Agricultural and food products are not like other commodities. Their price is that of life, and below a certain threshold, that of death.
-- Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart, A History of World Agriculture from the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis
Last month, after Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini dared question the virtue of certain U.S. farmers, many sustainable-agriculture proponents lashed out in fury.
Ken Cook.
Photo: agri.astate.edu
More recently, another high-profile observer, Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook, also made remarks about farmers that could be read as unkind. But while Petrini had to face down angry questioners and issue an apology, Cook's jibes generated not a peep in the sustainable-ag blogosphere, where Cook enjoys high esteem.
In one sense, the divergent reactions can be explained by looking at whom the two men insulted. Petrini took a poke at small-scale organic growers producing for a nearby community, while Cook aimed at Midwestern grain farmers -- the kind who practice what I and other observers often denounce as "industrial agriculture." It may be no surprise, then, that the sustainable-ag community rose to defend the small-scale farmers, and looked the other way when the big guys got roughed up.
But in another sense, the response is puzzling. The farmers Petrini tweaked are niche growers. Altogether, they supply perhaps 3 percent of the nation's food. But Cook went after the people who supply the great bulk of the calories that sustain a nation of 300 million.
If the former group disappeared -- a specter I don't raise lightly, since I work on a small-scale organic farm -- the quality of our food supply would decline appreciably. But in the unlikely event that the Midwestern grain farmers shut down operations, we'd likely experience a full-on famine.
By pointing this out, I don't mean to demean Ken Cook, whose work on our convoluted farm-support system I admire and have been citing for years. But I do want to challenge some of the discourse coming from the sustainable-ag community as congressional debate around the 2007 farm bill enters its stretch run -- especially the idea that merely ending subsidies will sort out our agricultural woes.
Just Another Day at the Office?
Cook is understandably quite critical of federal agriculture subsidies. His organization, the Environmental Working Group, has made a name for itself through its Farm Subsidy Database, a monumentally useful tool for gauging federal farm policy.
The database reveals, for example, that the federal government spent $164 billion on commodity programs between 1995 and 2005 -- and that 10 percent of farms received 73 percent of that cash.
The database also exposes outright abuses of the farm program. Cook recently reported, for example, that absentee farm owners who reside in Manhattan and San Francisco draw hefty government payouts -- from a program ostensibly designed to bolster rural economies.
If EWG didn't exist, ag observers like me would have to grope futilely for such information on the USDA's devilishly convoluted website. But while the Environmental Working Group skillfully exposes the inequities and absurdities of farm policy, the group sometimes oversimplifies the debate around it, portraying federal farm support as an unnecessary welfare program kept alive by whining farmers.
And in a post on his widely read blog Mulch last month, Cook mocked farmers who claim that the real beneficiaries of the federal subsidy system, as currently constructed, are agribusiness firms who sell farmers pricy inputs and buy their produce at cut-rate prices.
According to Cook, that's nonsense. "Let's be clear," he insisted. "Farm subsidies go to, and benefit, the businesses and people who collect them, no matter what bills it helps them pay, no matter how bitterly or resentfully they pay them -- with taxpayers' money."
And he didn't stop there. Seeking to debunk the claim that farmers deserve special support, he equated the lot of farmers to that of the other 98 percent of the population. "I've often wondered," he writes, "why so many farmers seem to think a New Yorker paying $2,300 a month for an efficiency, or a suburbanite buying a $4 latte for the cupholder of her $40,000 SUV, will register shocked sympathy upon hearing that a combine (whatever that is) costs $180,000 -- when you couldn't touch a 1 BDR condo for that price on either coast."
For Cook, the idea that agribusiness is the real beneficiary of farm support is tantamount to an urban dweller taking the position that "your salary isn't really paid to you, but to the bank that holds the note on your car or the mortgage on your home, or to the landlord who owns that $2,300-a-month efficiency you're renting ... You're just the middleman, the pass-through. After all, is it really your paycheck if most of it flies out the window to pay the cell phone, restaurant, and dry cleaning bills, buy health insurance, keep your kid in college, or cover that vacation to Cancun?"
By Cook's logic, farming is just another profession -- and its practitioners are no more worthy of federal support than, say, software engineers and lawyers.
First, Let's (Not) Kill All the Farmers
I think Cook is wrong on both counts -- that is, subsidies don't benefit the farmers who receive them, and farming is fundamentally different than other professions.
If subsidies were a boon to their recipients, then we'd expect to see farmers' fortunes steadily climbing since the early 1970s, when the federal government began to replace its old supply-management system with the direct-payment strategy in use today.
