With
the recent passage of the Farm Bill --- a monster package of federal subsidies
covering the next six to 10 years --- Congress has shoveled billions upon
billions of dollars, largely where they arenít needed.
The
conservative American Farm Bureau Federation is pleased, however. ìPrompt
implementation of the Farm Bill is imperative,î says bureau president Bob
Stallman in a written statement. ìAdoptionÖ assures farmers and our lenders
that we will have an adequate safety net in place and prevents the need to rely
on emergency assistance in the future.î
or a trampoline for ever higher-flying agribusinesses?
ìThat stench coming out of Washington,î said a May 6 Trib editorial, ìisnít
from one of those smelly hog farms, but it might as well be.î
that have made headlines all over the country: The bill will boost US farm
subsidies 70 percent over the next decade. The 10-year tab will come to between
$170 and $190 billion. And as the editors said, the money wonít be going to Old
McDonald and the family farm, but to big commodity producers. The Farm Bill is
complex, but the subsidy mechanism works in a simple way: it gives certain
producers (and not others) money to make up for market prices that are too low.
few years after Washington was spouting ìfreedom to farmî language --- touting
a ìmarket-basedî approach that was supposed to wean agriculture from subsidies.
Not that all subsidies or market-controls are bad: Progressives long have
wanted government to shift policy gears and support small farms, environmental
protection for rural areas, incubation of organic and sustainable farming
methods, and so forth.
especially in the US Senate, where both big parties hope to emerge with a
majority. And so the struggle for political clout in Farm Country has grown
feverish --- and itís agribusiness, not small operators, who can bring the
clout to market.
to big farmers who grow certain grains and other commodities: wheat, corn,
rice, peanuts, etc. Thereís also a regional tilt: The subsidies, loan
guarantees, and other supports go largely to the ìredî states as opposed to the
ìblueî --- the colors of the post-Election 2000 political map. (The reds are
the states that went for George W. Bush; the blues are those which went for Al
Gore.) But ironically, Bushís Office of Management and Budget opposed the House
version, claiming it would spend too much ìat a time of uncertainty,î target
the wrong farmers, and jeopardize foreign agricultural markets.
bill. This has provoked outrage from other countries --- not only because it
seems to contradict ìfree trade,î but also because it would affect human
health. Stateside, the Washington-based Public Citizen said one Farm Bill provision
would cause ìconfusionî about irradiated foods by allowing some of them to be
labeled ìpasteurized.î Food irradiation is rightly a hot-button issue in Europe
and other countries, including, of course, the US.
has been highly critical of the bill, has published a map of state ìwinners and
losers.î Sure enough, according to the map, states like Minnesota, the Dakotas,
Iowa, and others, will gain more than $1 billion each over five years under the
billís provisions.
Pennsylvania, though, will each lose more than $1 billion, says EWG. New York
Stateís bottom line, says the group, will be ìneutral.î
here?
in the right direction,î says Jessica Crittenden, spokesperson for the New York
Stateís Agriculture and Markets department. But she says the bill is
disappointing in some ways. For example, she says, it doesnít include the
ìDairy Compact,î a mechanism which New York and other regional farm advocates
had sought. (The compact would have established a multi-state governing entity
to keep dairy prices stable, and thus help dairy farmers keep their heads above
water.) She says there are some measures that can stabilize dairy prices.
Indeed, the bill establishes three-and-a-half year, $1 billion-plus program to
that effect.
provisions, short of a compact, will be enough. As Crittenden says, ìthe dairy
industry traditionally has prices that are up, down, all over the placeî --- a
tendency that puts all players at risk.
officials and farmers are ìdisappointedî in the bill, mostly because it favors
the big commodities producers. ìWe wonít see much from it,î she says. She
explains that New York State, though it produces a great diversity of
agro-products, is comparatively weak on wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton, and
other crops that will get the goodies.
agricultural writer Elizabeth Henderson is more trenchant. She calls the Farm
Bill ìmore of the same bad policy we have had since the 1950s, large payments
to the biggest farms.î The ìreal winners,î she says, will be ìgrain traders,
meatpackers, and multinational corporationsî like ìCargill, ADM [Archer Daniels
Midland], and a few othersî that sell the commodities on international markets.
Farm and works with Genesee Valley Organic Community Supported Agriculture,
helps put the dollar discrepancy into perspective. Peacework Farm produces
70-odd crops on 15 rented acres; the cooperative urban-suburban-rural farming
enterprise draws individuals and families from the whole region. Recently, says
Henderson, Peacework got its first federal payment --- $470 and change --- to
help with the expense of federal organic certification fees. (The feds, with
much controversy, have been codifying standards and certifications for foods
labeled organic --- that is, foods grown with natural composting methods, and
without the use of artificial pesticides, herbicides, and so forth.)
action to what the big guys can get: Before passage of the Farm Bill, the
Senate had lowered the maximum payment from the current $460,000 to a still-generous
$275,000 per recipient. In the House-Senate conference process, however, the
limit was boosted to $360,000. Moreover, as the Washington Post reported, there are ìloopholesî by which recipients
can engineer multiple maxed-out payments. And as the Chicago Tribune said, in recent years ìjust 10 percent of the crop
producers have grabbed two-thirds of the subsidiesÖî It looks like this rule
will hold for the next decade, at least.
entirely downbeat. She notes the new Farm Bill includes more funding for
minority farmers, as well as measures to give redress for past federal
discrimination against Black farmers specifically. She says, too, that the
bill-related Conservation Security and Community Food Security programs will
get a little more money, which will be used to help low-income people and
communities.
provision of $3 million annually for organic agriculture research. (Interest in
organic foods may increase, too, after a recent Consumers Union report, which
established that organics really do contain much lower levels of pesticide
residues than do ìtraditionalî foods.) The Downstate-based National Campaign
for Sustainable Agriculture has looked at this angle. Organic-agriculture advocates
have both won and lost, says a backgrounder from the group. At one point, the
backgrounder explains, there was hope the Farm Bill would create an Organic
Research Program. This would have been around 50 percent more generous that
what the bill ended up with: a mere ìOrganic Research Initiative.î
into improving water quality, protecting wetlands and open spaces, and setting
aside marginal farmland.
ìvictoriesî that please the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture.
$190 billion total, the environmental packageís $17 billion --- less than $2
billion a year for reclaiming the agricultural and ecological integrity of a country
as vast as ours --- doesnít sound like a big deal or a good one.
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