America is scheduled to write a new farm bill in 2007. With the World Trade Organization ruling that our farm subsidies distort trade, and public expenses for flood relief and the war effort taxing the treasury, this could be a time of interesting shifts in how we view farm policy.
Moreover, both farmer and consumer groups say subsidies are harming Americans and developing nations (see Tom Philpott's fine story "I'm Hatin' It").
On the other hand, there are also signs that the same coalition of grain traders and producer groups will persuade Congress to extend the provisions of the existing farm bill for a few more years.
This gets me thinking about what a proper farm bill should do.
The first thing to note is: We don't need a farm bill in 2007. We need a food bill, or a rural development bill. We need to invest in communities, not commodities.
We support farmers in the U.S. because we want to ensure access to healthy food. But the vast majority of the $250 billion in farm commodities farmers sell in this country each year are just that: commodities. They are raw materials for industry. Fresh-food items are a tiny proportion of what is sold by growers. In fact, only 0.5% of U.S. food trade involves direct sales by farmers to consumers, as the Agriculture Census shows. Most commodities are sold to processors, who trade for a higher price, add value by creating a food product, or feed animals raised on industrial lots. Much of our corn is converted into corn sweeteners; most soybeans end up as animal food. There is no reason our federal dollars should subsidize cheap commodities for industrial production.
Moreover, on the eating end, things are spinning out of balance. Two of every three Americans are overweight. The medical costs of obesity now amount to $118 billion per year. Half of all public-school students can't afford to pay full rates for school lunch. Ten percent of all households will face food shortages this year. America loses 5,000 citizens a year to food poisoning. As I mentioned in a recent post, the U.S. is about to become a net food importer.
If our farm bill is intended to ensure reliable supplies of food, and healthy eating, it has failed miserably.
My food bill of 2007 would:
- use federal dollars to invest in infrastructure to make community-based food networks more effective;
- connect urban consumers with specific rural regions so local citizens groups can more effectively set local food policies;
- build capacity in rural communities, laying a foundation for community economic development;
- invest in ecosystem protection; and
- create specific policies that support healthier farm practices.
My research over the past 20 years suggests that federal dollars are best used to make specific and lasting investments in rural and urban communities -- not to create cash flow for farmers (or anyone else, except perhaps limited-means people). Certainly there is no justification for farm policies that primarily benefit the wealthy. No one person or family should be able to obtain more than $30,000 in subsidies in any year.
The government also has a role to play in assuring equality of opportunity, making sure no region or group of stakeholders chronically fares better in the food and resource economy than any other.
Farmers make up less than two percent of the American population. It's time to allow urbanites to help shape food policy in ways they will never be able to accomplish in a farm bill.
I'd welcome additional recommendations. There are many more issues to cover, which I will address in future posts.
Comments
View as Flat
odograph Posted 2:15 am
13 Mar 2006
It is the idea of the family farm that drives this stuff, emotionally. The corps just sponge off that image.
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biopolitical Posted 3:13 am
13 Mar 2006
do nothing
cost $0.00
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Amy Gregory Posted 4:17 am
13 Mar 2006
Any subsidies must be organized so that they: a) do not put undue strain on developing economies and b) maintain a way of life (be it family farms, organic farms) that society deems beneficial/good rather than purely facilitate economic growth.
Clarence
GreenpeaceUSA
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teambus Posted 5:45 am
13 Mar 2006
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rpritchard Posted 6:15 am
13 Mar 2006
America's farms and forests produce many more good things than just commodities, and each successive version of the Farm Bill has provided more ways to support landowners who produce clean water, fresh air, and abundant wildlife. Federal dollars should go to programs that allow farmers to produce these things. There are traditional set-aside programs (like the Conservation Reserve Program) which restore ecosystems, and there are cost-share programs for conservation practices (like the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program), but the most innovative new program is the Conservation Security Program, which ties monetary rewards on working farms to having a comprehensive stewardship plan. Yet congressional appropriators have shrunk this program far below its original extent. Farmer demand for all these programs far outstrips available funding.
The next Farm Bill will need to provide much more support for forestry on private lands (an especially big deal for us in the Southeast), because so many big timber companies are selling off their land to developers and investment firms, and it's unlikely they'll remain forests for long. The current Farm Bill virtually ignores 2/3 of the rural landscape in my part of the country (and it's the same in the rest of the East). The next Farm Bill ought to be a Farm and Forest Bill, if it is to really help maintain a vibrant rural economy and protect the ecosystems we depend on.
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Tom Philpott Posted 1:08 pm
13 Mar 2006
The WTO ruling against cotton support--combined with expensive foreign adventures and tax cuts--has forced Bush into the position of questioning commodity support. There's political space here to reform federal support for farming. One way to get around the WTO's demand to end "trade-distorting subsidies" would be to stop using federal policy as a hammer to force farmers into producing for a global commodity market. Rather than the current hammer, policy could act as a gentle nudge to produce for the local market. Here are a few things I can think of that might promote local and ecologically responsible ag.
Infrastructure grants. Say a county has a critical number of dairy farmers yet no processors nearby. Offer grants to create farmer-owned processing cooperatives. That would keep locally produced milk--and the profit it generates--within communities. And challenge the pricing power of giants like Pet. And perhaps inspire farmers to focus on quality--say, milk from grass-fed cows--to compete with the giants in the supermarket.