In fact, as Tufts University researcher Tim Wise showed in a 2005 paper [PDF], real net farm income has at best stagnated in that period. And while farmers were seeing ever-rising cash payments from the government to maintain income levels little changed from the 1930s, the agribusiness giants have seen their fortunes soar. A quick glance at the share-price charts for GMO seed powerhouse Monsanto, industrial meat producer Tyson, and corn-processing behemoth Archer Daniels Midland tells the story.
It's undeniable that in an era of unprecedented federal largesse for farm subsidies, farmers have had to run ever faster just to stay on the treadmill, while the companies who sell them inputs and buy their wares have thrived.
And Cook's contention that farming is like any other profession -- widely held by free-market economists who want to abolish farm support -- is an illusion with its roots, I think, in the supermarket. In 1930, one in four Americans worked on farms. Thus nearly everyone personally knew a farmer, and most counted at least one among close relatives. Growing food was concrete, something people understood.
Today, one in 70 lives on a farm -- and one in 750 on a full-time commercial farm -- meaning that very few people even know someone who owes a living to the land. This distance has allowed food production to become yet another abstraction in a highly specialized society. It's easy for some to dismiss it as another cog in the wheel, a role not unlike the mysterious work that, say, network administrators do to keep the office email humming.
Yet when network administrators fail, we suffer the inconvenience of the email being down. When farming fails on a large scale -- a disaster that has periodically visited humanity since agriculture's emergence 10,000 years ago -- people starve. That's why farming is fundamentally different, and why it is still deserving of some form of public support.
I join Cook and the EWG in deploring the farm program as currently structured, and I've learned much from their excellent work in bringing its flaws to light. But abandoning farmers to the clutches of a highly consolidated food-processing market, as he seemed to suggest in his post, won't solve our enormous social, public-health, and environmental troubles related to food. Rather, we need to figure out ways to use public policy and, when necessary, the purse to create a food system that's healthy for farmers and non-farmers alike.
[Correction: The original version of the column contained a reference to an editorial that the author mistakenly attributed to the Environmental Working Group. Actually, the Environmental Working Group was not responsible for the opinion expressed in the editorial. The author regrets the error.]
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Comments View as Flat
likethewatch Posted 3:57 am
21 Jun 2007
Do we really need all that corn?
Do we really need so many calories of food that we should continue to subsidize-- not farmers, who see very little of the dollars we pay for food-- but the biggest food processors who turn all that corn into cola, snack food, and other industrial food products? Today, most Americans are overweight. They need more locally grown lettuce, not chicken nuggets made out of corn.
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Aimee Witteman Posted 4:03 am
21 Jun 2007
We Need Good Public Policy
Thanks for the post, Tom. I know of many a sustainable aggie (myself included) who have taken exception with Ken Cook's characterization of farmers and farm policy. Commodity payments need to be reformed so that they are more equitable, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Farmers are not living high off the hog and readers sifting through the EWG database should not get the wrong impression that the government needs to end support for farmers altogether.
There is a place for good public policy and there are several programs being considered in the next Farm Bill that can help foster the long-term health of our communities, landscapes, and rural economies. Among them, good public policy promotes land stewardship (through programs like the Conservation Security Program), sustainable agriculture research (through programs like SARE), the next generation of growers (Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program), and local/regional markets (Value-Added Producer Grant, Farmers Market Promotion Program, Community Food Projects).
Finally, there also needs to be a comprehensive Competition Title.
The Farm Bill debate is in full swing - these and other programs need our support now.
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Farmer Deb Posted 4:13 am
21 Jun 2007
When 1 +1 Doesn't Equal 2
Thanks, Tom for laying out the difference between a support price that enables a farmer to pay his seed bill and forking out four dollars for a latte! Ken Cook's and Scott Faber's definition of "pass through" leaves much to be desired in rural reality.
Please take a moment to read a response to EWG's database drafted by George Naylor, Iowa grain farmer and NFFC president, below:
With the recent release of its new database on federal farm subsidies, the Environmental Working Group has once again made farmers out to be welfare cases. As a math major and farmer for 30 years, I can tell when statistics are deceiving.
Unlike agribusiness commodity groups, most family farmers do not defend the current subsidy system and would agree with EWG that our current farm and food policy is broken. But EWG's database showing wealthy farmers as the main beneficiaries of our farm policy overlooks the real winners of the subsidy system: food processors, multinational grain traders, and industrial livestock operations.
Why do we have subsidies in the first place? Due to perpetually low commodity prices that seldom meet the cost of production for farmers, subsidies were created to make up the difference.
