Farm Bill - 1 step forward, 3 steps back
Today, the House will be asked to vote for a Farm Bill that keeps intact a food and farming system that has failed our country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, together with House Agriculture Committee leaders, has called this Farm Bill a step in the direction of reform and good for family farmers. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Newspaper headlines in California have lauded the big wins for our state’s fruit and vegetable growers. While $1.6 billion for specialty crops is an important step forward, it pales in comparison to the $40 billion proposed for commodity crops and will do little to help our country meet USDA nutrition guidelines for a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Only about 10 percent of this $1.6 billion will go to programs that favor local and healthy food systems, small family farms and organic growers. These are crumbs in a nearly $300 billion bill.
We have missed an historic opportunity to invest more in programs, such as farmers’ markets promotion, value-added producer grants and organic research that are small investments, yet yield tremendous health, environmental and economic returns. Ignoring these important benefits, the House Ag Committee eliminated mandatory funding for: the Community Food Projects, one of the more successful and cost effective local food programs. This program has helped San Francisco and many communities across the state increase their access to locally grown healthy food, build entrepreneurship skills among at-risk youth, and create new markets for small farmers.
Most regrettably, Pelosi, a great champion for the environment and children, did not push strongly enough for a Farm Bill that would truly serve both urban and rural populations. Just “follow the money” to understand who benefits from this Farm Bill: Three cotton farmers in California will receive in one year the entire national budget dedicated to organic research and extension. Five corn growers in the Midwest will receive the equivalent of the annual budget dedicated to supporting farmers’ markets. Roughly 13,000 rice and cotton growers in California will receive nearly $1 billion in subsidies over three years while our entire state will receive less than $100 million in conservation support.
The proposed Farm Bill misuses taxpayers’ money by leaving in place a subsidy system that encourages over-production of commodities such as corn and soybeans that are at the root of many of our diet-related health problems. It will continue to encourage farmers to grow commodities such as cotton - which uses 16 percent of pesticides applied to crops globally - in ways that harm the environment. It will significantly weaken one of the most important farm conservation innovations in a decade, the Conservation Security Program, while failing to provide adequate funding to help farmers effectively conserve our water, soil and wildlife habitat. It will do precious little to change availability and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables in schools and underserved areas, where they are sorely needed. Finally, the bill will do little to stem the tide of failing farms and struggling rural economies.
In a time of scarce resources and “pay as you go” rules, none of us can have it all. But why do so few get so much while so many get so little? Corn and soybean growers, who are experiencing record high prices, continue to reap the benefits, while critical fruit and vegetable programs that invest in the future health of our nation, get short shrift. This reality has brought together a powerful coalition of unlikely bedfellows to demand major commodity reform and a reprioritization of Farm Bill investments.
Yet the best the Democratic leadership of the House and the Ag Committee can offer is a payment limits package that is nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The sham reform proposal actually increases the amount of overall payments that farmers can receive. This is a significant step backward and one whose net effect would be a large increase in subsidies to mega-farms which drives small farm operations out of business. While the proposal would limit farmers making more than $1 million a year from receiving subsidies, this limit is five times the cap put forward by the Bush administration, and will generate scant new resources and affect just a few thousand farmers.
Farmers, and our nation’s health, would be better served by a bill that includes real commodity reform, such as the Dorgan-Grassley bill introduced in the Senate, which closes all loopholes and puts a hard limit of $250,000 on total payments to one farmer. This kind of reform is a good start, and would free up new resources to invest in programs that will deliver far greater health and environmental benefits to all Americans. Now it is up to the Senate to make wiser choices and give us real reform.
Kari Hamerschlag is the policy director for the California Coalition for Food and Farming, an alliance of urban and rural food, farm and environmental organizations working to promote a healthier and more sustainable food and farming system. www.calfoodandfarming.org
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
All of the programs Kari talks about need more money, but it should come from ending subsidies with the Food from Family Farms Act, http://www.nffc.org, to end the much bigger billion dollar de facto subsidies to agribusiness and get more money for her programs. That’s the real sham. Tyson and Smithfield animal factories got more than 2.5 billion each, http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/CompanyFeedSvgsFeb07.pdf and Cargill and ADM overall even more. But Kari misses all of that and so do the main proposals of the California Coalition for Food and Farming.
