News Coverage
Senate Passes the Farm Bill
Published December 18, 2007
After a six-week standoff, the Senate approved a $286 billion Farm Bill on Friday by a vote of 79-14. The vote was the largest margin to pass the Farm Bill in over 30 years, but reaction to the final Bill has been anything but unanimous.
While, the Senate’s version of the Bill will provide new funds for some farm programs, food stamps and conservation, it will keep the much debated subsidies for farmers and ranchers in place. Rather than lower the cap on how much individual farmers receive, as outlined in the Dorgan-Grassley amendment, the Senate’s Bill will allow for subsidy payments as high as $750,000 that won’t take effect until 2010. The Houston Chronicle reports Southern lawmakers used a procedural maneuver to prevent the approval of these stronger limits on subsidy payments to large, commercial rice and cotton growers. As it is, the Senate Bill allows subsidies to be made to farmers whose adjusted gross income is $2.5 million or less.
Acting Secretary of Agriculture Charles Conner said Friday he was “disappointed” with the Senate Bill, particularly the rejection of the Dorgan-Grassley amendment that would have limited subsidy payments to $250,000 and free up $1.15 billion for anti-hunger programs, fragile grassland protection and the settlement of lawsuits filed by farmers of color suffering discrimination in government farm programs. For Conner, protecting subsidy programs that pay the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans with money from middle-class taxpayers, is a flagrant misuse of public funds and trust.
Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group agrees. “The Democratic leadership of this Congress has come down at almost every turn in favor of subsidized big agriculture.” He noted in the Chicago Tribune, “It really is a shameful abdication of leadership on the part of the Senate; and it’s made all the more shameful by labeling it as reform. It’s really outrageous.”
But for some, the Farm Bill contains small but important changes. As Montana Senator Jon Tester, an organic farmer, noted, “It’s not everything we wanted but it’s a lot of what we need, and I think it moves this country in the right direction.”
Some of those changes include the strongest Farm Bill livestock reforms ever passed, in an effort to halt unfair contract practices and limit meat-packers’ market power. More important to producers working to increase local food systems, the Bill includes a new provision that will allow meat from small state-inspected plants to be sold, as long as plants adhere to federal food safety standards. This will provide more opportunities for local ranchers to process their meat and be able to sell it in local markets.
The Bill will also create a USDA Office of Small Farms and Beginning Farmers and Ranchers, and will require the Secretary of Agriculture to direct research on the impacts of local and regional food system’s on the community, economy, health and nutrition, environment, food safety and food security.
In turn, the Farm Bill will expand upon Organic Farming Research with $80 million in funding and provide $30 million for the Farmers’ Market Promotion Program, $22 million for the Organic Certification Cost-Share Program and $5 million for Organic Production and Marketing Data Collection.
Groups like the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition champion these moves, but the Coalition’s Policy Director Ferd Hoefner laments, “the Senate’s failure to pass the Dorgan-Grassley payment limit amendment repudiates the large majority of farmers who support reform and the largest bi-partisan nationwide movement for farm program reform ever mounted. Most importantly, it means uncapped commodity payments will continue to flow to mega farms and push rural communities, family farmers, and the next generation of producers off of the map.” The Policy Director’s biggest regret (opens pdf) is the loss of funding for the Value-Added Producer Grants Program and a Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program.
Secretary Conner agrees. “I am a firm believer in federal support of agriculture, and farmers and ranchers need a strong safety net that helps in years they need it most. However, the Senate-passed farm bill does not represent fiscal stewardship and lacks farm program reform.”
In the New Year, the contentious provisions of the Farm Bill will be debated once more as the Senate and House begin to reconcile their separate versions. Only then will they send it to the president, who has threatened that he too will only approve the Bill if it comes with stronger limits on farm subsidies.
