Quick thoughts on the USDA’s ‘Know Your Farmer’ program 14

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1. 

   foodprovider Posted 7:58 am
   17 Sep 2009

   The "Farm Bill" as most everyone calls it is actually the Food Securities Act of 2008.  The bulk of all funds in the bill go towards food stamps and programs such as WIC (Women Infants and Children).  Other areas are...rural developement, energy, conservation, and yes subsities.  The farm subsities that all you so srtrongly complain about is but a drop in the bucket in the bill's budget.  Less tha 2% of the monies in the Food Securities Bill actually goes to production Ag.  And that also includes organic production.  It is NOT just grains, fruits and vegetabel are now included.  The monies that are set aside for sudsities are not automatic.  There are trigger points that must be met, such as price pints paid to the producer.  As the price of grains, vegetables and milk increases to the farm producer, less is subsidisized.  A producer does not get rich off the subsities.  What it does provide is a safety net not only for the producer, but also to the consumer.  This is a supply and demand thing.  If the prices paid to the producer are too low, the producer stops growing YOUR food.  When that happens, only the largest of the large farms will survive due to the economies of scale.  It's just like the "walmarts of the world vs the corner grocer".  When that happens the price you pay in the stores go up.  Then You complain.  The US citizen pays the least amount for food than anywhere else in the world on a per capita basis.  Food Security is a major issue with ALL world governments.  Without food and food security, there would be major uprisings.  "A well fed nation is a content nation".  You talk about indutrial ag.  What exactly is industrial ag?  Isn't ag an industry?  Do I understand correctly  that you would wish industrial ag to disappear?  If I misunderstand this, would somebody please educate me.  What would happen without the AG Industry?  Where would your milk come from? Where would your eggs come from?  Where would your proteins come from?  Oh yeah, yu could just go out to the shed in the back yard and milk you rcow , and gather the eggs in the morning before going off to work, just like your grandparents and great grand parents did. The USDA does havew a good idea in "getting to know your farmer".  I agree, get to know your farmer, get to know many farmers from many different farm activities.  Get to know what it takes to produce the food you eat, the fibers you wear and the fuel you use.  Ask your farmer on a per hour basis what is wages are.  Ask a farmer about his health insurance plan.  Ask a farmer about his "401K".  Don't stop at just 1 farmer, go to many.  If I would just stop at one business owner and got his side of the story, I would only have 1 story.  Go out and meet the farmers that produce you essential nutritional requirements so you can enjoy your own careers and lifestyle.  May God help us if the US would ever have a food shortage.  Or maybe that IS just what we need!

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2. 

   sustainablegrub Posted 7:35 pm
   17 Sep 2009

   I'm not an expert on federal ag policy, but you can look at this one of two ways: 1) the Obama administration is just putting on a show, drop in the bucket support for sustainable ag to appease its liberal base or 2) they know what they are up against with Big Ag and are trying to first build a case for real reform by showing that there is real demand and interest, i.e. trying to build more public interest and demand by gradually supporting reforms that are hard to oppose: supporting farmer's markets, more local foods in the schools, etc. In either case I think it's worth letting them kinow what we really want/ need.

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3. 

   foodprovider Posted 8:47 am
   18 Sep 2009

   What is sustainable ag? What is big ag? Can you have both? Are they different? If a farm has been around for 100 yrs, is that sustainable? Is a farm that goes bankrupt not sustainable? What is the definition of a sustainable farm? or what is the definition of sustainable farm practices?

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   1. 

      Albionwood Posted 8:29 pm
      21 Sep 2009

      "sustainable" by my definition means it can continue indefinitely. So anything that relies on external inputs from finite resources (like, say, fossil fuels) is not indefinitely sustainable. A farm that has been around for 100 years may very well be unsustainable. A farm that goes bankrupt may or may not be sustainable - depends on what happens after!
      
      Big ag probably isn't sustainable, because it is predicated on cheap and abundant fossil-fuel inputs. Even most organic ag isn't sustainable, because it relies on mined sources of phosphate and potassium, and external sources for nitrogen that are themselves unsustainable. Irrigated ag in dry climates is usually unsustainable, though it can take many generations for salt buildup to reach toxic levels.
      
      Is ag that relies on government subsidies sustainable? Is it even ag?