The 1996 Freedom to Farm Act removed all remaining vestiges of the New Deal price support and supply management policies, letting the "market" drive down prices as low as they could go. Prices not surprisingly collapsed, causing Congress in 2002 to institute "countercyclical" subsidies when prices were driven too low to make up for some of that lost income. Large subsidy payments reflect a food system that encourages production to achieve cheap commodity prices which mainly benefit the buyers of these commodities, not the producers. That is what needs to change.
Corn prices are higher now, but during the past few years, corn was still selling for under $2 per bushel--less than farmers received in the 1970's To make up for these low prices, I received $60,411 between 2003-2005 according to EWG's database. This comes out to about $20,000 annually or just enough to pay for my seed and repair bills. There have been no provisions to cover skyrocketing costs of fuel, rent, taxes, fertilizer or living expenses.
This places my little 470 acre farm in the top 11% of EWG's database. So am I one of those "big welfare farmers" hogging all government subsidies? By throwing in my payments with those of larger farmers, EWG's tabulations make it look like farmers in my percentile received $46,000 instead of the actual $20,000 per year.
Framing farm bills as welfare bills that pit small farmers vs. big farmers, or farmers vs. non-farmers, hides from scrutiny who really benefits from our current policy favoring cheap prices for commodities. EWG tries to make farm programs fit a description of welfare programs, even though it's Tyson, Smithfield and Cargill who are the real welfare cases.
Research by Tufts University has shown that from 1997 to 2005, the four largest broiler chicken companies paid $5 billion less than the cost of production for their feed-mostly corn and soybean meal produced by family farmers. The four largest hog companies (producing 50% of U.S. hogs) paid $3 billion less than the cost of production for their feed. These types of factory farms, including giant beef and dairy feedlots, are also some of the most egregious environmental polluters, yet EWG, as an environmental organization, fails to recognize them as the true beneficiaries of our subsidy policies.
As president of the National Family Farm Coalition, an organization that truly does represent and advocate on behalf of family farmers, we don't like subsidies anymore than EWG does. What farmers need most of all is a fair price from the marketplace and price stability. What we don't need is sham Farmers "Risk Management Accounts" or privatized revenue insurance that dismantle our current system without addressing the problem of low prices, which is the core issue underlying our flawed farm policies, not subsidies.
NFFC's Food from Family Farms Act advocates farmers getting a fair price from the marketplace instead of relying on taxpayer subsidies. It accomplishes this by putting in place the original support programs we had for decades: a floor price for commodities in conjunction with conservation programs and emergency food, crop, acreage, and strategic energy reserves.
We need a farm bill that favors family farmers and a healthy, safe food supply. Distorting statistics and refusing to point out who really wins with subsidies does nothing to lead us in the right direction.
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Samuel Fromartz Posted 7:06 am
21 Jun 2007
Hum....
Tom, I see your points. And I also see the points Naylor makes in his well thought-out response. It doesn't make sense to just finger the farmers, but the subsidy programs underpin this entire food system. And as everyone in all these comments - including Cook - say, the entire system needs to be reformed. And part of the way to do that is to shine a spotlight on wealthy "farmers" who are getting millions. Without that political gambit, nothing will change. (It probably won't anyway - witness the collapse of the Doha Round).
As for the idea that farmers are special because they produce food, what about oil companies that produce fuel and heat? What about electricity and phone companies? What about hospitals? Should all our policies in those spheres be outside the market? They are now, but the policies also happen to benefit the biggest - whether big oil, big health, or big agribiz.
What Naylor is saying is that the way subsidies are designed needs to change. Cook seems to suggest farmers don't need any help at all (if I read him right, admitedly I haven't read enough of his work). But as soon as you rely on the argument that farmers are special, the entire ag system as constructed gets a pass. Why do you think agribiz likes this argument? They are the ones that always benefit from it.
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Tom Philpott Posted 7:16 am
21 Jun 2007
supply management
Hey Sam,
Unhappily, supply management--the policy that seems to make the most sense for stabilizing farms--isn't on the political table. I'll write more about that in the next day or two.
Cheers,
Tom
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Tom Philpott Posted 8:34 am
21 Jun 2007
Doctors vs. farmers
I didn't have the space to get fully into my take on why farming is different than other professions. Let's look at doctors. We have nearly one million physicians here, who have a potential customer base of 300 million. In our largely privatized system, that market is pretty disaggregated. Medical services are pretty much a seller's market, so doctors' wages are relatively high and people keep fighting to get into med school. "Not enough doctors" is not a factor in our healthcare crisis.
