NY Times Op-Ed Response to Amber Fields of Bland

As a few on this list have expressed what a great op-ed Dan wrote, I would like to take this opportunity to share a major gap in Dan’s points. First off, sincere gratitude to Dan for bringing in the chef’s perspective and realizing the vital role his occupation plays in our gastronomy and food culture. Also, he hit the nail on the head with “We need a farm bill that makes corporations internalize the costs they impose on society in the same way that they internalize their profits.”

What the op-ed incorrectly surmises:
Dan is absolutely right that cheap grain is a subsidy for industrialized livestock production, but the only way to internalize the cost of grain production is with price supports (not subsidies), making agribusiness pay for the true cost of producing the grains so it is not so profitable for them to fill our foodstuffs with high fructose corn syrup. This can only happen if we reject the globalization of food and labor markets and deny the weakening of food safety and quality standards to facilitate free trade. Mainly, the direct sourcing solution, which is great, cannot be the sole alternative to the current system without replacing the industrial model, which will take new policies in the 2007 Farm Bill but not through subsidies to vegetable and fruit growers.

The last thing farmers around the globe and taxpayers want is to increase subsidies such as to fruits and vegetables and never offer a real price for farmers’ products. Why create complicated formulas of rewarding farmers for nitrogen levels? Farming used to be a life of dignity and honor, not a life dependent on receiving government checks. My father, a dairy farmer for over 40 years, recently stated that if the only way he can make a living is through the government’s subsidies, then he will quit farming tomorrow. We don’t want or need more subsidies for food and fiber. That is not the solution.

The solution is a fair price for farmers. What does that mean? It is like a minimum wage for farmers delivered through the market with commodity price floors established by the government and food security reserves. It means your well-earned dollar will go to the farmer instead of to the middleman. Right now on average, farmers receive less than twenty cents to the American food dollar. Where does it all go? Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson’s, etc. you get the picture. We fight for a livable minimum wage for everyone else yet it is ok that our hardworking farmers cannot cover the cost of production and are forced to rely on government subsidies to pay the heating bills. It doesn’t have to be this way. And guess what, it won’t last much longer this way as farmers lose their land and dignity, food reserves are non existent and our nation faces a health crises created by the cheap corn complex.

ELECTED OFFICIALS CAN HELP
Public policy must be fashioned to protect and strengthen the future of our food supply, environment, public health, and rural communities. A new U.S. farm bill and international trade agreements must reverse the current policy that uses taxpayer dollars as a substitute for income not provided to farmers through the low prices paid by multinational corporations. Family farms must help prevent global climate change and be an essential source of renewable energy with respect for local control. Low commodity prices and high taxpayer expenses combine to exacerbate the nation’s budget and trade deficit, create cheap feed that encourages destructive industrial production of livestock, and spread the curses of unhealthy diet and low farm income abroad while destroying economic opportunity on family farms and in rural communities here at home.

Our nation’s food security and food sovereignty require in the new farm bill:

* Establishment of food security reserves, commodity price floors, fair wages and working conditions for all workers in the food system.
* Support for new generations of diversified, sustainable family farmers.
* Encouragement of fair and open competition and enforcement of existing rules pertaining to competition and anti-trust to address the rampant concentration in the food industry.
* All farm and food policies to fully serve the diversity of our nation’s family farmers through accessible USDA programs.
* Stewardship of land and water through improved conservation programs.
* Encouraged economic development through new markets for healthy, sustainably produced food.
* A democratic policy making process that protects the future of our environment and encourages healthy rural communities.

Understanding key points of the next farm bill is essential to the future of our food supply. If you would like to know more about the National Family Farm Coalition’s position statement above, please contact me at deschmeyer@nffc.net or visit www.nffc.net.

As Daryll E. Ray, Director of the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, so accurately summed up on January 12, 2007: “As we watch the parade of proposals to replace the current commodity programs, it appears to us that many of these proposals are variations on a theme. The theme begins by ignoring the inherently variable nature of crop production with the low price responsiveness on the part of both food consumers and farmers. Having ignored the original rationale for farm programs, they then offer a clever money delivery system that will placate farmers, will be more appealing to non-farm interest groups, but will create a huge hole in agriculture’s safety net.”

We need to mend the hole in the safety net with sound public policy that creates a future in farming.

Thank you for reading,
Deb Eschmeyer
Project Director, National Family Farm Coalition

In acknowledgement for the op-ed’s great points:

* We are losing family farmers at a perilous rate.
* Monocropping, single species planting does create bland food choices.
* The farm bill truly is a food bill that affects everyone that eats, including chickens, pigs, and cows as they are on the front lines of the industrialized runaway food system government policy supports.
* Increase local procurement policies and establish better means of supplying local food to institutions
* Dan was right on target with COOL and we need to continue pushing actual enforcement of labeling our food products as we have the right to know what we are feeding our families.
* Correctly understands the danger of CAFOs and does tie in cheap grain to agribusiness profits.
* Legislation to approve state-inspected meats is sorely needed as well as SARE funds and environmental programs like CSP.
* THANK YOU for pointing out that Agribusiness is being subsidized, not larger farmers. “I’m talking about the big boys — the Smithfields, the Tysons and the Archer Daniels Midlands of the world — which the farm bill subsidizes in the form of direct payments for grain (their feed is then artificially cheap).” AND “We need a farm bill that makes corporations internalize the costs they impose on society in the same way that they internalize their profits.” Beautifully said.