Food policy could go backward under Farm Bill
Green Acre Radio: As the nation suffers a serious drought, Congress is working on a farm bill that turns away from the underlying issues of sustainability and good health.
Darin Leach, U.S. Department of Agriculture/Flickr
As the nation focuses on the economy, the presidential race, immigration, and most recently, the worse drought in half a century; a critical piece of legislation about the food you eat is being debated in Congress.
Customers check out tomatoes, cherries, greens and grass fed beef at a local farmer’s market. Consumer demand for chemical free food is on the rise. But it’s not clear if legislators debating the new farm bill — some say it should be called the food bill — are listening.
Click here to listen to first half of the audio version of this story, which was originally presented as a two-part series on KCBS radio. Click here to listen to the second part of the audio version of this story.
At the farmer's market, I ask customers: Are you familiar with the farm bill? Do you think it supports the produce you just bought here? I get these different responses.
"Are you kidding me? No. I would like to have much more support for the farms that are really serving to nurture the environment."
"I must confess I’m not familiar with it. But my expectation is that it would."
"I think the farm bill supports the ADMs [Archer Daniels Midland] of the world and big corporations.”
Every five years, a $90 billion per year tax bill for food, feed, fiber, fuel, and conservation is debated in Congress. The Farm Bill determines what crops will be subsidized, what foods will be plentiful and cheap and whether the meat we eat comes from mega-farms or family farms.
John Fawcett-Long with the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group says the bill needs to come out of the closet. “We need to bring it into the common conversation and realize that people can make change and need to demand change. That this is more like a food system we want.” Fawcett-Long points to the bustling farmer’s market. “As opposed to putting hundreds of billions of dollars into an agriculture that’s dominated by monoculture, heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides which affects our groundwater, which affects our rivers.”
Written during the Great Depression in 1933 to provide farmers financial support and deal with the soil erosion crisis, the Farm Bill, says Fawcett-Long has morphed into a commodity subsidy program. Corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans and rice receive 84 percent of all subsidies. “And guess who benefits from that. Just a few mega agri-business corporations — Sara Lee, Con Agra, Archer Daniels Midland.”
Jim Kleinschmidt, with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, says farmers who grow fruit and vegetables receive some support, but it pales compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars commodity crops receive whether they thrive or fail. What concerns him about the Farm Bill under debate is the lack of attention to what farmers could be doing to mitigate climate change. ‘”And right now it’s forefront in my mind with the great drought that’s spreading across the country,” Kleinschmidt says. Ninety percent of the food, water, energy, fiber and minerals the country relies on are rural lands.
“Those are the areas that are going to be biggest victim of climate change yet we know that farming done right can be one of the parts of the solution by taking the problem, that carbon dioxide that’s in the atmosphere, and putting it back into the soil.” It’s a simple and elegant solution, says Kleinschmidt. “Small farmers have always done this, this is what crop rotations have been about. It’s about building the soil, building organic matter, building the nutrient base there, not through fossil fuel based fertilizers but through natural systems and natural crop rotations.” Farmers experimenting with deep rooted crops and switch grasses have shown they fare well during low and high water times.
Instead the new Farm Bill is doubling down on crop insurance and risk mitigation for failed commodity crops, which may cost taxpayers up to $40 billion a year. “If we’re going to provide financial risk mitigation to farmers wouldn’t it seem appropriate to ask them to do what they can to actually reduce the risk of a failed crop for all of us?" Kleinschmidt asks. "We think that’s not a big ask for farmers for what they get in return.”
A version of the farm bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee last month cuts more than $6 billion from environmental programs, offers no support for farmers to grow crops that can withstand climate change, and strips the EPA’s ability to regulate pesticides. John Fawcett-Long with the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group says it’s critical that people contact their representatives. “We have to fight this battle, keep the pressure on," Fawcett-Long says. "With this Farm Bill we just need to keep growing the movement to get people introduced, take it out of the closet and say this affects you and the food you eat.” The 2012Farm Bill is expected to be taken up by the full House and Senate after the August recess. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, agribusiness spent an estimated $120 million in lobbying this year, with American Crystal Sugar, the biggest contributor.
Crops struggling to survive in the nations worst drought in half a century are the subject of hot debate this summer But little attention has been given to the practice of monoculture farming or growing a handful of crops year after year in the same fields and how the practice is reinforced by federal policy under the Farm Bill.
