As a child of the Midwest, I’ve been surrounded by farms and farmers my whole life. Most of my immigrant forebears were farmers, and there’s a good chance that yours were, too. Although I’ve chosen a city lot instead of my grandfather’s alfalfa fields (at least for now), I’m quite interested in what will happen in the 2012 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill affects not just farmers, but everyone who eats -- and that’s all of us. The bill, with its grand scope and billions of dollars, will help define what we eat (and, thus, who we are) in thousands of subtle ways.
So what exactly is the Farm Bill? I won’t ask you to read the whole 700-plus-page thing, but I’m hopeful that you’ll join us in this blog space (and on Facebook), and together we’ll figure out what the Farm Bill is all about and how it can better serve us as lovers of all things simple, good, and tasty.
Every five-or-so years, Congress reconsiders the Farm Bill. Since the last Farm Bill was passed in 2008, plans are underway to introduce new legislation in 2012. The Farm Bill does two things: it enacts mandatory programs, which are definitely funded -- even if they go over budget, and authorizes discretionary programs, which later require money to be appropriated for them by Congress.
The very first Farm Bill, enacted under FDR in 1933, was designed to aid struggling farmers during the Great Depression. It established price support for six basic commodity crops by paying farmers not to produce them, limiting supply and thus driving up prices . Since then, the Farm Bill has grown to encompass not only areas often associated with agriculture, such as the commodity programs, conservation programs, and trade, but also topics like nutrition, rural development, and the forest service.
The mandatory spending laid out in the 2008 Farm Bill was projected to be $284 billion, an unfathomably large sum that’s actually less than one percent of the federal budget. Four areas, nutrition, commodity support, conservation, and crop insurance, make up the bulk of the Farm Bill’s total spending. In fact, nutrition programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps), make up 67% of Farm Bill spending, while commodities account for 15%.
So who’s in charge of writing this behemoth (and where can we direct our suggestions)? The House and Senate agriculture committees each write their own versions of the bill, and then hash out the differences. Therefore, the makeup of each committee is critical to how the Farm Bill looks. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is the chair of the Senate committee, while Collin Peterson (D-MN) heads up the House committee. The committee members are largely from Midwestern and Southern agricultural states, though other states are represented.
Because it’s an omnibus (that’s Congress-speak for “broad”) bill, the Farm Bill can sometimes facilitate the alliance of seemingly conflicting interests. However, it can also inspire fervent competition for limited funds (how do you choose between soil conservation and child nutrition?). For example, the connection between nutrition programs and agricultural policy represents a built-in compromise between legislators from more urban and more rural states. In the ultimate paradox, the USDA recommends that we all eat more fruits and vegetables, while the Farm Bill promotes the production of more grain.
Fortunately, the choice doesn't have to be “nutrition vs. agriculture.” Over the next few months, we’ll explore ways that rethinking Farm Bill could help solve these problems. Meetings about the 2012 Farm Bill are already underway in Congress, so the time to advocate a fair Farm Bill for producers and consumers is now!
Resources used in the creation of this post include:
- A Fair Farm Bill for America, edited by Ben Lilliston for IATP in 2007
- Farm Bills and Farmers, by Edward Lotterman for Banking and Policy Issues Magazine, December 1996
- What is the “Farm Bill”?, written by Renée Johnson for the Congressional Research Service in 2010.
- Farm Bill and USDA lecture by Tim Griffin at Tufts University, October 7, 2010.
Finally, if you haven't yet "Liked" our Facebook page, Understanding the Farm Bill: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Food System (jointly created with folks from IATP), please visit us there, let us know what you think, "Like" us, and tell your friends.
Ann Butkowski is happy to be back in her native Minnesota after spending the last two years in Boston. She’s learning to bike the streets of Minneapolis and grow tomatoes in her backyard. Ann has a master’s degree in nutrition science, but doesn’t let that stop her from eating ice cream right out of the carton.
Comments
Thank you for taking on this giant issue, and breaking it down into pieces that we can all understand.
I was so happy to find this blog, the Facebook page and Civil Eats this week while I, myself, was trying to figure out the whole Farm Bill 2012 behemoth. Thank you for being our translators for such an important issue. I am trying to do my part in spreading the word with my own blog as well, hoping that all people get a sense of how important it is for us to be heard at such a pivotal moment before this legislation gets passed.
Foodie Primers for the 2008 farm bill often confused commodity issues, and that's true for 2012 as well. IATP's fair farm bill series, including Lilliston, above, is an exception. The farm bill was never written primarily to aid poor farmers with targeted income help. In fact program crops lack price responsiveness, they don't self correct economically, on both supply and demand sides. Individuals can't reduce supply, eaters don't double intake when corn is cheap. That was never a short term need. (See my blog "The Myth of the Temporary Farm Bill."
