearly 70 percent of the benefits. Guess what: They were right.
As the U.S. House of Representatives debates the next five-year farm bill, statistics show two-thirds of the present bill's subsidies go to 10 percent of the recipients. The Oklahoman's Chris Casteel reports most farms don't receive any payments, while some non-farmers living in big cities do receive payments.
Now the really sobering news: The commodity subsidy program cost nearly $38 billion from 2003 through 2005. Oklahoma ranked 20th in subsidies in that period, with about 48,000 recipients drawing $538.5 million.
We're not against farmers, nor are we against a reasonable program of price supports that helps farmers through lean years. But the current bill -- and the one likely to succeed it -- miss the mark.
Current policy is rooted in the Great Depression, when Washington thought it could manage American agriculture with subsidies, commodity supply and price controls, acreage allotments, import restrictions and export subsidies. The idea was a safety net, but the result was a disaster. Central planning didn't work, and attempts to control supply helped U.S. agriculture price itself out of the export market. Foreign production filled the vacuum created by idling vast areas of American farmland.
The 1996 "Freedom to Farm" bill tried to change things by letting farmers choose what to plant and by providing market transition payments that would phase out by 2002. The legislation had flaws and loopholes, but it really was done in by its creator: Congress. Foreign economic problems and weather-related disasters prompted lawmakers to appropriate emergency relief on top of farm bill payments. By 2002 it was back to the future with a bill that mirrored pre-1996 legislation.
With the 2002 program expiring, Congress is at it again despite opposition from the White House, budget groups and environmentalists. Smart money is on the traditional approach, but taxpayers would be better served if lawmakers tried again to craft a bill that gets subsidies to those who really need them and eventually phases them out.
One proposal would replace current subsidies with risk management accounts farmers could use to ride out the ups and downs of agriculture. Left alone would be assistance to buy crop and revenue insurance -- the proper way to deal with losses from weather-related disasters. (Congress then would have to resist the urge to allocate emergency aid.)
Unfortunately, the 2008 election cycle is under way. Historically that means lawmakers will tend to throw money around trying to win farm votes. So we'll not hold our breath waiting for a reasonable, economical farm bill.
June 25, 2007 Monday
"Cut Farm Fat; Congress Should Take Advantage Of A Growing Drive To End Costly Agricultural Subsidies."
IT'S A GREAT TIME to be a Midwestern farmer, what with rising demand for ethanol causing prices for corn and other key crops to soar. But if you think that has decreased farmers' appetite for the billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts they get every year through the farm bill -- this country's most egregious corporate welfare act -- think again.
The 2002 farm bill expires in September, and it's up to the House Agriculture Committee to write its replacement. Last week, to the surprise of no one, the 18 members of a subcommittee working on a draft bill voted unanimously to reject all reform efforts, including a modest fix from the Bush administration aimed at making the bill compliant with international trade rules and cutting off government payments to farmers who make more than $200,000 a year. The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization, points out that those 18 subcommittee members come from districts that hoovered up a quarter of the $34.8 billion in crop subsidies parceled out from 2003 to 2005.
The committee may be hoping for another five-year pork package, but that could be tougher this time around. An unusual coalition from across the political spectrum has arisen to fight farm subsidies.
Conservatives don't like them because they're a waste of taxpayer money and interfere with free trade. Consumers don't like them because they inflate food prices. Anti-poverty activists don't like them because they encourage American farmers to overproduce certain crops and dump them on the world market, putting farmers in poor countries out of business. Even most U.S. farmers don't like the current system because its benefits are distributed so unevenly: The top 20% of recipients collect 84% of crop payments, and roughly two-thirds of American farmers don't get any subsidies at all.
It's probably too much to expect progress from the House Agriculture Committee. But even if it drafts a status-quo farm bill, the rest of Congress can scrap it. There are strong reform alternatives, particularly the bipartisan "Farm 21" bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and in the House by Reps. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) and Dave Reichert (R-Wash.). It would end trade-distorting crop subsidies and instead put the money in "risk management accounts" -- sort of like Individual Retirement Accounts for farmers -- and end government payments entirely within seven years.
A small minority of farm states has controlled U.S. agricultural policy for far too long. It's time for the rest of the country to wean agribusiness off the dole.
June 27, 2007 Wednesday
“Kind's Agriculture Reform Bill Is An Idea Worth Debating”
Jun. 27--Third District Congressman Ron Kind had his face splashed across the top of The New York Times Business section last Friday. The spread also included a photo of him as quarterback of the Harvard University football team, and a photo of a postcard that showed the word "Wisconsin."
The occasion for all this attention is Kind's latest attempt to reform the way the federal government looks at agriculture. Kind is trying to take the emphasis away from $16 billion in subsidies to farmers who produce specific commodities, and change the focus to deal with such issues as conservation and rural development.
That's going to be a hard sell, because the farmers who get the most in subsidies -- primarily the growers of corn, cotton, soybeans, rice and wheat -- will not give them up without a political fight.
While there are powerful farm interests that would prefer to keep the system as it is, critics contend that the emphasis on farm subsidies encourages overproduction and also subjects the United States to criticism from other countries on global trade issues.
While dairy farmers have received $1.4 billion in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2005, Kind argues that there would be other opportunities for farmers to get money through grants on conservation, renewable energy, anti-hunger programs and other issues.
There is a large bipartisan consensus that believes it is time to change American farm policy. One of Kind's allies in the Senate is Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.
Kind's efforts have been praised in newspaper editorials in several major dailies, including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which said, "For as long as anyone can remember, fair-minded reformers in Washington have been trying to wean American farmers from government subsidies, design a more sensible rural safety net and let market signals, rather than federal regulations, guide the nation's food supply."