Push a cart down the aisle of a grocery store and see if you can find one of the most prominent foods in the Farm Bill under debate in Congress. In its basic form, you’ll find it among the fruits and vegetables, a sure sign summer has arrived. But in its industrial and processed forms, it’s harder to identify. Farmers decry the plague of this crop, the falling prices, the droughts, the floods. But agribusiness hails its power; it’s ability to fatten cattle in feedlots for the country’s meat consumption and use as a sweetener in cereal, fruit juices, salad dressing, yogurt, chicken nuggets. Guess what it is? Sweet corn — at times called king corn but also “the welfare queen.”
Iowa corn farmer George Naylor has been growing corn for 35 years. He’s been fighting for a farm policy that favors small farms and diversified agriculture for most of his farming life. But he recognizes the power of corn. “You could pick any other plant on the planet and there’s no way it would come close to producing protein, carbohydrates and oil like corn does. It’s basically animal feed but there’s no other plant that can produce that kind of animal feed.”
It was 97 degrees in Iowa when we spoke on the phone, down five degrees from the previous day. Corn stalks were burning up on some farms, Naylor said: “My soil is very heavy and deep and so the corn it’s just barely hanging on but its losing its yield potential every day.” Crop insurance will cover his losses, and more significantly the losses of the food giants who buy cheap corn, but there’s no doubt, farm policy is flawed, he says.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Aug 2, 8:31 a.m. Inappropriate
"On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012, 64-35, with the support of 46 Democrats and 16 Republicans. The measure will fund agriculture, farm, and nutrition programs for the next five years at a projected cost of $969 billion over the next 10 years.
The biggest item in the bill is a projected $768 billion over the next 10 years for the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” also known as food stamps."
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/11820-senate-passes-agriculture-reform-food-and-jobs-act-of-2012
Posted Thu, Aug 2, 4:49 p.m. Inappropriate
"I think the farm bill supports the ADMs [Archer Daniels Midland] of the world and big corporations.”
Did Martha tell him 80% of the money is going to Food Stamps? Not CORPORATE welfare, just plain old, garden variety WELFARE? I assume not, since she didn't tell the rest of her audience.
Is he better off ignorant with his dogma or misinformed with his journalism?
Are Crosscut readers better off ignorant or misinformed?
Posted Thu, Aug 2, 7:13 p.m. Inappropriate
This story is an insult. It offers no specifics at all. It makes me wonder what Martha Baskin's actual agenda is. After having seen Seattle's phony "progressives" trot out benign-sounding buzz words and then deliver corruption and dishonesty in the details, I'm not signing onto anything until Baskin says what she's actually talking about, chapter and verse.
Posted Fri, Aug 3, 7:56 a.m. Inappropriate
BlueLight, guess whose products are bought with the majority of Food Stamps?
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-20/news/ct-nw-food-stamp-spending-20120620_1_food-stamp-junk-food-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program
Ever seen anyone use food stamps at a farmer's market?
Posted Fri, Aug 3, 9:18 a.m. Inappropriate
Ever seen anything at a farmer's market that wasn't double the price of the same item in a supermarket? I go to farmer's markets, but I can afford it. If I were on food stamps, no way.
Posted Sat, Aug 4, 10:20 a.m. Inappropriate
This series, originally written for radio and broadcast July 19 and 26th was about the foods and crops the Farm Bill, i.e. government policy favors, and the environmental consequences.
Of the $112 bill taxpayers spent on commodity subsidies between 1995 and 2004 (see Dan Imhoff's Food Fight), more than 80% went to the production of just five crops: corn, cotton, wheat,rice and soybeans. At the same time, very little of all the subsidized output is edible, at least by humans. Out of the hundreds and even thousands of plants and animal species cultivated for human use the Farm Bill favors just four primary groups: food grains, feed grains, oil seeds and upland cotton.
This system is what our industrial food system favors -- at the grocery store, for nutrition programs, school lunches. Farmer's markets with their grass fed beef and chemical free produce grown by small family farmers receive very little support in comparison -- hence the high cost to consumers.
According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, nutrition programs make up 68% of the Farm Bill; commodity support, 12%, crop insurance 10% and conservation, 9%.
My piece wasn't about "nutrition" programs or the growing health crisis in this country -- that's another story.
As for my agenda -- see the groups I relied on for information. My agenda is sharing their perspective.
Posted Sat, Aug 4, 9:53 p.m. Inappropriate
You need to ask yourself a basic question: Do you want to preach to your choir, or do you want to provide credible information to a wider audience?
If it's the former, then your collection of buzzwords is probably fine. But if it's the latter, you failed miserably. There is no real organization to what you've written, nor is there enough specific information to even begin to get a sense of what you're after.
