op-ed Urge U.S. Senate to change farm bill

Author: Robert McKay

This week, the Senate votes on the bill that will determine the course of U.S. agriculture for the next five years. The House has already passed its version of the new farm bill, and it has introduced some promising changes. But these only mitigate the House's overall failure to rethink a fundamentally broken farm and food policy.

In the last five years, the government handed out an average of $12 billion a year to farmers. Nearly all of these subsidies support a handful of commodity crops, primarily corn, soy wheat and cotton. Because of current high commodity prices, a great deal of this money is at best wasted. At worst, it helps perpetuate the consolidation of farming in the hands of a few agribusiness giants, while driving out the family farmers political rhetoric purports to be "saving." Because payments are based on how much a farm produces, not on the farm's income, large farmers with no need of economic assistance often get the biggest checks. A Washington Post special recently interviewed farmers who said they simply felt insulted by the unneeded charity. But they continued to take the checks in order to keep up with their neighbors, who were using their handouts to buy more land and expand production, guaranteeing more subsidies next year. Thus the subsidy program is spurring the spiral of consolidation, driving small farmers out and land prices up, and making it near impossible for new farmers to buy land.

Furthermore, U.S. subsidies are pushing millions of farmers in the developing world into desperate straits. Since the '70s, the United States has been aggressively expanding overseas markets to soak up surplus commodities. Sometimes, over 50 percent of a crop is "dumped" on the foreign market at below the cost of production, underselling farmers worldwide. The WTO has begun to take notice - the U.S. government just lost a suit brought by Brazil over the trade-distorting effects of its cotton subsidies.

Finally, the current subsidies program contributes to the health problems facing poorer Americans. Because it provides ultra-cheap corn and soy to the meat and processed-food industries, the cheapest food in the supermarket is also the unhealthiest. Far from a fact of nature, the situation is due in large part to policy - healthier foods aren't made artificially cheap by subsidies.

The time has come for a new farm bill - a bill different not only in its details, but in its vision for the future of American and world agriculture. Today, the expansion of the ethanol market has raised commodities prices to a 10-year high, rendering even more of the federal payments gratuitous. While corn ethanol is at best a temporary fix, it affords a politically opportune moment for the Senate farm bill to cut commodity subsidies far below the House version's modest caps and reinvest in a truly forward-looking farm policy.

A farm bill for the 21st century would embody a new vision for farm viability, eaters' health and our energy future. All of these depend on an overhaul of the commodities program. The Senate should cut subsidies, especially those the WTO has ruled trade-distorting, and redirect the money wasted on subsidies toward the following kinds of programs:

It should increase funds by at least $5 billion to the Conservation Reserve and Environmental Quality Incentives programs, which currently turn away 75 percent of applicants due to lack of funds. These programs will provide incentives to take land out of commodity production, creating a system to control the price drops that are likely to occur when corn supply catches up with ethanol demand or cellulosic ethanol outcompetes corn with its much higher efficiency.

Looking toward this latter possibility, the farm bill should continue to support cellulosic research.

The Senate should support and strengthen several House proposals to give poorer Americans access to healthier food. These include funds for schools to buy fresh local vegetables the creation of a children's nutrition program based on the Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program and the expansion and modernization of Farm to Family programs, which would send Food Stamps recipients to farmers' markets and CSAs - where the Senate should propose to subsidize their purchases in order to close the gap between the cost of healthy and processed food.

In addition to cellulosic research and a healthier nutrition program, money saved on commodities should also beef up the House bill's new Title X, which supports organic agriculture. The Senate should fund organic research, which now gets only about 0.5 percent of federal agriculture research dollars. It should provide grants, loans and incentives to new sustainable farmers, especially minority, female and urban farmers. It should establish a special grant program for innovative sustainable ag projects, such as those that combine urban agriculture, nutrition education and "green-collar" job creation and training.

The Senate is debating the bill as you read. Now is the time to urge them to produce a bill that reflects a new vision for American farmers and eaters - a bill that will reinvigorate American agriculture with new farmers using sustainable practices, invest seriously in our energy future and support food and health equity for all.

For more information and to call your Senators, visit the table outside Proctor at lunch this week.

William McKay '11 is from North Ferrisburg, Vt.