I would eliminate all benefits to corporations and support only family farms (owner-operated farms).

It is the idea of the family farm that drives this stuff, emotionally.  The corps just sponge off that image.

do nothing
cost $0.00

While current subsidies largely benefit big, corporate farms, it is important to remember that if all subsidies were cut, it would most likely accelerate corporate take-overs much in the same way big business eats everything in a laisse-faire system.

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

First, the author's comment that much of the corn we grow is used to make HFCS. That didn't sound right, so I checked. Less than 5% of our corn is used to make sweeteners!!! And this guy has been studying it for how many years? I learned that most corn is fed to livestock. I live in Kansas so know a bit about farming. How come no one ever considers the positive impact farming operations have on local economies? Do you big city people think there are huge Cargill factory farms around here? Nope. Spend a day in my neighborhood and you'll see they're just folks trying to make a living like the rest of us. And these people who say the farm bill makes us fat--whoo boy. I am a bit overweight, but I only have myself to blame. Too much organic yogurt, I think!

Ken Meter's post raises the right issues. Although the Farm Bill won't be passed until 2007 at the earliest, now is the time to weigh in with your Members of Congress. The Farm Bill may be the single most important piece of conservation legislation to be written by the next Congress. The next Farm Bill will be written under a tight budget and with great uncertainty about the next set of trade negotiations. Now is the time for urbanites to make common cause with conservation-minded farmers and forest owners (of which there are plenty), if they want to preserve open space, preserve ecosystem services, and protect wildlife for their children's future.

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.  

Between 1995 and 2004, under the previous two farm bills, the USDA doled out $113.5 billion in commodity payments (vs. $18.3 billion for conservation programs). That's a cool $11 billion per year in commodity support. The trick will be to push an agenda that attacks the direct-payment plan while preserving some of that cash to rebuild local food networks. I love Ken's idea of a "Food Bill"; I also agree with rpritchard about forests. How about a Food and Forest bill?

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

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.

While I initially like the idea of simply doing away with all of the programs and letting the farmers actually do what their markets need them to do, I fear that in the recent past and current climate has created the behemoths in the business that are in a position to simply complete their take over.

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.

I think CowsEat is spot-on, here. To put it another way, if farmers' children are so reuctant to take up farming, then where are we going to find the next generation of farmers? Today, it is virtually impossible to start farming on newly bought land. Under even the most efficient sustainable farming methods, it's impossible to make enough money to offset land prices. Land today fetches much more on the market for development than it can reasonably generate farming. This is a crisis that will need to be confronted--and that hardly anyone is talking about. The average age of a US farmer is 56.

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.

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

Oops.  How could I have said prohibit all exports without adding, "prohibit all imports"?

Jeff Hoffman

8. And a pony!

www.grist.org

but I won't turn down a pony.  I could give him/her to my wife's grandkids.

Jeff Hoffman