Original farm bills had programs for fruits and vegetables, even though they aren’t storable.
Sugar beets and cane are not storable long term, so their program is different and is not dumping or subsidy oriented. See “Sweet or Sour? The U.S. sugar program and the Threats Posed by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement,” (DR-CAFTA) R. Dennis Olsen, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, April 2005. http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=72784
The main storable commodities in the farm bill are grown on the lions share of agricultural land, 8 crops on 74% APAC report, p. 14 at http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html . True, they get 70-80% of subsidies, p. 8 but the programs have mostly dropped market prices, “about 40%” “since 1996” p. 8 so, for example! “…Market prices in 2001 were … BELOW the cost of production” by a lot
corn 23%,
Wheat 48%,
Soybeans 32%,
cotton 52%,
rice 45%. p. 10
This below cost grain gives enormous subsidization to Smithfield 2.5 billion, Tyson 2.5 billion, (see my references farther above) Cargill and ADM get even more. These programs reduce market prices, then give partial compensation subsidies. For 2000, Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, and Cotton net incomes were all negative.p. 10 For 2001, corn netted 1% above costs, but Wheat, Soybeans, and Cotton LOST EVEN MORE! p. 10. See the pdf ppt chart on this, especially slide 14, at: http://www.nffc.net/resources/reports/APACReport.pdf
Do California fruit and vegetable farmers want the same treatment, farmers to lose money, subsidize Del Monte and consumers, and get blamed?
On nutrition see A Fair Farm Bill for Public Health ahttp://www.iatp.org/iatp/publications.cfm?accountID=258&refID=98598) and the rest of “Fair Farm Bill Series.” But go to the National Family Farm Coalition for a specifid bill ending billion dollar subsidies.
I’m sorry to take away from this otherwise excellent article, but it’s absurd to have policies of dumping of foreign farmers, losing money on U.S. farm commodity exports as an ongoing policy.
Yes we need base reform and other sustainability measures, but we must stop subsidizing these unsustainable animal factories and feedlots at the multi billion dollar level. That’s billion with a B, not the regular farm subsidies Kari is mentioning and so too her organization. Progressives must come on board with these issues.
And exactly what’s so wrong with shoveling billions of our tax dollars to help the creators of Napalm undermine the food chain by introducing such lovely, untested alien species like “zombie seeds” and vitamin-packed rice?
Oh, right…
We do not need people like Kari Hammerschlag causing more division among groups than we already have, thanks to the Bushies. It is time to start working for everyone`s benefit, rather than always trashing someone else. I expect some of our farmers tax money is being thrown at urban projects also, so lets not make the farmers out as the only guilty parties.
As for converting land from commodities, does Kari have any idea of how much fruit and vegetables could be produced on millions of acres of grain, rice, and cotton acres? Even if the consumption was doubled it would not be noticible. Most average farms are 1000 acres or more so only a few farms could provide the increase.
I imagine there are quite a few farmers that would rent some land to city folks to raise veggies on as long as they would provide all of their own labor, equipment, and management. Then they would be able to give up subsidies on those acres which would no longer be eligible. That would be more helpful than trashing farmers, large companies, and politicians.
Frank, you need to understand that your “zombie seeds” serve to eliminate the need for dangerous chemicals and pesticides so they are not all bad, as some people believe.
I don’t think it’s “trashing farmers” by implying that big ones are welfare queens, Kernel. I think that’s a fairly apt characterization.