The European Union subsidizes organic ag. Why not subsidize local ag? Details would be complicated to work out, but farmers who can prove they sell within, say, a 50-mile raduis might be given direct payments. Too socialistic? Well, it's what's currently happening with commodity ag. But it's not really working for the farmer. Maybe Ken can help me out on this one.
To cut down on pesticide and fertilizer use, why not make like Europe and subsidize organic ag, after all? In the EU system, organic farmers aren't rewarded for gross production--like commodity farmers are here, but rather by acres under cultivation. Partly as a result, Italy alone has more organic acres under cultivation than the whole US.
More later.
Tom
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David Foley Posted 7:06 am
14 Mar 2006
Ration the market. Each farmer, to stay even or get ahead, tries to produce more crop. The market treats the crop as a commodity - it doesn't distinguish one soybean from another. Therefore, each farmer works to produce more, but the effect of all farmers doing this is overproduction and pressure on the crop price to drop. Meanwhile, since each farmer is trying to produce more, the price of inputs such as fertilizer, machinery, etc., is bid higher. Result: each farmer is caught in a profit squeeze - and each farmer decides that, just to stay even, they have to produce MORE crops. Rationing the market breaks a vicious circle: if you want, say, 50,000 soybean farmers, then allow each farmer to produce up to 1/50,000 of the market. This isn't socialized farming - each farmer is free to run the farm as he or she sees fit - but it caps individual production instead of subsidizing non-production or production for export, as we now do.
Financially reward restoration of Natural Capital. Right now, good topsoil is worth little or nothing until it's put into use. A farmer can increase income by running down soil in order to boost production. Soil is capital, but markets don't recognize this. It will take a subsidy to give farmers an incentive to rebuild topsoil. Here's a strange fact: in the United States, our largest "export", both in value and weight is - topsoil. We "export" most of it to the Gulf of Mississippi. We aren't "importing" any. That's a bad balance of trade.
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CowsEatGrass Posted 8:48 am
14 Mar 2006
Thus, I think one of the most important items is something that both Ken and Tom mention--the need for infrastructure for local processing. I like the idea of consumers buying as many fresh, whole, farm goods as possible, but few of us can do much with, say, wheat berries. Whether individuals or co-ops build this infrastructure matters very little to me, but local food systems are not going to work across the board without some of this infrastructure being (re)placed in rural communities.
Secondly, and more dauntingly, I think the best way to bring about (or more accurately reinvigorate) environmental conservation in farming communities is to make it worth it to the farmer to see the big picture and look at the long term. Historically, the motivation to take care of the land was the fact that the farm would stay in the family for many generations to come--it was your legacy that was at stake when you put plow to soil. Now, there are so few farms that will stay in families, there is little motivation to treat it in the same way. I'm not saying it's right, but where's the motivation to enrich the soil if tract houses are going to be built on it in 10 years?
We need to find ways to make farming a respectable and dignified profession again. Most farmers have no control over what they buy thier inputs for and they have no control over what they sell their products for. They are treated as expendable cogs in a machine over which they have no control and don't even necessarily want to be a part of. What kid would decide to be used by vendors and consumers alike and then be scoffed at by urbanites who eat the food they grow for being conservative and "spoiling" the environment.
Now take that and put it in your farm bill!
Essentially, if the farming family knows that farming will support them and their kin indefinately out into the future, they will want to keep make sure that the land and business are kept in the best of shape (read: stewardship). Respecting and taking care of farming families will in the end benefit everyone who eats, and everyone who breathes the air and drinks the water the farmers must use to create the food.
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CowsEatGrass Posted 9:06 am
14 Mar 2006
http://www.newfarm.org/features/2006/0306/schutte/sullivan.shtml
Stan Schutte just won the Upper Midwest Organic Farmer of the Year Award sponsored by MOSES and The Rodale Institute. His comments that "I want to share this award with my son, who is helping us keep our farm in the family" and "Nothing is truly sustainable if you can't pass it on" are telling.
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Tom Philpott Posted 2:49 pm
14 Mar 2006
On the question of processing, it's very important to note that half a century ago, processing infrastructure was much more decentralized. Localities had canning facilities, slaughterhouses, etc. Fifty years of consolidation, underwritten by government farm policy, has essentially wiped out local processing almost everywhere. It's hard to see how we're going to get that infrastructure back without a nudge from the government. A few years of $11 billion budgets for such a thing--the average level at which commodity production is now supported--might go some way toward remedying the situation.
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jdhlax Posted 4:10 pm
14 Mar 2006
Outlaw all pesticides;
Outlaw all genetically engineered food;
Prohibit all exports. All food should be sold locally;
Break up large farms so that all farms are small and owner-operated. No landlord or absentee farmers!;
Prohibit CAFOs and otherwise overly large animal farms that cause environmental problems due to their size;
Subsidize farmers so that they're guaranteed a decent living; and
Require that all crops are ecologically appropriate for the area in which they're grown. This would remove the need for massive water removals from natural bodies of water, which are very environmentally destructive.
Jeff Hoffman
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jdhlax Posted 4:11 pm
14 Mar 2006
Jeff Hoffman
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David Roberts Posted 4:55 pm
14 Mar 2006
www.grist.org
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jdhlax Posted 5:44 am
15 Mar 2006
Jeff Hoffman
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