Of course, not everyone agrees. The most severe criticism has come from Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Oklahoma, who said Kind's bill was "a danger to every consumer of agricultural products. It's a threat to everyone. I'm frightened as to what Mr. Kind can do to rural America on the floor of the House."
But rural America has other needs, not the least of which is economic development. It's well past time to have the debate about new approaches to federal farm policy.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
“Congressman's Attack Exposes Contradictions Of Farm-State Conservatism”
Under the heading of “Legislative Issues” on Oklahoma Republican Congressman Frank Lucas’ website, the link to “lower taxes” sits immediately above the link to “agriculture assistance.”
It’s a contradiction the Congressman barely makes an effort to hide.
Lucas recently unleashed his contradictory brand of farm-state conservatism against Wisconsin Democratic Congressman Ron Kind, whose 3rd District includes Tomah, over the issue of farm subsidies.
Kind’s transgression? He and Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake want to significantly reduce the bloated $210 billion farm-subsidy program by implementing “revenue management accounts.” They would work like individual retirement accounts and could be tapped by farmers when their revenues fall below a fixed historical average, or for certain rural investment projects. The bill would save $20 billion over the next five years and still leave more money for conservation, renewable energy and food assistance to the poor.
Lucas will have none of it.
“This is a threat to everyone, the entire world,” he said. “I’m frightened as to what Mr. Kind can do to rural America on the floor of the U.S. House.”
Lucas is wrong. The Kind-Flake approach is only a threat to the small percentage of farms that reap most of the subsidies. Two-thirds of payments go to 10 percent of the recipients, some of whom aren’t “farmers” in the traditional sense (NBA basketball star Scottie Pippen has reaped $289,000; talk show host David Letterman got $8,000). Only a few select crops are subsidized, and the vast majority of farms receive nothing at all.
Lucas’ attack on Kind is both hyperbolic and revealing. In almost every other context, Lucas and farm-state conservatives preach the virtues of the free market (health care, for example) and waive the bloody shirt of higher taxes. But in agriculture, they defend a command-and-control system of socialized agriculture that’s far more encompassing than even the staunchest liberals would apply to health care. It’s tax-and-spend, but the recipients aren’t poor people who can’t afford health insurance or college tuition; they’re rich people with vast land holdings.
The farm subsidy program is the least defensible thing the federal government does, and many Congressman know it. Said Flake: “It's plumb embarrassing to try to justify. Sometimes shame and ridicule works.”
Let’s hope the bill crafted by Kind and Flake reaches the House floor and see if people like Frank Lucas have any shame at all.
June 30, 2007 Saturday
“Phase Out Farm Subsidies"
Our Position: Reform-Minded Lawmakers Need To End The Wasteful And Inequitable System.
Jun. 30--If it's broken, don't fix it. That describes not only the congressional approach to immigration policy, but the view of some key lawmakers toward farm policy.
It's not too late to come up with a better farm policy that doesn't waste taxpayers money, squander resources and hinder U.S. trade negotiations. But lawmakers who want to see improvements will need to stand together to overcome a stubborn group who are beholden to the status quo's vested interests instead of national interests.
Current farm policy needlessly sends billions of dollars a year in subsidies to large farming operations, often corporate owned. More than two-thirds of U.S. farmers don't qualify. Only 1 percent of subsidies between 1995 and 2005 went to Florida farms.
Those subsidies encourage overproduction, wasting natural resources. They're a major obstacle to new trade deals, which keeps more overseas markets from opening to U.S. goods and services.
A bipartisan group in the House has introduced a plan to replace subsidies gradually with accounts to stabilize incomes for farmers. The change would save $20 billion over five years while solving problems in the current system.
Yet last week, a subcommittee of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee voted unanimously to extend the current subsidy program another five years. Members even ridiculed the idea of reform.
This will make it harder for reform-minded lawmakers to win the battle for change. They need backup from everyone in Congress who wants a fairer and more fiscally responsible farm policy.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
June 30, 2007 Saturday
“Toward Common Sense”
America's $19 billion system of farm subsidies encourages farmers to grow too much of certain crops, then taps the taxpayers for subsidies when prices fall, as they inevitably do. It favors farmers who grow corn, soy, cotton, rice and wheat over those who grow fruit and vegetables or raise livestock. Growers of the five favored crops now receive 90 percent of U.S. farm aid.
The system is, in two words, a mess and, in a few more words than that, welfare for the wealthy. Last year, the United States sent subsidy checks to 80,000 farmers whose incomes were greater than $200,000 per year and to large-scale corporate farms as well.
One way or another, the program has to change. The World Trade Organization already has ruled that American cotton subsidies violate international trade agreements, and other crop subsidies are similarly vulnerable. That raises the possibility of retaliatory tariffs against American exports.
President George W. Bush has proposed a reasonable reform plan, but some members of Congress, led by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., have a better one. In either case, with corn prices already sky-high because of the ethanol boom, this is an excellent time to move farmers toward a more sensible system.
The president says his plan would shift the program back to its roots as a safety net for farmers during bad times. The levels of subsidies would have less to do with crop prices and production and more to do with income: Subsidies would rise as farm income fell. That would reduce the distortion of crop prices that leads to international trade complaints. The president's plan also would eliminate those subsidy checks to people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Finally, Mr. Bush would direct more subsidy money to soil conservation, wetland preservation and reductions in fertilizer runoffs that poison streams. As proposed, the president's five-year plan would save $18 billion over the cost of today's subsidies.
The stronger congressional reform plan would move away from direct farm subsidies and toward a sort of rainy-day savings program. The government would contribute to the account, and farmers of all sorts also could chip in. When farm incomes fall, farmers could dip into the account to help cover shortfalls. Such a program would remove most of the price distortions caused by direct subsidies.