The core of the farm bill, therefore, was openly meant to be price floors and supply reduction (bottom side) and price ceilings and reserve supplies (top). Sadly, the food movement doesn't know about this. No commodity subsidies ever are generally needed or helpful under these correctly implemented programs, they've always been ways to destroy the program. They're needed to compensate farmers for government's foolish choice to lose money on exports for decades (ie. by ideologically pretending price responsiveness).
The Lotterman piece is a convoluted mess, combining accurate info with corporate spin (as we also find in Pollan's writting and films like King Corn).
If this isn't clear, see my Farm Bill Primer (click my name for links to IATP, APAC, NFFC, etc.) and my YouTube videos.
The food movement, confusing these issues, still supports a corporate agbiz Commodity Title (ie. zero price floors & ceilings, zero supply management & reserves).
I can't find a link to Tim Griffin's lecture on the Farm Bill and USDA.
The CRS piece, "What is the Farm Bill?" by Renée Johnson gives a short overview, but isn't very helpful to food justice, as it doesn't clarify the main issue related to cheap corn and soybean transfats. Price floors and ceilings and supply reduction and reserves were reduced in the farm bill from 1953 to 1995, then ended (for corn, wheat, cotton, rice, and soybeans is a special case, but there are none there also). Most government documents, therefore make little reference to the policies needed for justice. They weren't in the 2008 farm bill, so they won't be mentioned much in prep for 2012. They weren't in 2002, so they weren't much mentioned for 2008. They weren't in the 1996 bill, so they weren't much mentioned for 2002. Only justice advocates clarify these issues, and in this case this is usually only NFFC, IATP, APAC, and a few others.
In this, there is a radical difference between "income supports" and "price supports." Usually income support involved massive expenditures to compensate farmers, but only partially, for the enormous failures of free markets and free trade. They're used to hide massive below cost gains for fructose, transfat, and ethanol processors. Also exporters and CAFOs. All bad. Adequate price floors & supply management eliminate all price floors and stop multibillion dollar CAFO and processor gains, so grassfed, fruits and vegetables, etc. can compete with fairly priced corn, etc. It supports diverse resource conserving crop rotations, and spreads out the value added of livestock, bringing it back to family farms.
The CRS piece misses all of this, as do most food movement primers, unfortunately. Click my name for the main online sources of info. to correct this.
Correction:
"Adequate price floors & supply management eliminate all [COMMODITY SUBSIDIES] and stop multibillion dollar CAFO and processor gains...." etc,
The notion that fruits and vegetables vs grain is nutrition vs agriculture only exists because we no longer grow high nutrition staple foods widely and the subsidy program that Earl Butts launched to grow more food to make it cheaper than food anywhere else has created an incentive for higher yields at the expense of nutrition and proper care for the soil. The result is a lot of cheap food not worth eating that is at the center of our health epidemic. Think about it. Staple foods make up 70% of a healthy human diet. We have a health epidemic in the US not just because we don't eat enough fruits and veggies, but because the staple crops we grow and the way we process them makes our blood sugar rise and our weight increase.
The farm bill should recognize the need to grow high nutrition grain (not gmo corn but heirloom high nutrition corn), and beans (not just soy beans, but black turtle, pinto, adzuki--those three, by the way are given the name "vegetable" by county farm agency offices to which farmers report their commodity crops).
Let's get rid of the subsidies. They favor low nutrition crops, dump cheap commodities at home and abroad, and make growing good staple crops on family farms the stuff of boutique markets for high income locavores in the US and other wealth dominant countries. In the two thirds world farmers cannot compete with our subsidiaed crops.
I don't understand the farm bill. I am glad to find a place that attempts to break it down for me.
Please, let's work to make this farm bill support the development of regional scale staple food systems-- farms, processing facilities, school meals, and grocery shelves--that offer the highest nutrition staple grains and beans and oil seed and nuts that can be grown in each region. to that end, we started the Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative in 2008 to bring together stakeholders across our region (and later across the country) to figure out getting to scale region by region.
our email address is goodfooddirect@gmail.com. Google us to find out more.
Thanks for the farm-bill primer. Unlike Brad Wilson, I think your post gives a lot of the context, raises important problems, and shows a nice variety of the issues that make-up this legislation. Your perspective as a 'foodie' is welcomed by me.
Brad is right, though, it's important that we understand the impacts of how we support or condemn the different parts of the farm bill. Most people will agree that we can help lower-income families by offering food assistance, but how does that play in to the 'commodity' issues mentioned above? What is our standard of 'nutrition' in public schools, and how do commodity crop-producing agri-businesses stand to benefit from a minimum standard established by the USDA? At the same time, ending subsidies might have unexamined effects on those very safety-net programs.
I still think we need to rethink the commodity crop subsidy programs enacted by the Farm Bill. But it will take some creative, activist, forward thinking members of the Congress and the public to make it happen in a productive way. I hope Brad Wilson, with all of his enlightened economic know-how, will help create that change.
Also, I'm from Minneapolis, living away for now. How is it? How's your tomato crop coming along :)
We're thrilled to have each of you - whether you agree with us or not - weigh in on the farm bill. Thanks for your lively comments and for holding us accountable to what we set out to do.