No let's look at farmers. We have around 2 million of them, with a customer base of 300 million eaters. Yet as I've written before, there are several layers of distributors, retailers, "value adders," etc. between farmers and their customers, each taking a chunk of the cash consumers pay fot heir food. And most of those levels are severely consolidated, giving the buyer the advantage at each layer, putting downward pressure on prices felt most heavily on the bottom, on the farm. The farm take of retail dollars has been falling steadily for decades.
And as prices at the farm gate fall, each farmer quite rationally tries to produce more to make up the difference. And as they do, total supply rises,putting yet more pressure on prices.
Doctors don't face these problems.
Then there's the whole uncertainty question. A patient arrives in a doctor's office and presents his insurance card. The doctor has a pretty good idea she'll be paid.
A farmer plants a crop, and it could be wiped out by any number of factors. And if the crop makes it to market, any number of things could drive its p down -- a bumper crop halfway across the world, a change in market direction.
Take corn at $4 per bushel. That price is completely and utterly propped up by the government's ethanol program. Say Congress decided to choose another alternative energy to subsidize. Overnight, commodity traders would drive corn futures into the dirt, down to $1.50 or lower.
If society expects people to produce food under such conditions, then society has a responsibility to figure out a way to smooth out these sharp edges.
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davidalynn Posted 9:42 am
21 Jun 2007
Subsidies Need a Fix
Thanks for the article. However, I would argue with your stated fundamental difference with the farming profession: as far as I can tell, subsidies are not there to protect the nation's food supply, they're there to protect the farmers "way of life". So the fact that farming is different because it is a necessary supply is not the reason for the subsidies. If it was, then it would be all about strategic food reserves, not about paying farmers to keep their fields lying unplanted.
You also neglected what I consider one of the worst outcomes of the subsidy program: public health. There's a reason there's corn, wheat, and soy in absolutely everything - look where the subsidies go.
--David
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Samuel Fromartz Posted 11:09 am
21 Jun 2007
Point
Tom, my only point about the medical issue is that all people should have access to it in the same way they should have access to food. Right now, that's not the case. Same for heat, electricity and water. These are all necessities - I am not sure farms should be singled out because they are more imp't in terms of providing a life necessity.
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Rune Posted 2:07 pm
21 Jun 2007
Let's look at this again
Tom, you have overlooked the most important part of Cook's message and, in the process, completely misconstrued his point, in my opinion. In his conclusions, Cook wrote, "The important policy questions in this farm bill cycle have much less to do with what becomes of subsidy payments than with who receives them, and why."
From that, it should be clear that Cook recognizes (1) that not all farmers are subsidized (or not subsidized equally), and (2) that it is the competitive advantage of those who are benefiting most from these unequally and/or unfairly distributed subsidies that is causing problems, not the existence of subsidy payments themselves.
Indeed, Cook devotes the middle part of his essay to describing how the bulk of the subsidies are pocketed by a concentrated group of farmers who may not need them at all and, in at least a couple of cases, may not seem to fit the mold of the type of farmer the subsidies were intended to benefit.
Now, if the problem is that some larger, wealthier farmers (that is to say, those that already have some economic cushion and probably opportunities and advantages the other farmers do not enjoy) are walking off with a disproportionate share of the subsidies, we should not expect that to show up in Wise's analysis of average farm incomes and profits as a whole in the form of steadily rising net incomes. It is not clear what the overall effect might be on all farmers taken as a whole.
What we should expect, and what both Cook and Tom are getting at, whether Tom sees it or not, is that the bigger, wealthier farmers getting a large share of the subsidies are able to invest in higher value assets that further their competitive advantages, thus allowing them to sell at somewhat lower prices if necessary and still make excess economic rents relative to the bulk of poorer, smaller farmers who are just scraping by, possibly with some help from subsidies if they can get them.
Sorry, I don't think that really covers it. The purpose of farm subsidies was to stabilize the farming industry (which is what it is--it is not a profession, like medicine of law) was to encourage good stewardship of the land (by keeping some fields fallow). By encouraging farmers to plant more than they were sure they could grow and sell, it kept them from running short in lean years. By shoring up prices in bumper crop years, it kept farmers from going broke and not being around next year or being bought out by wealthier and richer farmers, leading to monopoly power and problems. Along the way, the government learned to use the surplus supplies of commodities both as a welfare handout and as a tool in international trade wars, but that is a tangent I'll set aside for now.