The congressional plan also would add $5 billion to food stamps and other food programs for the poor and direct another $6 billion to farm-based conservation programs. Overall, the congressional proposal would save about $5 billion over five years, compared to existing subsidy programs.
American agricultural subsidies, and those extended by our European trading partners, are the chief obstacles to a new international trade deal that could open up more foreign markets to American food products and manufactured goods. Both the Bush plan and the Lugar plan would move us closer to reaching an agreement that could expand trade and help raise living standards around the world.
All these common sense positions, however, face stiff opposition from the special interests that benefit from the existing farm subsidy program. Those interests won a round last week when a House agriculture subcommittee working on the farm bill voted unanimously against both reform plans. The reformers' chances may be better on the House floor.
Taxpayers, farmers and the U.S. economy all stand to gain from a more rational system of farm aid.
July 1, 2007 Sunday
“In search of leadership on the farm bill”
At a time when raising crops to produce energy is transforming the economics of agriculture, the 2007 farm bill should be about the future, not the past.
Farm bills of the past were about funneling money into crop subsidies as a safety net to offset low prices or crop failures. Sometimes subsidies were desperately needed. Sometimes they have further enriched already-wealthy landowners.
The run-up in corn prices as a result of ethanol production means there's less immediate need for crop subsidies. But there's even more need for conservation funding, because increased crop production for energy will intensify pressure to farm marginal land. And there are new demands for research dollars to determine how best to grow, harvest and transport energy crops. A farm bill that's about the future would funnel increased funding to those needs.
So what happened when a House agriculture subcommittee voted on crop subsidies earlier this month? Members ducked the opportunity to lead - and voted unanimously to keep things the same.
What unfolds with the farm bill over the next several weeks bears watching both for the matters of national interest at stake and for what the process will say about the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other key Democrats.
On policy: A forward-thinking farm bill will better protect America's soil and water and increase the nation's energy security. It will support rural economic development, including ways to capture the energy dollars now being generated in rural areas. It will promote development of markets for locally grown food. It will ensure the richest nation in the world provides nutritious food for its hungry (more than half of farm-bill funding goes to such programs).
Most members of Congress would agree with those goals. They also recognize that price-based subsidies are a stumbling block to expanding international trade. But will members serve the national interest and future needs, or bow to parochial interests clinging to the past?
On politics: The Democrats took control of Congress by riding the wave of voter discontent over the Iraq war and the dysfunction of government witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But they have yet to offer much evidence they can run the government any better.
The farm bill is perhaps their best opportunity to date to show that they can make the everyday operations of government work better for ordinary people: More money to feed the hungry and protect the environment. Less money to the ultra-wealthy few. It's a chance to show they can exercise fiscal discipline while backing up their party's ideals with action.
However, the throwback decisions coming out of the House Agriculture Committee, such as the subsidies vote, might paint Pelosi into a corner.
Staying the course without reforms is neither good policy nor good politics. Ten percent of recipients get two-thirds of payments, according to Environmental Working Group data. The government made $1.3 billion in direct payments since 2000 to landowners who didn't farm, the Washington Post has reported.
When the House Agriculture Committee reconvenes after the July 4 holiday-week recess, Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson needs to exercise his leadership as committee chair to hammer out a better bill for delivery to the full House. If he doesn't step up to the challenge, Pelosi should insist on it. Otherwise, her House risks producing a bill that rank-and-file Democrats will see as more charitable to rich landowners than to the hungry.
Subsidy supporters have taken a dangerous road, too. If they continue to circle their wagons, stubbornly refusing to accept payment limits or other mechanisms to curb abuses, they hang out a sign inviting more radical reform that might eliminate help even when it's needed most.
In the Senate, Iowa's Tom Harkin, a Democrat and chair of that body's Agriculture Committee, last week called for maintaining a crop-subsidy safety net while adopting reforms to eliminate the "billions of dollars in waste and unfair payments in the farm bill." Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa also has called for payment limits. So has the Bush administration's agriculture secretary, Mike Johanns.
Changes expected
Iowa's congressmen on the House Agriculture Committee, Reps. Leonard Boswell, D-Des Moines, and Steve King, R-Kiron, expressed the belief in interviews last week that substantial policy changes in farm-bill proposals still lie ahead in full committee votes or on the House floor.
King described some of the House subcommittee work so far as simply "kicking the can down the road."
Both defended the need for continued crop subsidies, while acknowledging some abuses.
Longer term, by perhaps 2020, King wants to significantly reduce crop subsidies, in conjunction with similar moves by Europe, as a step toward opening up more export markets.
Both Boswell and King want to spend more money on conservation. King would get some of it by cutting back an increase proposed in the food-stamp program.
Find the Environmental Working Group's farm-subsidies database at http://farm.ewg.org/farm/.
Harkin is a champion of conservation and understands the need to pivot funding away from crop subsidies and toward conservation. But he's working with a razor-thin Democratic majority.
That makes it even more crucial for Peterson and Pelosi to lead.
July 3, 2007 Tuesday
“Do it better; Next farm bill could restore common sense, improve conservation”
A better farm bill could work wonders for Americans, bringing a fairer, more market-oriented system, less agricultural pollution of water supplies and better international trade relations.
But what should be the new, improved 2007 farm bill is being held up by the same backward-looking Big Agriculture interests that have kept U.S. farm policy a mess of subsidies and bad incentives for years.
Those who want farm-policy reform have said that this should be the year it happens. High commodity prices (and, thus, less pressure to bail farmers out), worries about the federal budget deficit, concern for the environment and pressure by religious and humanitarian groups that want changes in food-stamp policy have combined to create momentum for change.
Still, the Senate agriculture committee is dominated by farm-state senators who resist change.
As the first Ohioan to serve on the committee for decades, Democrat Sherrod Brown should take the opportunity to push for policies that benefit everyone.