We don't claim to be experts in any particular aspect of the bill, but our goal is to get people thinking about how this legislation impacts us. We'll continue to publish the best, most accessible information on the bill that we can.
No tomatoes yet, Maxwell, it's still snowing in MN!
You?
I'm wondering, if you remove all the farm subsidies from the farm bill do you still call it a farm bill ? Subsidies total 15 % of the total farm bill. While food stamps receive 67%. I have been involved in farming and ranching for 57 years and I have yet to raise any food stamps. I'm concerned about the current economic problems that our great country is experiencing. I say cut the farm bill in half. Farmers get 7.5% and 33.3% for food stamps. Better yet have separate a farm bill, a food stamp bill, a forest service bill and everything else that has been added to the so called Farm Bill.
For Maxwell: One point on low income food assistance vs commodity issues is the safeguard of having price ceilings and reserve supplies in the commodity title, as we had in the farm bill for decades. Unfortunately toward the end, (approaching their elimination in 1996,) they were set too low, helping keep prices low for agribusiness buyers of the input complex and CAFO complex. Price ceilings are usually not supported in the food movement, apparently because those writing the books and blogs and making the videos and films don't know enough about them. The model today is the Food from Family Farms Act of NFFC.
Other related matters are 1. since commodity subsidies were never needed except with low/no price floors and supply reduction (balanced supply management) programs, we simply need to bring back those programs to eliminate most of those costs on a long term basis. By the way supply management never needs to cost money. You don't need to pay for it. Supply management was made voluntary and for pay as a way of weakening it, to cause the programs to fail, to help get rid of them. 2. Fair trade, living wage prices make CAFOs pay well above costs for grain for livestock, making grass/forage and hay fed livestock more competitive, bringing livestock back to diversified farms. Diversified farms also create much more wealth and jobs, which also helps the poor. When the US still had a lot of farmers, price floors were lowered under pressure from corporations to run farmers off the land, (as in the CED report of 1962,) to then drive them to he cities to compete with labor there, and drive down wages.
For Jim: As I've said, the farm bill originally had no commodity subsidies (ie. until 1961 corn-wheat-feedgrains; 1964 cotton; 1977 rice, 1998 soybeans). Originally, the main trunk of the farm bill tree was market management (price floors & ceilings, supply management including reserve supplies).
I am trying to put together an Event (one or 2-hr lecture/presentation/discussion on a weekday in late February) at my local Community College to get students--and faculty and staff--active in influencing the outcome of this year's (2012) Farm Bill.
I want something that will incite and direct energy toward specific actions.
Converging issues would be:
Environment (primarily water, soil)
Humane treatment of animals
Public health
The small- and mid-size farmer
Any suggestions re speakers or how to organize this event and especially what actions attendees could be moved to take to directly influence the outcome would be most gratefully received! Also, a brief summary/intro re the Farm Bill & how it works & why it's important is essential...
thank you
My simplifying summary of the farm bill is that there are 2 parts to it.
The first part is the market management part, to try to get fair trade price levels (neither too high for consumers or too low for farmers). The big way this is done (ie 1942-1952, but then lower and lower 1953-1995, then zero 1996-) is as in my other comments (price floors & supply reductions (reductions when needed to balance supply and demand) for farm price justice, and on the top side, for food price justice, price ceilings with reserve supplies (to be put on the market when prices fall too low.
I have historic videos at YouTube that you could download and use (click my name, and look for links). I also have links to 1 page fact sheets and summaries of the "Reason why we have farm bills", etc. (Click my name and look at APAC or IATP links.) They're important because we don't have any of the main market management parts of the farm bill today, so things go bad. At my YouTube channel under "Farm Bill & Food Bill" choose from several series: "NFFC Farm Bill" "Farm Bill" "Farm and Food Policy" plus the glimpse at "Food Movement 1985". It's good to have some historical perspective.
Then another market management aspect is the Livestock title and GIPSA, (Grain Inspectors Packers and Stockyards Act) which makes for fair market conditions in the US, or not. Then there are subsidies, which pay farmers to partly compensate them for farm bills with bad or zero market management.
Ok, then there are other titles to fix things that market management can't fix. They involve writing checks for projects, for cost share, etc., for conservation, or food stamp coupons, etc.or making loans.
On all of this there are good and bad ways, and most of what Congress (Presidents sign) has done lately is not very good.
I have a list of "planks" for political parties for the market management part and how it connects with other concerns of the farm bill (click my name).
One important new proposal I'll blog about and post links to soon is a new study of Reserve supplies by APAC. It shows how we could have done it much better than the subsidy programs.
Where will it be? Will you be in California at CFSC? I started a University farm bill group some years ago, and put on a program. We also joined with others in "Students Empowered for Rural Action". I'm planning to post a blog about "SERA" soon, maybe at La Vida Locavore or zspace.
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