The point is, the subsidy program was eventually influenced and rigged by large interests in the farm industry to allow them to destabilize the market (thus failing one of the purposes of subsidies), in part by engaging in ever more intense and less diverse land and crop management practices (thus undoing the other benefit that subsidies were meant to bestow).
And that, I believe, is what is wrong with the subsidy program and what needs fixing. I suspect Cook would agree. At this point, it may take more than simply reworking the subsidies, it may require anti-trust action among the bio-tech and livestock industries that are quite happy to keep lobbying to continue the status quo farm policies, which are serving their interests quite well. But one way or another, we would be better off with farm policies that promote the original goals of good land management, stable incomes, and stable food prices. I happen to believe that small, competitive farms producing a relatively diverse mix of crops and/or animals would be a wise way of achieving those other ends.
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meander Posted 4:01 pm
21 Jun 2007
Visibility and complexity
As someone who had a little bit of involvement in the Petrini hubbub, here are some of my thoughts on Tom's post and the resulting comments.
The farmers who receive the bulk of the subsidies are more or less invisible to those who live on the coasts, and even many in the middle states. Corn, soybeans and cotton don't appear in stores in their original form -- they are processed into products like soft drinks, oil or clothing and sold under different brand names. You can't go the to store and buy "George Naylor corn-fed beef.". The farmers at the SF Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, on the other hand, are people we see every week. We know their products, know their histories, and have connected with the real people behind the food. And so it was a lot easier to get riled up when the "known" farmers were slighted.
Another factor is that farm subsidies are hard to understand. Petrini criticizing a farmer for being a slacker is far easier to comprehend than Cook's statistical analysis and discussion of pass through vs. direct payments.
I agree with some of the commenters that Ken Cook and EWG are going after the system, not the farmers, i.e., not aiming for a complete destruction of subsidies, but a reform so that farm subsidies go to those who need the assistance or risk protection. That's why payment limits are a repeated request from EWG and others. Do we really want individual farmers (or their convoluted paper setups) to be receiving $1 million in subsidies? Do we want our national policy to reward such large operations? Or should payments reward how the farmer treats the land, animals, and workers?
My sense is that many subsidy receiving farmers are trapped in a system that they didn't design, one that has been corrupted by industries like ADM and Swift. Perhaps another piece for the reform puzzle is a voluntary buyout program, in which farmers can choose to have their specialized equipment purchased and their debt on that equipment restructured (or retired) so they can try a different type of farming, like grass-fed beef or pastured pork, or fruit orchards, or specialty vegetables.
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 11:39 pm
21 Jun 2007
You Are What You Eat
Physician and Johns Hopkins University postdoctoral fellow Scott Kahan published an article in The Baltimore Sun focusing on the Farm Bill and health.
The aritcle has been picked up by several media sites.
TruthOut: "The USDA's Unhealthful Budget:"
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050207HA.shtml
The Alternet version, "Why Americans Keep Getting Fatter," has received 131 comments so far:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/53792/
About Scott Kahan ~
http://www.iebn.org/aboutscott.htm
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leifutne Posted 9:29 am
22 Jun 2007
Organic agriculture vs. climate change?
Tom: What about the argument that we should switch to organic agriculture as a way to fight climate change?
This short video, SOIL: the Secret Solution to Global Warming, featuring Canadian organic icon Percy Schmeiser, explains the Rodale Institute's findings that sustainably farmed soil absorbs up to 30% more carbon from the atmosphere than conventional farmland.
If, rather than eliminating our ag subsidies, we shifted them to provide incentives for farmers to go organic on a wide scale, we could cut our greenhouse emissions by 10% in the US (in Canada and the rest of the world it would be more like 20%).
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Rune Posted 3:15 pm
22 Jun 2007
Consider what it takes to go organic
Leif, I don't think there is any question that rich, living soil sequesters carbon, among other wonderful things. The trouble is, we have enormous expanses of ground under tillage that have been exhausted and adulterated. It takes a long time to bring the soil back to life after being on artificial life support. Even the biointensive projects that John Jeavons has spread around the globe general involve a bit of cheating on the front end to prime the system. Doing this on a massive scale begs the question of where we should get the inputs to kick off a massive transformation to organic farming. A couple years ago, Richard Heinberg wrote a very convincing article in his Muse letter outlining just how many well trained warm bodies it would take to do a good job of going organic on a low energy budget. It's a long haul. Definitely the right direction, but not a quick trip.