The bill President Bush sent to Congress contained a number of sensible provisions. For starters, it would end payments to any farming corporation or individual with more than $200,000 in gross adjusted income, a level that sounds more than secure to most Americans. The 2002 bill currently in effect has an income limit of $2.5 million.
The administration's bill also would shift the basis for subsidies. Instead of pegging them to crop prices, which often can yield illogical results, such as high subsidies in bumper-crop years and vice versa, it would structure subsidies to help farmers stabilize their revenues.
A move away from rewarding overplanting of commodity crops could have multiple benefits. U.S. farmers would dump less excess grain on world markets, a recurring sore spot in global trade relations; conservation programs would get a built-in boost because commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans, consume land and pollute streams, because of fertilizer runoff.
Conservation incentives, many of which are aimed at protecting water quality in streams, are especially important for communities that get their drinking water from reservoirs that drain vast agricultural areas.
More than two-thirds of the land that drains into the Scioto River and Big Walnut and Alum creeks is planted in crops. Fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides seep into drainpipes and wash into creeks and eventually into Columbus' water supply. When heavy rains coincide with the growing season, levels of some chemicals become high enough that the city has to warn residents to boil the water and not give it to infants for a time.
Regulating this type of pollution is difficult, because it can't be easily tracked to its source. The better solution is to induce farmers to reduce runoff. Two primary approaches -- protecting streams by planting buffers and creating wetlands, and cutting back on chemicals by using high-tech methods that apply them precisely -- can be encouraged with the right farm-bill provisions.
Congress should deliver a farm bill that respects markets and benefits Americans.
July 8, 2007 Sunday
“Out from the manure lagoon”
EVERY FIVE years Congress passes a farm bill that makes a gesture or two toward land conservation - but mainly enriches large corporate producers of corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, and cotton. Growers of those commodity crops have received almost $70 billion in taxpayer subsidies in the past five years.
The switch to Democratic control of Congress could lead to a bill this year that cuts back on the subsidies to agribusiness in favor of assisting vegetable and fruit growers. But don't bet on it. Several of the newly elected Democrats come from districts that benefit from the status quo. Improving on previous farm bills will take a bumper crop of leadership on Capitol Hill.
A new point raised against the crop subsidies is that they hold down the price of corn syrup, soybean oil, and other ingredients in the soft drinks and junk food that are contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic. At the same time, more healthful foods get little or no help, so their costs rise beyond the reach of many families. Fruit and vegetable growers are not asking for direct subsidies, but they would like more help getting their products into nutrition programs for schoolchildren, the elderly, and low-income families.
A broader-based farm bill could also assist in building the infrastructure of local processing plants, slaughterhouses, and farmers' markets that would help smaller farms with diversified crops or livestock to succeed. Current policy favors the centralized industrialization of farming. This not only creates the manure lagoons of hog farms but also requires wasteful expenditures of energy, as livestock and grains must be shipped longer distances for processing and marketing.
If Congress does cut subsidies in favor of programs that will genuinely benefit rural America, it need not fear a veto by President Bush. In fact, the administration correctly wants to deny any subsidies to farmers with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more and would cap payments to farmers at $360,000. The administration is also backing a loan program to help young farmers get started in a profession in which the mean age is now 55. Its package includes provisions to encourage development of cellulosic ethanol, which is much more energy-efficient than corn-based ethanol, and the use of wood biomass as an energy source.
These forward-looking plans will not get the funding they need if Congress refuses to touch the subsidy programs, which are also coming under increasing attack from the World Trade Organization as unfair to producers in other countries. The farm bill will test the ability of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid to translate their victory last fall into solid improvements in policies that reach into all the kitchens in America.
July 9, 2007 Monday
“GREEN FARM BLUES”
America's farm safety net is spending billions to subsidize agribusinesses whose profits are soaring, whose prices undercut small-plot farmers in this country and abroad, and whose crops contribute to obesity and water pollution.
Yet a promising drive to shift subsidies away from the largest and more profitable grain and cotton farms to smaller fruit and vegetable outlets, as well as to conservation programs to help farmers keep fertilizer out of the Chesapeake Bay, is faltering badly.
Congress is great at giving, not so good at taking away - especially from the farm lobby that holds so much clout among lawmakers from Southern and Midwestern states.
But leaders should avoid the temptation to relax pay-as-you-go requirements in order to put enough money in the pot so that everyone but the taxpayer comes out ahead. The time is long overdue for reform of crop subsidies, and the opportunity should not be abandoned without a fight.
President Bush, legislators from both parties and an unusual coalition of environmentalists, humanitarian organizations and taxpayer watchdog groups are pushing for a rewrite of the farm bill that would trim traditional crop subsidies and divert the funds to other purposes, such as food stamps and land conservation.
As the House Agriculture Committee began work on the measure last month, though, the subcommittee that deals directly with subsidies voted 18-to-0 to maintain the status quo. Not surprisingly, the lawmakers involved hail predominantly from the districts to which much of the subsidy money flows.
Rep. Collin C. Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the full Agriculture Committee, is expected to shortly unveil two proposals. One makes modest cuts in crop subsidies and transfers the savings to fruit and vegetable growers and more environmentally sensitive agriculture programs. A second measure calls for beefing up nutrition and conservation programs, but so far it doesn't have a source of funds.
The bay money, proposed at $200 million a year for the six-state watershed, may depend on a deep cut in crop subsidies. But that's not the best reason to cut them.
These outdated handouts are going to farmers who don't need them, at the expense of those who could use some help. Mr. Bush's proposal to reserve subsidy payments for farmers earning less than $200,000 a year instead of millionaires and absentee landlords would work to the advantage of the family farmer, who is the purported target of such aid. Environmental damage caused by crops requiring lots of fertilizer, and health damage caused by making corn syrup and starch much cheaper than fruits and vegetables, strengthen the case.