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4. 

   mkeating Posted 10:01 am
   20 Sep 2009

   FOODPROVIDER is not submitting accurate statements nor making substantive comments. Comments like these are why sneeze guards were invented for buffets - some people simply don't know how to behave in public. Factual errors begin in the first sentence, in which FOODPROVIDER incorrectly identifies the 2008 Farm Bill - it's titled the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. I'm not going to elaborate the gross distortions and misrepresentations of fact that follow. For an intelligent discussion of the cost of Farm Bill subsidy programs, visit the Environmental Working Group's excellent database on the subject. The United States has allocated between $10 billion and $22 billion annually on such programs over the past decade, not the 2% that FOODPROVIDER states. Really, I avoid flaming people on the internet but FOODPROVIDER'S comments strike me as intentionally counterproductive and designed to frustrate discussion. Yes there is a very meaningful and understandanble definition of sustainable agriculture, one that was codified in the 1985 Farm Bill. Visit the USDA's SARE program's (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) webpage and you will be delightfully informed. I am a strong supporter of sustainable agriculture (twenty years professional experience) and farm subsidies, but we must begin to pay farmers for how they grow, not what or how much they grow. The tide is turning on this subject - T. Philpott is a good source for that - and the essential ingredient is that consumers seek out whole, fresh and local foods and pay farmers an equitable price!!

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5. 

   foodprovider Posted 4:11 pm
   20 Sep 2009

   MKEATING, I stand corrected. Feel free to flame me anytime you wish. At least somebody is reading my rants. I did miss name the farm bill, and yes my math is faulty. Math was never my strong point. Even so, with the Bills budget, roughly 2/3 of that budget is for food assistance. I have no problems with that. The original cost estimate was for $75 B for commodities $52 B for conservation, $66 B for crop insurance, and $432B for Nutrition programs. That was the estimated budget in June. My point is that commodity ag is not the major beneficiary to the bill, like alot of people like to say it is. As far as sustainability, I am a supporter of sustainable agriculture. I feel that sustainability does not necessarily equal organic. Organic is a choice, a choice i did not make based on economics. The farmers that i have witnessed go into organic production were farmers that were, and in some cases still, on the verge of bankruptcy. I'll take my mistakes like a man. I will not stand by though and watch people tear down agriculture.

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   1. 

      Albionwood Posted 8:10 pm
      22 Sep 2009

      Commodity ag is the major (almost sole) beneficiary of the subsidies, and it also ultimately receives a lot of the benefit of the food security/nutrition/food stamps portion as well. Much of that money is spent on commodity ag products, because they are the cheapest forms of calories, because they are subsidized! (Is this a great country, or what?) Meanwhile the producers of fresh vegetables and fruits - you know, the healthy stuff - are not subsidized, so carrots cost more than corn chips.
      
      Ever wonder why HFCS is in everything? Because it's cheap - because we taxpayers subsidize the corn it comes from.

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6. 

   mkeating Posted 7:19 am
   21 Sep 2009

   Fair enough, we all get emotional about this subject and that can distort what we mean to say. I also take issue with people from non-agricultural backgrounds who throw around their opinion on the subject; I guess that would hold for anybody who speaks forcefully about a subject they know little about.
   I'll respond to a few of your specific points. Yes, the food security budget does account for more than half of USDA's operational budget. Those numbers are running very high right now because more people than ever qualify for and use food stamps - our economy is a long, steady and not readily reversible decline. Allocating money for the relatively poor and the outright poor to eat is a pretty good investment, IMHO. How they spend that money is a fair question- the number one problem affecting all of America, rich and poor, is that we have forgotten how to eat. Stick to whole, fresh foods and lots of quality saturated fat - you'll like it and you'll be much healthier.
   The non-food security component at USDA lives and breathes to support commodity monoculture - we can't throw money fast enough at corn, cotton, soy, wheat and rice. You can roll most of your crop insurance and conservation funding into support for these commodities because that is where the money goes. There is one crop that needs to replace these five as the foundation of American agriculture: pasture. Put the animals back on grass, manage it well and we have optimal environmental benfefits, greenhouse gas reductions, increased farm income and healthy, whole food.
   Farmers who wait till the verge of bankrutcy to convert to organic agriculture are not likely to succeed. How mant people come back from being on acute care life support? In general, the USDA organic program has both a lot of substance and a lot of hype behind it. Let's focus on the good part: how we produce our food definitely affects its nutritional properties, as well as the farmers' income and environmental quality. Not all good food is organic, and not all organic food is good.
   