My former neighbor, Michael Abelman, once of Fairview Farms, has been making the point for quite a while that local farms with personal interaction between farmers and consumers (not to be confused with signing up for a box of CSA veggies on the internet) is probably more important than any standards or certifications for organic farming. Provided there is a reasonably high level of education and knowledge among consumers, I am inclined to agree. If people see farming as a part of their community instead of a vague concept, like wilderness has become, they are more likely to appreciate farmers who are taking care of the land, water, and air while turning out healthy food, and farmers that are cutting corners are less likely to get away with it among informed and involved neighbors than they are among occasional inspectors who have only a mild financial interest in the results.
It may turn out that reducing the amount of refrigeration and shipping, as well as carbon inputs into what are now industrial farms, is as important or more important than converting to accepted organic methods, as a first point of focus. It may not. But encouraging small(ish) and (relatively) local farms may, again, be a better way of getting the best and quickest results for the people than setting another set of blanket policies that can eventually be gamed by some of the players who aren't intimate with the other stakeholders they are effecting.
Anyhow, I am just throwing out a few thoughts that can be connected when thinking of what a practical, effective and, by necessity, long range farm policy might include if we are looking to rally around a new model or two. I am interested to see what others think and want to add or warn against.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 10:40 pm
22 Jun 2007
Are farmers different?
Tom, while (naturally) I agree with much of what you say in your article, I don't agree with your basic message, that farming and farmers are different. Of course the activity differs from other activities, just as designing software differs from making wood cabinets. But the great thing about this modern age is that people by and large can choose their vocations, or at least try to. That includes farmers, and the children of farmers.
Promoting the "farmers are different" line doesn't help in the farm-policy debate, and only feeds the myths that are exploited to defend the status quo. You paint a false dichotomy:
Oh, come now. Is there, has there been, in recent memory any shortage of people willing to farm? Yes, farm incomes wax and wane, but that is a social welfare problem at best, not an issue that threatens the food supply.
On the other hand, policies that continue to discourage crop rotation and chemical-intensive farming in general DO threaten the long-run agricultural capacity. And perhaps not only in the long-run: as you know and have criticized, we are now moving into a situation in which other calls on farm output -- notably for biofuels -- are being given precedence over food and feed.
Otherwise, I agree with you that "abandoning farmers to the clutches of a highly consolidated food-processing market won't solve the social, public-health, and environmental troubles related to food" and that "we need to figure out ways to use public policy and, when necessary, the purse to create a food system that's healthy for farmers and non-farmers alike."
That doesn't mean we should demonize farmers, but neither should we place them on a pedestal -- unless you want also to put on that pedestal teachers, firefighters, nurses, garbage collectors ... and, last but not least, the migrant workers who actually do much of the heavy lifting on farms these days but get little benefit, if any, from the current farm-subsidy system.
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 2:46 am
23 Jun 2007
Farm Bill-Ask Congress to support healthy changes
Ask Congress to support healthy changes to the Farm Bill
The following is from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
http://www.pcrm.org/
Congress is revising the Farm Bill, which will directly affect the health of all Americans--and we need your help to implement federal policy changes that will support healthy foods.
The Farm Bill helps determine what foods are available in schools, nutrition programs, and the entire food economy. There is a direct link between America's growing rates of chronic disease and our access to cheap and unhealthy food products that are high in fat and cholesterol. That's why we must encourage Congress to support healthy foods and stop heavily subsidizing animal agriculture.
Here's how you can help:
Producers of feed crops (including corn, soy, and wheat), meat, and dairy products receive 73 percent of direct subsidies for food production. Fruit and vegetable farmers receive less than 1 percent. The government purchases surplus food commodities, most of which are high in fat, cholesterol, and sugar, for distribution to food assistance programs, including our children's schools. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.
With your help, we can change the Farm Bill. Please forward this information to your friends and family and ask them to take action. Encouraging Congress to make healthy changes to the Farm Bill will help lower the rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. Thank you so much for your support, and feel free to contact Kyle Ash at kash@pcrm.org if you have any questions.
For further information and links within the message above, click here:
https://secure2.convio.net/pcrm/site/Advocacy ...
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Rune Posted 4:29 am
23 Jun 2007
Farmers are different, farming is not
Ron, I agree with your points about the folly of trying to enshrine farmers as a special case worthy of special treatment. Like all capital intensive businesses, farming entails risk. Some years go well, others do not. Some businesses thrive at any one time and at others they take a hit or may go under. Farming has always been subject to a lot of volatility due to weather, pests, unintended consequences of technology, changes and manipulation of markets, etc. But, as was pointed out, other industries, such as energy, are also volatile and also of key importance to the rest of the economy and the welfare of the people. Trying to make the case that farming is fundamentally more important and more difficult is more likely to alienate non-farmers who sense that the argument fails on the merits than it is to win sympathy and support.