Hard as it is, Congress should put that subsidy money to better use.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
July 10, 2007 Tuesday
"Reaping what you sow"
Congress must get serious about reforming the wasteful subsidy program that does little to help small farmers, hurts consumers and hinders U.S. trade with other nations.
What you need to know about the current wasteful farm subsidy system can be summed up as follows:
- Large farms, with 10 times the wealth of the average American family, receive most of the payments.
- The richest 10% of "farmers" receive almost three-quarters of the subsidies. Paul Allen - a Microsoft co-founder and the fifth-richest American, according to Forbes - got a subsidy. So did Texas oilman and billionaire Lee Bass.
These facts, courtesy of the non-profit organizations Citizens Against Government Waste and Environmental Working Group, show how Congress chose to waste your money in 2002 when a farm bill was last up for consideration.
Worse, there is a very good chance that lawmakers won't do anything about this flimflam in the new farm bill, which will likely come to the floor next week.
They should, of course, and a great place to start would be Rep. Ron Kind's Farm 21 proposal, which would put the brakes on this runaway gravy train.
Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, and his co-sponsors, including Wisconsin Republican Reps. Paul Ryan and Tom Petri and Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, want to set up "risk management accounts" to take the place of subsidies. Farmers could draw on the accounts during hard times.
Backers say such a system could save $55 billion over a decade compared with the current colossus. The savings would be diverted to a voluntary conservation program, to federal nutrition efforts and to other programs. The bill would replace the current Milk Income Loss Contract program with similar accounts for dairy farmers.
The current system must be changed. It does almost nothing to help small farmers, it hurts consumers by needlessly boosting prices on a variety of products and it was a key reason that the effort to reach a global trade deal fell apart last year.
Unfortunately, there are signs that the leaders of this discussion - Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) - like things pretty much how they are.
Kind says he wants to work through the committee system to accomplish his goals, and we wish him luck. But he'll probably have to fight for his ideas on the floor, something he has vowed to do.
Congress has a chance to create a saner system that will truly support farmers and at the same time save taxpayers billions of dollars. What's not to like about that?
“Local algae blooms, Farm Bill connected”
Lake Crystal residents have what most Minnesotans adore — a big beautiful lake in the center of their town.
They also have what southern Minnesotans have come to dread in the heat of summer — a lake coated with a thick, green, stinky film of blue-green algae.
Algae blooms are nothing new, especially in the shallower lakes in our area. But the algae problems of today have been greatly exacerbated by human activity and only changes in practices in rural and urban areas will help restore the lakes.
The blooms occur when hot weather produces rapid algae growth that is spurred by excess nutrients in the water. Those nutrients, primarily phosphorus, can come from a variety of sources, including fertilizer, faulty septic systems, animal waste and urban runoff.
The algae blooms aren’t just disgusting but potentially dangerous. Pets can and have died from drinking the tainted water and humans who come into contact with the water can suffer everything from rashes to more serious illnesses.
Fortunately, there is no mystery in how to reduce the problem:
Fixing faulty septic systems.
Preventing manure runoff from livestock pens.
Upgrading city sewer treatment plants to reduce phosphorus output.
Creating storm-water storage ponds where urban runoff can sit while pollutants settle before the water is slowly released into bodies of water.
And a variety of farm cropland management techniques, including using grass buffer strips along drainage ditches and around open field tile intakes so that fertilizer — and soil — is filtered out.
In Lake Crystal, a broad-based coalition is coming together to try to put many of those tactics to work to try to reduce the algae bloom problems in Crystal, Mills and Loon lakes.
Groups representing government, agriculture, education and the environment are putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into a 3- to 5-year project. They will start by educating landowners and residents in the watershed and then work to sign people up to use best-practices to reduce nutrient runoff.
A major focus must be with agriculture. While no farmer tries to do things that add to the problem, the fact is that modern agriculture, and the sheer mass of cropland, is inherently a big part of excess nutrients in bodies of water.
The key, of course, is to provide the economic incentives that make best-practices on the farm feasible to landowners. The Lake Crystal coalition will have access to some funding and programs to help farmers.
But maximizing solutions on a broad scale requires state and federal commitments. That’s why the current debate in Congress over renewal of the Farm Bill is so important. Past Farm Bills have focused too heavily on subsidies for crops and too little on providing financial incentives for farm conservation.
There is, this year, a considerable push for more money for conservation efforts in the Farm Bill.
The issue is important for anyone who has wondered why lakes often look so disgusting.
July 15, 2007 Sunday
“Farmers want fresher air: Cardoza's changes to the 2007 farm bill would help them out”
Jul. 15--Farming can be messy. Plowing and harvesting is dirty work, pesticides must be handled with care, and we haven't even mentioned tending cows. Some of that mess gets kicked up into the San Joaquin Valley's horribly polluted air. Farming creates about 25 percent of our air pollution; trucks, cars, trains and suburban fireplaces create most of the rest.
Though only partial contributors, farmers and their friends in Congress are uniquely positioned to help the situation.
Unfortunately, it's going to take a fight.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza is proposing changes in the 2007 farm bill that would provide an additional $305 million over five years for air quality programs in areas that have lots of farming and very bad air. The San Joaquin Valley is at the top of that list.
The 2007 farm bill will detail $285 billion in spending over the next five years. Cardoza feels more of that should be spent on air, land and water conservation; better nutrition programs for school kids; and research on "specialty" crops such as almonds, wine grapes and organics.
He laid it out in House Resolution 1600, a "marker" bill he wants incorporated into the larger farm bill. About 100 representatives from New York to Florida to Oregon are co-sponsors -- including Jim Costa of Fresno, George Radanovich of Mariposa and most of the California delegation.