   Back to the original post: Kathleen Merrigan (a friend of mine for over a decade) is a quality individual with a first class mind and plenty of savy to navigate in DC (she's been doing that for over twenty years). After five months on the job, she has done more for local and sustainable agriculture than any other Deputy Secretary of Agriculture in history, which is both impressive and depressing. Federal sustainable ag programswill continue to make progress at the fastest rate possible under her leadership and this won't come at the expense of conventional ag (they won't be ignored or underserved). The key to the success of sustainable agriculture has and always will be consumer demand - this isn't a feel good phenomena that USDA can take charge of. Real change has to come on the ground where people become committed to buying good healthy food as close to the source as possible.
   Lost in the hand-ringing over the last Farm Bill was just how good it is for sustainable and organic ag. Commodity monoculture agriculture still gets billions and billions and sustainable ag is getting millions and millions, but sustainable ag is going a lot, lot further with those dollars. Example: I was a reviewer for the Farmers Market Promotion Program in July that awards grants between $25K and $100K to direct marketing operations. Before the 2008 Farm Bill, the FMPP got $1 M a year in funding. Thanks to the Farm Bill, it will get $32 M over five years, including $10 a year beginning in 2010. This year, we received over 500 grant applications of which 100 to 125 will be funded. But 80% of the total were WORTHY of funding - shovel ready projects with a prior record of success and people in place who know what to do. SO, many of those not funded this year will be funded next year, and morew after that...the real food revolution is definitely taking off. The good news is that with people like Kathleen Merrigan in place, USDA can be more of a help than the hinderence (with a few hardworking exceptions) it has traditionally been.

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7. 

   mskellyann Posted 11:04 am
   22 Sep 2009

   Funny. I live in a farming village, and I can tell you that it is almost impossible to get ahold of vegetable-farmer friends by phone or email this time of year. They're working 18-hour days planting their garlic and trying to get everything in - squash, root veggies, kale, etc. Yet Foodprovider's comments - delivered with the authority of the working farmer - are regular and unstinting, posted at times of the day when no farmer I know would be inside at his or her computer. Really makes me wonder . . .

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   1. 

      foodprovider Posted 4:03 pm
      22 Sep 2009

      Well, I can assure you that I am a working farmer. In Wisconsin it is not quite harvest time for the grains I grow. I also am a certified crop advisor and a manager of an Ag Supply business.

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      1. 

         Albionwood Posted 7:52 pm
         22 Sep 2009

         FP - What grains do you grow? If it's malting barley, I'm your man. :)

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   2. 

      Albionwood Posted 7:49 pm
      22 Sep 2009

      Your vegetable-farmer friends aren't receiving welfare checks (ag subsidies) from the US Govt, so they have to work a lot harder. One line from "Omnivore's Dilemma" that really struck me: "George Naylor works his fields fifty-six days a year." He grows #2 field corn. I guarantee us vegetable producers are working a lot more days than that! (Especially out here in CA where we grow year-round.)
      
      Those subsidies really distort things.

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      1. 

         foodprovider Posted 8:27 am
         23 Sep 2009

         If my memory serves me corectly, vegetable crops are now a subsidized crop in the most recent farm bill. Some of the provisions that no one talks about with subsities is that it is a sliding scale, or a safety net to low prices paid to the growers. If the farm gate price on a commodity is below a trigger price then a subsity is triggered. It is never a 1 to 1 ratio of price under the trigger point. In the case of grains it is 85% of the avreage county yield. e.g. if my average yield on soybeans is 50 bu and the county average is 35 bu. I currently get paid 85% of the 35bu. That happens when the price paid to the farmer drops below $5.82 (if my memory is correct) It has been a few yrs since I have qualified for payments due to the higher prices paid for the commodities. So, if prices are high, the paynments growers gets are low or even zero. When prices fall delow the trigger prices (each crop has diferent trigger points), the paymenst start to kick in. This also holds true for the vegetable growers.
         
         Yes some vegatable growers do usually put more labor hrs in than grain farmers do as the fresh vegetable growers rely heavily on hand labor. Their just isn't the harvesting machines available as in grains. But growers are very important to mainatin the level of food nutrition needed to feed the many many hungry and even starving mouths in this world. Some estimate that figure to be 9 million mouths to feed by the year 2050.

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      2. 

         foodprovider Posted 8:37 am
         23 Sep 2009

         My vegetable growing farming friends are in a high value crop. They make thouands of dollars per acre on certain crops. Some grain crop growers are excited when they make $50-$100 per acre. In grain farming you may not actually see someone out in the field everyday with equipment, but many are in their fields keeping track of what is going on, taking notes as to when the next task needs to be done in that field to insure the most economic yield is reached. I past farm bills, the vegatable growers had refused subsities in exchange for some form of protection from expansion of vegatable acres. A grain grower could not turn a field into vegetable production and receive any subsities on the following crop years even when putting grian back on the land. This detered farmers from getting into the vegatable market at a level that was economical. That was the protection that the vegatable growers were afforded, It kept the competition low for them so they could make a decent living.

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