A couple of examples: Grass fed beef isn't expensive because of any lack of support from the feds. It's expensive because the basic means of producing it are more expensive, and get passed through to the consumer. Farmer's markets are expensive for two basic reasons: One being that most of the food is produced by high-cost means, and the other being that the distribution is incredibly inefficient, not to mention far more energy intensive than "industrial" agriculture.
Or did you actually think that having each little farmer stick some fruit and/or veggies in the back of a car or truck and drive it from Yakima to Seattle is energy-competitive with having food picked up at a distribution point and loaded onto semitrucks?
Let's face it, like so many other fake-o "environmental" and other initiatives coming from Seattle's "progressives," what you appear to be pushing is boutique sentiment with little real content. You want people to buy what you're selling? Try harder. A whole lot harder.
Posted Sun, Aug 5, 2:34 p.m. Inappropriate
Part of the reason for the Farm Bill's have been to have inexpensive food for the United States citizen. The food industry has betrayed this. We are constantly told that the huge agribusinesses are beneficial, because they farm more efficiently. Yet, the price of food has skyrocketed at a rate many times inflation. The United States citizen is subsidizing agribusiness, and then being gouged by agribusiness, the commodity markets, the food distribution networks, and the grocery corporations. United States food policy needs to be studied, and food policy, and agriculture policy, need to be directed to be in the interest of the United States citizen, not multi-national agribusiness.
Another reason prices are so high at the farmers markets is that the farmers at the farmers markets are gouging the customers. An interesting thing about the farmers markets in Seattle is that they keep out any competition. Say I grow a big carrot patch in my backyard, and have a couple hundred pounds of carrots; I am not allowed by the farmers markets to sell my carrots at the farmers market. I can not pay for a booth, it is not allowed; you have to pay for the whole season if you can even get a spot. I tried last year, I grew a huge garden, and had fennel bulbs, carrots, peas, and many other vegetables in my backyard in Seattle. My plan was to sell produce at the farmers markets. I found out that I couldn't. These are not farmers markets, they are monopolized markets. Thus the high prices.
Posted Sun, Aug 5, 4:08 p.m. Inappropriate
We are constantly told that the huge agribusinesses are beneficial, because they farm more efficiently. Yet, the price of food has skyrocketed at a rate many times inflation.
That's simply not true. Of all the economic data the government collects, food price data is the most accurate. This is because the government has been collecting that information for about 100 years, and has gained deep experience in doing it.
The numbers contradict your assertion. Just because the price of (fill in your favorite food) has gone up does not mean food price inflation is rampant. Look across the whole market basket, and food inflation has not "skyrocketed" as you claim.
Another reason prices are so high at the farmers markets is that the farmers at the farmers markets are gouging the customers. An interesting thing about the farmers markets in Seattle is that they keep out any competition. Say I grow a big carrot patch in my backyard, and have a couple hundred pounds of carrots; I am not allowed by the farmers markets to sell my carrots at the farmers market. I can not pay for a booth, it is not allowed.
This is very interesting! Maybe we need "neighborhood food markets," where people with gardens sell their home-grown produce. I think the farmer's market prices are as high as they are because it's a horrendously inefficient way to distribute anything, but I'm sure the "aspirational" nature of the channel has something to do with it.
Thorstein Veblen ("Theory of the Leisure Class") would have a field day with farmer's markets and organic food, not to mention gourmet coffee chains.
Posted Mon, Aug 6, 12:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Thanks for the book tip.
Posted Thu, Aug 9, 10:43 a.m. Inappropriate
See also Chapter 4 (Blowout, The Commodities Bubble) of Matt Taibbi's Griftopia. Off topic, but equally eye-opening are the new chapters in the back of the paperback edition.
Posted Sun, Aug 5, 10:44 p.m. Inappropriate
If farmers need the government to prop them up, they are in the wrong business.
Posted Mon, Aug 6, 8:05 p.m. Inappropriate
Are Crosscut readers better off ignorant or misinformed? Little blulite, we are both if we take your comments seriously. The gods are still rolling in the aisles.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 12:33 p.m. Inappropriate
swiftylazar, I'm afraid it's YOU who is "misinformed" about the farm bill.
http://www.snaptohealth.org/farm-bill-usda/u-s-farm-bill-faq/
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 2:03 p.m. Inappropriate
Yo NotFan: I wasn't talking about the fram bill, so relax.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 2:04 p.m. Inappropriate
Nor about the FARM bill, so you can still relax.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 5:25 p.m. Inappropriate
The commenter you attacked discussed nothing other than the farm bill here.
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