ARLIN WASSERMAN - Changing Tastes; Robin Hood Center
When the Farm Bill Comes Around, Less Policy is Better Policy

Our nation’s farm policy rightly ought to be considered the most important and powerful legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president. The food grown on farms across the country drives the business activity that employs nearly one in four working Americans while using more land, water and energy than most other commercial activities. Also, everyone eats.

The challenges in developing public policy that has such far-reaching influence are as great as the opportunities to improve so many lives through well-crafted efforts. But the goals are simple: make sure everyone has enough food to eat, that the food is tasty and nourishing, protect the land and water resources necessary for producing food in coming years, and ensure that everyone involved in producing it earns a decent living.

For the hundreds of thousands of farmers throughout our country, it’s a straightforward task. These many skilled and hard-working people, each owning a small business, need to satisfy their customers’ needs for good food and charge a fair price. But this has gotten lost in a complex system of legislation, regulations and financial incentives often known as the Farm Bill.

The billions of dollars that the Farm Bill now pours into rural America– with a hefty slice ending up in corporate coffers– have hampered the ability of farmers to learn the intricacies of the market and instead demanded they spend time understanding how to apply for federal loans, grants and payments. What began in 1862 as a new federal initiative to share information about ways to improve agricultural practices was long ago hijacked in the 1930s. Politicians turned it into a mechanism for directing federal money to their rural districts for a host of purposes unrelated to ensuring everyone has a decent meal.

Decades of political wrangling have turned our nation’s farm policy into equal parts business give-away and legislative pork. Subsidies have promoted the growth of a narrow range of crops, largely supporting the industries that have grown up around corn, soybeans and the like. Meanwhile, the farm policy focus on rural development, has created a way for lawmakers from rural districts to funnel money to their communities, akin to the pork laden transportation bills that caused some Midwestern towns to try to return federal funding in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

We can expect a very different outcome from this next round of work to pass another Farm Bill. Decades of repeated Congressional action that substituted giveaways and subsidies for real policy have undermined our nation’s agricultural systems. As with any structure built on a crumbling foundation, very visible cracks are beginning to show.

This year, the United States will become an overall importer of food, receiving more food from abroad than we ship to other countries, after decades of being the world’s breadbasket. The change is anticipated to be permanent. At the same time, subsidy payments to farmers are projected to rise to a record level of $23 billion this year, a 61% jump from 2004, despite repeated assurances from Washington that they were on the decline. Safety and health concerns are emerging throughout our food system.

Lawmakers now must work under a new reality shaped by a mandate to cut spending coupled with a public will to improve productivity and food quality. The simplest solution is simply to have Washington focus on ensuring that everyone has a decent meal and let farmers meet the needs of their customers. If someone is smart enough to use only their hands, dirt and seeds to produce my dinner, they can figure out whatever else is needed. But Washington’s reach into farming has only grown and not decreased since 1862 and nothing is quite that simple in Washington and so a few words of guidance:

Ensure every one has enough to eat by continuing programs to provide food to everyone in need including expectant and new mothers and make sure programs are adequately funded and easy to access.
Ensure every child has enough to eat through school meal programs. Give schools the money they need to provide healthy meals and end a practice of giving them low-cost, low-nutrition leftovers from agricultural commodity programs.
Apply labor laws to agricultural and food production operations. Everyone who takes on the honorable professions of growing and preparing food should be treated as well as others.
Permanently end commodity payments and instead provide several years funding to farmers, cooperatives and trade associations to close the business skills gap created by decades of federal wrangling.
Support a host of policy changes to help farmers create real wealth in rural communities including programs to help save for retirement, tax breaks that treat the sale of working farms differently from other real estate transactions, and allow producers to promote their products as they see fit. Federal opposition to voluntary and extensive testing for "mad cow" disease or genetically modified ingredients should be dropped. Meanwhile new rules to help agricultural regions create their own wealth by promoting where food is grown should be quickly adopted.
Promote diversity by letting farmers meet the needs of their customers. Most people want a bountiful table filled with many foods. Growing just such a diversity of crops on every farm is the simplest formula for healthy soil and water.

And finally, eat well. If the food tastes good, chances are all that brought it to your table also is good.

Arlin Wasserman, MS MPH is founder and principle of Changing Tastes, and co-founder of the Robin Hood Center in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Email him at arlin@mac.com.


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This article was published in the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life©. No portion of this article may be reproduced without written permission from The National Catholic Rural Life Conference. To purchase the Winter 2005 issue of Catholic Rural Life, please contact The National Catholic Rural Life Conference office at 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50310-2199, call (515) 270-2634, or e-mail ncrlc@mchsi.com. The cost is $2.50 an issue plus postage and handling.