But not everyone agrees that more money should be spent to improve air in farm communities and to help the nation's children eat healthier -- at least not if that money to pay for it comes from the pockets of Midwestern farmers.
Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., heads the House Agriculture Committee, which is packed with members from states whose farmers get direct payments for growing wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, sugar and cotton. A few valley farmers get subsidy checks, but most grow nonsubsidized crops: almonds, grapes, melons -- a cornucopia too huge to list. They don't want federal subsidies, but they do want, and deserve, federal help.
As we said, farming is messy. State and federal regulators don't like messes, so valley farmers are saddled with the world's most restrictive and costly environmental requirements. Farmers who won't complain about commodity prices complain bitterly about meeting those requirements.
Yet, most know what to do. Farmers already have reduced airborne dust and soot, cut carbon emissions and captured methane -- often with federal or state aid.
Stanislaus County farmers have received $13.4 million in federal grants to reduce air pollution since 2002. San Joaquin got $14.3 million; Merced, $13.4 million. It paid for the chipping of orchard debris, methane digesters and dust suppression.
In five years, 761 grants were awarded in Stanislaus County. But last year, nearly a fourth of those who applied were rejected. Their projects were sound, but there wasn't enough money.
"More funding in (the program) will help a lot," said Ashley Boren of Sustainable Conservation. "Right now, the program's oversubscribed; you have a lot more farmers applying than there is funds."
That's why Cardoza is adamant.
"Basically (the proposals) allow farmers in high-cost areas like ours to comply with federal mandates on the environment, pesticide applications and air quality issues," Cardoza said. "It allows them to stay in business. ... (It) allows farmers to continue to do what they've done historically and to comply with good practices."
In spending $285 billion, Congress should be able to find more money for conservation projects that work, especially when more than $20 billion a year is tied up in payments to fewer than 10 percent of the nation's farmers.
Yet Peterson insists on the status quo: continued big payments to farmers more comfortable sitting in a boardroom than on top of a tractor. He's offered to support Cardoza's proposal as a separate bill.
That was a ploy. A separate measure wouldn't have any money attached, making it meaningless under the Democrats' pay-as-you-go requirements.
"Nobody wants to devastate the Midwest," Cardoza said, "but there are some important reforms that need to take place. Major portions of HR 1600 have to be in the farm bill or I can't support it."
Tuesday, members of the House Agriculture Committee begin "marking up" the 650-page farm bill, detailing priorities. It's unlikely any real reform will make it out of the committee.
But that's only the first inning of this game. Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put Cardoza on the powerful House Rules Committee. Once the farm bill leaves the Ag Committee (with or without Cardoza's proposals), it goes to the Rules Committee. There, it can be changed and the Rules Committee determines which amendments will be debated in the full House.
That's where Cardoza will start playing hardball. He'll need all his allies, such as Fresno's Costa, and the support of every member of the California delegation.
Some, like Wally Herger of Chico, Joe Baca of San Bernardino, David Dreier of Glendora, Jerry Lewis of Redlands and Grace Napolitano of Santa Fe Springs, are not yet committed. They need to get off the fence. More importantly, Pelosi must use her considerable clout to make certain the 2007 farm bill benefits all Americans, not just a small minority of farmers growing subsidized crops.
Those who operate cars, trucks and trains bear more responsibility than do farmers for creating this devil's soup of foul air. They can't be let off the hook.
But farmers, at least, are willing to do their share; they deserve all the help they can get.
July 16, 2007 Monday
“Shift the focus to stewardship”
The rush to expand crop production to make biofuels threatens to erode decades of effort to improve soil and water quality across America.
But the ethanol-driven climb in commodity prices also presents a historic opportunity to shift the emphasis of farm payments from subsidizing crops to rewarding good stewardship. If taxpayer dollars once destined for crop price supports can be funneled to conservation instead, they would deliver a clear public good: improving water quality, preserving wildlife habitat and protecting the nation's rich farmland for future generations.
Steered by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the 2002 farm bill started that shift. The 2007 farm bill, which will be debated by the House Agriculture Committee this week, should accelerate it.
Enticed by higher prices, farmers have planted 19 percent more corn this year than last. The prospect that farmers will plant marginal land to energy crops and abandon soil-replenishing crop rotations makes it all the more urgent that lawmakers write a farm bill encouraging - and in some instances requiring - conservation.
Here are some specific ways the farm bill can do that:
- Expand rewards to farmers who practice conservation on working lands: Payments for conservation have typically required idling land. Harkin created the Conservation Security Program in the last farm bill to pay farmers for improved stewardship of land still in production. The program is a model for the future of U.S. agriculture policy: Instead of boosting farmers' income with crop subsidies, pay them for how well they take care of their land.
Unfortunately, the program fell victim to politics. A Republican White House and then-Republican Congress repeatedly raided its funding. Eligibility was restricted so that farms in only a fraction of watersheds nationwide could qualify. That caused hard feelings when a farmer across the road was getting paid for conservation practices and his neighbors weren't.
Harkin knows politics, too. To boost the program's chances for expansion, he has come up with a plan to combine it with aspects of other popular working-lands programs.
Even hobbled by funding cuts, the Conservation Security Program has worked. It "has increased the level of conservation across the country as producers seek to become eligible for the program," the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded. It should be expanded.
- Adopt a "Sod Saver" provision to prevent converting rangeland and native grasslands to crop production. In the eastern Dakotas, land never broken by a plow is giving way to crops. That destroys wildlife habitat, worsens erosion and increases taxpayer liability for crop failures on marginal land.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has proposed making grassland that's newly converted to crop production permanently ineligible for government payments. Make it so.
- Expand preservation of wetlands, which are critical to wildlife habitat, water quality and flood control. Making more land eligible for the Wetlands Reserve Program would help reconnect rivers with their floodplains. On a pilot basis, allow enrolled acres to remain working lands, planted with flood-tolerant crops, to provide additional income.
