http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070827/nichols

Farm Bill Showdown

by JOHN NICHOLS

[from the August 27, 2007 issue]

The 2007 farm bill, as approved by the House on the
eve of the August recess, is as shambolic a piece of
legislation as will ever be OK’d by a chamber that
frequently endorses the incomprehensible and the
indefensible. But what is truly frustrating about the
House’s version of the five-year, $286 billion
blueprint for everything from agriculture and food
policy to trade and energy development is that this
complicated mess of a measure cannot be easily hailed
or condemned. On the plus side, it makes significant
new commitments to encourage sustainable farming
practices, fund the conversion to organic farming,
strengthen food-safety protections and expand
nutrition initiatives that are the essential
food-policy components of this omnibus legislation. On
the negative side, the House bill proposes to open
gaping loopholes that would allow environmentally
destructive factory farms to qualify for funding
intended to help family farmers conserve the land;
maintains corrupt practices that stifle competition in
the livestock industry; and fails to endorse basic
health-and-safety moves like banning the practice of
blasting spoiled beef with carbon monoxide to make it
appear wholesome.

Hovering above all the good bits and nasty pieces of
the measure is that it would do little to change our
corrupt system of paying subsidies to some of the
wealthiest nonfarmers in the world. Nor does the House
address the fact that the bulk of the money intended
to maintain diverse and competitive family farms would
go to a handful of Southern states that overproduce
crops like rice and cotton.

The best that can be hoped for now is intervention by
the Senate, where Agriculture Committee chair Tom
Harkin says, “We can’t afford to settle for an
extension of the status quo–not in terms of budget,
and not in terms of policy.” But for that to happen,
we need to broaden the public discussion at a time
when, as Representative Rosa DeLauro says, “too many
Americans know too little about the farm bill and its
impact on our lives.”

The fact that debate about farm and food policy plays
out on the margins of the national discourse, thanks
to media that treat rural America as a punch line,
makes it too easy for politicians and interest groups
to distort the discussion. For instance, House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi can get away with her absurd claim that
the House bill is “reform” that “takes America’s farm
policy in a new direction.” Not true. The Speaker
chose the status quo over innovative proposals by
author Michael Pollan, chef Alice Waters and savvy
policy groups like Food and Water Watch and the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy to stop
pouring federal dollars into the coffers of
agribusiness, establish a real safety net for working
farmers, protect the environment and encourage the
production of healthy foods. But just as Pelosi is
wrong to dub herself a reformer, so too are the
editorial writers and Washington think-tank gurus who
grumble about the rejection of their favored “reform.”
The plan so beloved by those so distant from rural
America–a scheme by Representatives Ron Kind and Jeff
Flake to establish the farming equivalent of the
“individual retirement accounts” promoted by those who
would destroy Social Security–failed because farm and
consumer groups saw through its false promise of
“market solutions.”

Rejecting real reform as well as false promises,
Pelosi backed a “Christmas tree” measure, which
offered something for everyone–from agribusiness to
Congressional Black Caucus members seeking
long-overdue justice for minority farmers to consumer
groups that want country-of-origin labeling on
meat–then played on the fears of urban House members
who know less about countercyclical payments than
about crop circles. To maintain their House majority,
Democrats voted for a bill Pelosi told them would
re-elect vulnerable farm-state Democrats–including
nine freshmen on the Ag Committee.

That may be shrewd politics. But it’s foolish policy.
So now it falls to Harkin to cobble together an
alternative measure that can pass the Senate, survive
a messy reconciliation of House and Senate plans and
then overcome a threatened presidential veto. That’s
probably too tall an order. But Harkin recognizes what
needs to be done. He’s a passionate supporter of
nutrition and conservation programs, he wants a tight
cap on federal payments so they don’t go to
millionaire “farmers” and he recognizes that the
United States should do away with direct subsidies
that fail most farmers, consumers and the environment.

As he shapes the Senate version of the farm bill,
Harkin should embrace the proposal of three dozen farm
and rural groups–led by the National Family Farm
Coalition and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy–and their labor, religious and environmental
allies. They want to replace subsidies with a
federally defined price floor that would in effect be
a minimum wage for farmers and to reinstate strategic
grain reserves to stabilize crop prices. Harkin should
listen to Iowa farmer George Naylor, who serves as
president of the farm coalition and who says it is
still possible–and politically smart–to forge a farm
and food bill that “will benefit family farmers by
giving them a fair price for what they produce instead
of continuing with ineffective subsidies that have
failed rural America.”