RE: WmC: As I showed above, subsidies often result in net losses when combined with the lowering of market prices, so Kernal makes an important point. Again, see slide 14, at: http://www.nffc.net/resources/reports/APACReport.pdf
Progressive groups like the California coalition represent a foolish division among progressives, in not backing the Food from Family Farms Act to end multibillion dollar subsidies to what should be called the welfare gods. It makes an an unnecessary division between many farmers and progressives, and a foolish alliance between multibillionaire subsidy recipients and progressive groups.
Of course, WmC is right on target on how subsidy approaches, including those of many progressive groups, could, and partly should be characterized. Farmers are incredibly foolish in thinking this horrible compromise (in Freedom to Farm in 96, 2002 farm bill, Bush, or Harkin and Kind proposals for a “Freedom to Farm with a Green Mask.”) will not draw such ridicule. All should be rejected in their commodity proposals, as should weak billionaire agribusiness subsidy bills like Grassley’s, in favor of ending dumping with NFFC’s FFFA.
I’ve read, re-read and re-re-read your original post, Brad, and can’t for the life of me figure out your main point. What, pray tell, is it?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/21/2676/
“Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, hailed as reform a bill that would grant subsidies to farmers earning up to $1 million — five times more than the cap sought by the Bush administration”
Using Campaign Spending Limits to Get America Better Politicians is the Only Way to Solve America’s Problems Enough
To WmC: My apologies. I’ve been using Netscape 4.8 at home and can’t post comments here, so I go to the library, which closed at 3:00 on Saturday, before I saw your post. For references and links I email myself and then paste them in at the library. Previously I was at the library posting to the San Francisco Chronicle “Huge Farm Bill Offers More of Same for Agribusiness” http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/26/2778/ and “Pelosi Takes Heat for OK of Farm Bill” http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/21/2676/ when I saw the commentary (above). I wanted to put up an early post so I drew from what I had stored on email, and it ended up poorly organized, hard to follow, etc.
Here and elsewhere my main points are meant to be (1) that the enormous, mystifying omnibus farm bill can be greatly clarified by understanding that it has one primary CORE issue which is much bigger than all other issues in terms of the devastating world economic impact of recent farm bills (though various programs Kari identified are excellent and greatly needed). The CORE is that which affects market prices here and worldwide, not subsidies as many are claiming, but the lack of price support mechanisms. (2) After examining the commodity provisions in perhaps nearly two dozen major progressive and nonprogressive documents, I’ve seen that most of them miss both the needed CORE proposals and mention of the implications of them for agribusiness buyers of commodities who get, not multimillion dollar benefits as the articles I cite here above also discuss, but multiBillion dollar benefits. (A good exception on both accounts is Food and Water Watch’s study: The Farm Bill: Food Policy in an Era of Corporate Power, http://foodandwaterwatch.org/food/us-farmbill. Compare that to Bread for the World’s totally inadequate commodities chapter, for example. http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-reports/hunger-report-2007-download.html) So a good part of the progressive movement seems to lack knowledge that there is this CORE issue. And they are not offering proposals to remedy this, the most important injustice in recent US Farm bills. Thus, I regret to say, House Ag Chairman Peterson was correct, at least in this respect, in stating that “frankly most of those people have no clue what they’re talking about.”
And that enormously widespread factual and proposal shortcoming adds up to an enormous, avoidable movement empowerment problem, which I think is what we’re seeing in Washington!
By the way, one factor behind all of this is that this most important thing in the farm bill, in fact, is NOT in the farm bill. There are no price support mechanisms in the farm bill for major commodities, (except in the Sugar program) Bach in the 1980s-90s Harkin-Gephardt Bill had good ones. They were ended in 1996 with “Freedom to Farm.” Only NFFC’s Food from Family Farms Act has them.
So I’m saying there are just these two key closely related points to sort out the top priorities for the Farm Bill and the movement for farm bill distributive justice.
My various citations further explain this. So who follows my summary and who doesn’t? And what’s your background? Have you folks heard of this before or not? I’ve been involved in these issues for more than two decades and my father for two decades before that and my grandfather before that. I’ve tried to get the two sides of the movement to come together in past years. I’m for both sides.