- Tighten rules and oversight requiring farmers to follow conservation practices to remain eligible for any government payments. A 2003 report by the General Accounting Office found that inconsistent enforcement "increases the possibility that some farmers receive federal farm payments although their soil erodes at higher rates than allowed or they convert wetlands to cropland."
And when violations were identified, the report found, penalties were often waived. That shouldn't happen.
- Fund research to encourage development of "environmental markets," such as carbon-exchange programs. Growing concerns about global warming could make conservation practices worth money on the open market. If values can be quantified for environmental goods and services, credits can be traded. Farmers could be paid to reduce tillage, which cuts atmospheric carbon dioxide by increasing storage of carbon in soil. Or perhaps a business that wants to discharge effluent into a stream might be required to pay for establishing buffer strips on a farm, which would reduce runoff.
Johanns has recommended $50 million for the effort. Creation of such markets could signal a sea change in conservation on private lands. Farmland conservation is a sound public investment. But it would be even better if the market paid for it.
What are the funding prospects for conservation?
Both Iowa's Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, chair of the House Ag Committee, say they want to increase conservation funding.
The problem is that they're bumping against pay-as-you-go spending rules. To spend more on conservation, they'll have to identify offsetting cuts elsewhere.
Cuts in crop-subsidy spending are one place to go, and Harkin said he'd also get some from reforming the crop-insurance program. But to increase
conservation spending significantly, both committee chairs also will have to sweet-talk congressional leaders into making cuts outside the agriculture budget.
Harkin met last week with Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, in search of other dollars.
He also said he would push for a six- or seven-year farm bill, rather than the traditional five. Through the magic of government accounting, that would allow more wiggle room on spending.
If he can't come up with additional money soon, though, he could move ahead with a pared-down bill that would not expand spending for conservation and energy as much as he prefers, he said in a phone conference call last week.
Contra Costa Times (California)
July 17, 2007 Tuesday
“Reform the farm bill”
WHEN DIVVYING UP THE nation's tax dollars, there is at least one universal truth: One representative's vital program is another's pork-barrel boondoggle. That is certainly the case with this year's farm bill.
The farm bill is a piece of legislation that is so huge the Congress only messes with it about every five years.
Although it involves the parsing of billions of dollars, in terms of political interest in Washington, the bill usually ranks somewhere between abstruse and arcane.
But this year seems different. The farm bill is getting a good bit more attention, and that is a good thing. In fact, it is a very good thing that could benefit California.
This year's bill totals about $90 billion. Yes, that is billion with a b. Nearly two-thirds of that money goes to underwrite the nation's food stamp and other nutrition programs for the next five years.
But the remainder of it -- about $33 billion -- pays for agricultural subsidy programs. The prime influences on this bill traditionally have come from representatives from the Midwest and South.
Not surprisingly, then, crops such as corn, rice, wheat, cotton and soy have been handsomely rewarded at the expense of California's primo crops of fruits and vegetables. For example, as this year's bill is currently configured, only about 2 percent is set aside for fruits and vegetables.
But this year, food activists and others have taken up the cause of reforming the farm bill. They argue that current government subsidies help the processed-food industry and, thus, help promote obesity.
They offer a convincing argument when they say that if the nation wants people -- and especially school children -- to eat more fruits and vegetables, then farmers of those crops should get more help.
The truth is the entire subsidy process stinks. U.S. Department of Agriculture data show that 66 percent of the payments go to 10 percent of the recipients. And let's not forget that the USDA gave $1.3 billion in subsidies over the past six years to landowners who are not farming their land.
Frankly, it is time for California to throw its weight around a little. The speaker of the House is, after all, from California, albeit a very urban part of the state.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, has a bill to shift spending toward nutrition, research, conservation and fruit and vegetable crops. The bill has more than 120 co-sponsors, but the Agriculture Committee has largely ignored it so far. We support his efforts and urge the committee to listen to what he has to say.
It's clear that reform is needed, and it is needed now.
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)
July 18, 2007, Wednesday
“Terrorists obviously think Iraq is important Millionaires wearing overalls Federal farm subsidies have become alms for the wealthy”
The old TV series, "Green Acres," centered on the fictional Oliver Wendell Douglas giving up his successful law practice in Manhattan to farm in Hooterville.
It made no sense back in the 1960s, but today a real life Oliver Wendell Douglas would make much more money in Hooterville. The federal government hands out $25 billion in farm subsidies.
The Washington-based Environmental Working Group checked the records and identified the biggest recipients of agriculture welfare in the years 2003 to 2005.
No. 1 was the King Ranch in Kingsville, Texas, which drew $3,888,577 in subsidies in that three-year period. At 825,000 acres, the ranch is larger than Rhode Island. If a farm that big cannot make it without subsidies, then maybe it shouldn't be a farm.
Businesses are supposed to support the government through taxes, not the other way around.
Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group in Washington, did the math.
"Current farm policies are obscenely expensive, doling out $25 billion in subsidies each year," Riedl said. "Most of the money goes to commercial farms, where average household income is $199,975 and average net worth is almost $2 million."
Farm subsidies go back more than 70 years, to the Great Depression, when farmers needed relief from falling farm prices.
But that has changed. Riedl said the top 10 percent of the subsidy recipients receive three-quarters of the money - for an average of $91,000 a year per farm.
The bottom 80 percent receive subsidies of less than $3,000 per year.
"If Washington really wants to help struggling farmers, as the subsidies are promoted as doing, it would be far cheaper just to hand every full-time farmer $40,000 a year," Riedl said.
"Green Acres" was a comedy show. The federal farm subsidy program is a joke.
Congress needs to rein it in.
July 21, 2007 Saturday
“A wasteful program”
Our position: Farm subsidies need to be replaced with a more worthwhile alternative.
