News Coverage
Farm Subsidies Are Good Idea, But The System Doesn't Work
Published January 13, 2008
Farm subsidies were intended as a "safety net" when they were established during the Great Depression with the added goal of ensuring a safe and abundant food supply. Seventy years later, the system has evolved and wandered wastefully from these goals, and is now causing unintended and unnecessary social and environmental problems. Taxpayers want affordable and nutritious food, but they don't want it at the expense of failing rural economies, a healthy environment, and malnourished poor people at home and abroad. In short, the status quo farm bill is broken and begs for reform when Congress finalizes the 2008 farm bill over the next few months.
Instead of helping farmers stay on the land, today's farm subsidies actually provide capital liquidity to the largest and wealthiest mega-farmers, enabling them to outbid their small and medium-sized neighbors for farmland. The result? Your taxpayer dollars aren't providing a safety net, but are pulling the rug out from the small, family farmer. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas, the top 25 percent of subsidy-dependent counties in the U.S. have higher population losses, higher job losses, and lower business start-up rates than the national average. Instead of propping up rural America, farm subsidies are helping to depopulate it.
The inequity in farm programs is staggering. Ninety-three percent of the farm subsidies help only those who grow the five favored commodity crops: corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice. Farmers who grow fruits and vegetables get virtually no farm bill subsidies, nor do ranchers-and in fact, they don't want the kind of support that goes to subsidies crops. They prefer the marketplace. Even more egregious, farm subsidies are paid to wealthy absentee land owners who may not even live in the same state. Our analysis has identified 263 plantation-scale, corporate farms that will continue to receive over a million of your taxpayer dollars every year if no reform to the Direct Payment Program occurs. See the EWG website below to view the two Indiana farms in this category.
Farm subsidies also indirectly contribute to major environmental problems. For the last two decades, scientists have identified the fertilizer and manure pollution coming from agriculture as the single largest source of the nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients causing the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Imagine an area the size of New Jersey at the mouth of the Mississippi River where virtually all sea creatures suffocate every spring because of lack of oxygen. Taxpayer-subsidized farms growing corn, soybeans and rice are the primary sources of the pollution. In fact, USDA found that farms receiving commodity crop payments operate 80 percent of the cropland acres that have a high or very high nitrogen runoff potential.
In exchange for farm subsidies, the USDA requires a soil conservation plan be implemented. This required plan has helped to save millions of tons of prime topsoil from farmland. However, over 100 million acres of farmland are still eroding at unsustainable rates today. The Farm Bill aggravates environmental problems even as it short-changes solutions. Important conservation programs are drastically under-funded every year while subsidy payments to wealthy mega-operations continue unabated. Over the last few years, some $18 billion-worth of USDA conservation program applications was rejected after farmers volunteered to tackle environmental problems on their farms and pay half the cost.
Finally, farm bills continually fund unhealthy food options and under-fund nutrition programs for the poor. Earlier this year, the President's Cancer Panel argued that the processed forms of heavily subsidized corn and soybeans "are known contributors to obesity and chronic diseases, including cancer." Since the majority of these two commodity crops are fed to livestock for meat production and high fructose corn syrup now dominates most processed foods, Americans are getting cheap, abundant and unhealthy food supplies for their subsidies. The situation is even worse for the nation's 26 million people poor enough to qualify for the Farm Bill's Food Stamp Program. These Americans are limited to just $5 per day in benefits or about $11,000 a year. Meanwhile, the nation's 700,000 farm subsidy-recipients can receive essentially unlimited subsidies without any effective "means test."
During the Farm Bill debates last year, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., offered the FRESH amendment that would have revolutionized the way we support farmers and begun to address many of the problems. The FRESH amendment would have phased out existing farm subsidies and provided a real safety net for all of America's farmers (not just the commodity crop farmers). When farmers demonstrated a drop in average revenue -- that is when they demonstrate need -- taxpayers would come to their aid. By phasing out today's subsidies, Sen. Lugar's reforms would have yielded millions more for conservation and nutrition programs and for deficit reduction. Unfortunately, the FRESH amendment and other amendments on lowering income eligibility and program payments fell short of the super majority needed to pass the Senate.
Over 300 editorial pages across the country in the past year alone have decried farm subsidies as broken and many investigative series have exposed the waste, fraud, and abuse in the system. The public is more aware than ever that subsidy-receiving farmers, their lobbyists, and the members of Congress representing subsidy-dependent districts are fighting tooth and nail with red herring arguments and scare-mongering tactics to defeat reform proposals. Given half a chance, Farm Bill reform would help more farmers when they demonstrate need, protect the environment, help the poor at home and overseas, and provide healthier food choices.
Michelle Perez is a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group.