At present, part of what mitigates against the dire warnings of famine upon domestic farm failures that Tom tossed out as a reason for doing more to prop up farmers is the global nature of food production and distribution. This is a mixed blessing for many reasons that I suspect most of us are familiar with, but it must be acknowledged when building a credible case for sound farm policies. Like every other industry, offshoring is a part of the farming reality, now. Yet another point of commonality to look for solutions that speak not just to farming, but to the entire economic transformation that is necessary to address major issues, such as global warming, health, declining wealth, and a deficit of time in most people's lives to teach their children well, among other things. We are all in this together, and all the pieces help or hinder the effectiveness of efforts in any one area.
However, in answer to your question about whether there is a lack of people willing to farm, I would say there is certainly a lack of people who are qualified to farm well--in addition to the immediate crisis of moderately skilled, low paid workers who have gone missing due to immigration crack downs and competing shifts in other parts of the economy. And that was what I was getting at in pointing to Richard Heinberg's essay about moving to less industrialized, less energy intensive farming that is consistent with the demands of reducing GHG's, putting less strain on an energy market that is stretched to the limit, improving the health of the soil and, thus, the nutrition in our food, and thinning the toxic soup of chemicals added to our air, water, and edibles in the course of big agricultural undertakings, today. As was demonstrated in Cuba as it learned to grow food without the luxury of large energy inputs, there is a lot to learn and many people who must be well educated and involved to pull off that change. Farming is a specialized industry and those who can master it are unique in their knowledge and perspective of what green means from the ground up.
It is too late to figure out and push through sweeping ideas such as these in the farm bill. But is a great time to start working on these matters as part of a holistic response to the major issues of our time, and see that they are reflected in future revisions of health, education, welfare, infrastructure, finance, energy, and, yes, farm legislation, which will need to be tweaked over and over as we come to grips with the considerable shifts the U.S. must make in the face of dramatic changes taking place in the world and in our towns and rural areas.
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Scott Faber Posted 5:07 am
23 Jun 2007
Reward Stewardship
Farm subsidies certainly don't help most farmers.
As EWG likes not note, less than 40 percent of farmers even grow the crops eligible for subsidies. And, only a small fraction of the farmers who do collect subsidies get more than a $100 a month.
A better course would be to share the cost of clean water and wildlife habitat.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 10:26 pm
23 Jun 2007
Excellent comments, Rune
You make a good point that one needs to make a distinction between the supply and the quality -- in the sense of ability to manage a complex business AND look after the environment -- of people involved in farming.
It is not as if the government hasn't tried to raise the educational level of farmers. One of the motivating ideas behind the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1990, which created the land-grant college system (Iowa State University, Cornell University, etc.) was to do just that. And, with the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, the fruits of the research at those colleges began to be extended into rural areas through co-operative extension. A considerable amount of state and federal money still goes to supporting these institutions and activities. Have they somehow failed to keep up with the times? I don't know. (I am a graduate of one, but that was a long time ago.)
More likely, the incentive system is wrong, with too much of an emphasis placed on maximizing yield and uniformity.
Rune, I've enjoyed reading your very thoughtful and well-reasoned comments. Drop me an e-mail some time; I'd be interested in corresponding. Mine is rsteenblik at iisd dot org.
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bobcajun Posted 10:24 pm
25 Jun 2007
Farming and Farm Subsidies
First, let's recognize that this is not only an intellectual issue, but an emotion-charged fundamental question about the way our ecomony works.
Small farmers, the so-called "yeoman farmer," was essentially the economic and social class that actually formed and built this country.
That is no longer true. In fact, small farming is quickly becoming an anachronism.
Why? Because we are talking profound and fundamental differences between the small, independent farmer and large agribusiness.
On a small farm, the farmer himself is the active ingregient. He (or she) not only grows the crops or raises the animals, but also provides an economic and social rationale for the "essence" of communities throughout the U.S. The small farmer interacts with that community in a dynamic way, forming part of a microcosmic infrastructure that was once, but regretfully is no longer, part of the defining culture of this country. It was truly a vocation. Additionally, the small farmer had independence, reliability and social conscious that is impossible to recreate in an agribusiness environment.
It is true, of course, that the net production of agribusiness and small farmers is essentially the same. However, agribusiness operates in a completely different dimension.