A House panel moved to make U.S. agricultural policy a little less objectionable this week. But it still amounts to a new coat of paint on a house that should be condemned.
Working on the latest five-year plan for farm policy, the House Agriculture Committee voted to spend money on research, on market promotion and on conservation to benefit fruit and vegetable growers, who have been largely neglected under federal farm programs. This change would be especially good news in Florida, with its fruit and vegetable growers.
But other than barring government handouts to millionaire farmers, the House panel left intact Depression-era subsidies for growers of corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans and rice. Those crops get the bulk of the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that the federal government doles out each year.
Crop subsidies waste resources and harm the environment by spurring overproduction. They are perennial obstacles in U.S. trade negotiations. They have encouraged production of the cheap carbohydrates blamed for the nation's growing problem with obesity.
Congress has a much better alternative: a bipartisan plan to gradually replace the primary subsidy programs with accounts to stabilize incomes for farmers. The plan would save billions to plow into rural development, conservation, renewable fuels, food stamps and other nutrition programs.
If Congress won't phase out current farm policies, fruit and vegetable growers deserve a share of federal dollars. But lawmakers would do better to take down the system and build a better one in its place.
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
July 21, 2007 Saturday
“How about zero instead?”
There may be a little hope that Congress will start reining in -- if not abolishing -- unconstitutional farm subsidies.
The House Agriculture Committee has approved a bill that would end taxpayer-funded subsidies going to farmers who average more than $1 million a year in income. At present, a farmer can get the federal payments even if he earns up to $2.5 million. That's ridiculous, of course, and the reduced figure would be an improvement.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, has proposed limiting payments to farmers who average $200,000 or more per year. That would be even better.
Unfortunately, neither idea addresses the fundamental problem: The federal government has no business offering subsidies to farmers, traditional or "alternative" energy companies, railroads, plumbers, chemical engineers or any other sector of our economy.
Such funding -- often used by lawmakers to buy votes -- distorts the free market and creates economic winners and losers based on government meddling rather than on the law of supply and demand.
While any proposal to reduce farm or other subsidies is welcome, the best solution would be to end them altogether.
Poughkeepsie Journal (New York)
July 16, 2007 Monday
“Make changes to farm bill”
With tens of billions of tax dollars on the line and the stability of Hudson Valley farms at stake, we all have a vested interest in one massive piece of legislation being worked out in Congress.
The farm bill is up for renewal, and it's essential that changes are made to how government deals with the complicated task of helping farmers.
The country's farm subsidies are out of date, benefiting to a large degree, mega-farmers at the expense of smaller ones and offering a disproportionate amount of aid to farmers growing certain crops.
President Bush has proposed making sound modifications to the system. He wants to see tighter caps in place, halting the practice of having taxpayers subsidize growers who have gross incomes of millions of dollars a year in some cases.
Numerous government watchdog groups have long railed against the subsidy program. And the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which wants Congress to focus more on helping farmers that use sound conservation methods, has periodically posted on its Web site revealing lists of farms benefiting in ways that could never be justified.
For example, Riceland Foods Inc. in Arkansas received more than $15 million in subsidies in 2005; Evans Properties Inc. of Florida got more than $13 million. That's because 90 percent of the federal farm subsidies are for five specific crops: corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybeans. Consequently, more than 50 percent of the federal subsidies go to fewer than 10 percent of the producers, the government's own figures show. That does little to help New York's apple growers or milk producers.
Working at the state level
New York's congressional delegation is seeking improvements that would stabilize milk prices for dairy farmers, as well as make it easier for fruit and vegetable growers to recapture some of their losses due to disease or disaster. Fruit, vegetable and other "specialty growers" also would be eligible to compete for federal assistance where appropriate. That makes sense for a number of reasons, including helping smaller farms and promoting healthful foods. Conservation programs also should be bolstered, since they provide financial rewards to farmers who preserve their lands instead of selling them off to developers. These resources are critical to protecting the remaining Hudson Valley farms in particular.
But just as important as spreading around the aid to those needing it, Congress also must have the will to impose caps on farms that have been benefiting far too much over the years. Bush has sought this change before, when the farm bill was last authorized in 2002. But the caps disappeared as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives negotiated a final deal. That must not happen this time around. The country needs a farm bill that is generous but responsible. And it needs one more-reflective of the challenges faced by today's farmers, in all parts of the country.
To see a comprehensive list of which farms benefit the most from the existing program, go to www.ewg.org
July 22, 2007 Sunday
“Managing Texas Resources"
Farm bill should stress land conservation more
The first thing you often see on the Panhandle's southern edges are acres of cotton and wheat. Right alongside them are long irrigation systems, showering the crops.
The water largely comes from the Ogallala Aquifer. In fact, irrigation consumes 95 percent of the water the Ogallala produces in the area. If things don't change, that water will be scarce.
That is why the farm bill Congress is considering is so important. And not just to the High Plains. It also can benefit other parts of Texas.
The land conservation proposals first caught our attention in the House Agriculture Committee's draft legislation last week. They contain incentives for landowners to use better irrigation practices and the like.
But there's little money for taking land out of production. The Environmental Defense Fund proposes, and we agree, that the House could fund this by diverting cash from the part of the bill devoted to subsidizing crops.
Last year, Congress paid about $16 billion to help farmers grow various crops. Surely, some of that could be invested to save more farmland in areas challenged for natural resources.
For instance, instead of farmers getting subsidies to grow cotton and wheat around the High Plains, they could get paid to not plant their land. By returning farmland to grasslands, landowners could use it for everything from grazing cattle or running hunting operations.
America still will have ample places to grow cotton and wheat, but here they'd drain less of the Ogallala. That would extend the aquifer's life in parts of Texas where it has fe