There are few real "farmers" in the agribusiness world. There are CEOs, upper management, and mid-management MBAs, whose main objective is to provide a profit to company shareholders. The product is ancillary to the profit. In short, the people who run agribusinesses could probably just as well run an oil company. It's just a job to them. Agribusinss employs agronomists, and botanists, and other specialists to make sure that their product is packagable, eatable, edible,and practicable.
But there are no true FARMERS in agribusiness. There are farm workers, that's true. These are people that drive the tractors, combines and other farm equipment. There are mechanics, who are employed en masse to repair the fleet of farm machinery. There are payroll clerks, hr specialists, operations managers etc. But there are no real farmers in agribusiness. The basic difference between agribusiness and the old communal farms of the Marxist regimes are that the workers have a better standard of living in an agribusiness environment. But a farm worker at an agribusiness operation can never become more than a farm worker unless he joins the agribusiness team.
In short, except for the handfull of niche farmers, the idea of the independent farmer is an anachronism. It is already too late. No amount of farm subsidy will save the smallindependent farmer. The small niche farmers are allowed to exist, becfause that provides rationale to the agrument for agribusiness.
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Bobbi Katsanis Posted 1:48 am
26 Jun 2007
City-Slickers please be quiet and listen to farmer
Dear friends,
I grew up on a very small farm in North Dakota. A relative and member of the community hung himself from the beams of his barn when he could not make his mortgage payments. That was during the recession of the 1980s, when bad weather and worse prices (and horrible farm policies: Earl Butz's "get big or get out") were forcing family farmers from the land in droves.
Why should we care about small family farmers? Why are they "different" from other professions? Why should the government subsidize them to keep them in business (in a way that does NOT send taxpayer money to Cargill et al.)?
- Farmers grow our FOOD. Food doesn't come from the supermarket. However, we need it to live. OK, that's an obvious point.
- What is special about small family farmers is not their personalities, vocations, or any such thing. It's their knowledge. Every small farmer that has intimately worked the land for generations has a knowledge of that land, its climate variations, soil fertility, and needs, knowledge that is lost forever every time a farmer has to leave his or her "vocation" and go work for minimum wage in the nearest city. This is such a big problem that farmers in the eastern part of the country are now begging the Amish to come and give workshops about how to farm, because nobody else still knows all the secrets.
- Small farmers are a BIG part of the environmental and global warming solution. If Congress were to offer supports to struggling farmers below a certain income, acreage, and carrying a certain amount of debt (leaving out Cargill et al.), they could target supports for farmers who are using organic methods (not necessarily certified, that's another story) and selling their wares locally. The ecological footprint of most Americans is biggest when it comes to FOOD, not transportation, as southern California trucks (the transportation $$$ can be written off) produce all over the country. Every state should be largely responsible for growing its own food and we should not be importing fruits and vegetables from other countries. Locally-grown is environmentally much saner, more nutritious, tastier, and supports sustainable local economies. These are things we WANT, people.
- Small farmers do not enjoy the same legal contracts in their trade agreements as other industries. Example: an organic produce cooperative in Appalachia made an agreement with local supermarkets to supply their tomatoes for the year. When harvest time came, the supermarkets had discovered that they could get California tomatoes cheaper (see transportation write-off, above) and reneged on the agreement. The farmers had NO LEGAL RECOURSE and tons of tomatoes went to rot, and all their $$ inputs wasted. Can you sue your employer if they fail to pay you what was agreed on for work you had already done? Yup. But small farmers can't.
Please do some reading (I recommend Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Osha Gray Davidson's Broken Heartland: The Rise of America's Rural Ghetto) and come back to the conversation when you know what you're talking about. Thanks.Permalink
Tom Philpott Posted 3:38 am
26 Jun 2007
Great comments
Thanks do much for the great comments. This is precisely the sort of debate I dreamed of starting when I first started blogging on gristmill in 2005.
Thanks especially to Meander's insightful analysis. Yes, clearly, people leapt to the defense of the Ferry Plaza growers because they knew them, whereas a guy in Iowa with 2000 acres and a combine is absolutely invisible. It may well be that we won't get sensible national farm policy until the distance between producers and consumers shrinks.
As for Ron and Rune, I agree that the globalized food supply has made the threat of famine seem remote and abstract. But if you read the headlines, when we import food, we export misery. China, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina--we are importing increasing amounts of food from these places, and their commodity crops like corn and soy act as de facto reserves in fungible commodity markets.
But in all of those places, farmers are absolutely miserable, losing money, and in many cases involved in either open revolt or suicide epidemics. The food security they supply us might not be as durable as we like to think.
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