...we'd have better luck hooking teenagers on something that would prolong their lives instead of shortening them: more fruits and vegetables.

A University of Minnesota study shows teens eating fewer fruits and vegetables. (HT, The Packer's Tom Karst at Fresh Talk)

This study does indeed reinforce the case for farm bill proposals to increase fruit and vegetable offerings in the federal school lunch program, an idea Senate Ag Committee Chairman Tom Harkin has long championed.

"Loserville"?

We refer, of course, to California's Central Valley, home to perhaps the country's biggest concentration of farm bill losers: the fruit and vegetable growers who have been by-passed by farm bill investments for decades.

Maybe that's about to change.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns isn't heading all the way out to Modesto for an 8 a.m. meeting Wednesday so he can deliver disappointing news to the produce crowd about the farm bill proposal he will have announced here in Washington the day before.

We're betting that this, one of his first stops in farm country to explain the administration's farm bill ideas, is intended to be a pep rally aimed at the ag producers he must have on his side if his ideas for reforming subsidy programs are to make any political headway. And he'll need the Modesto-based House Ag Subcommittee Chairman on his side, too.

If we're right, his visit should give a big boost to the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance and the legislation they've put forward, the EAT Healthy America Act introduced last year.

We're pumped because that bill called for a dramatic, long overdue increase in funding for conservation programs for which all farmers can qualify, even if they don't grow the five favored commodity crops. Conservation investments are the best way to make the distribution of farm aid fairer, less costly, better for trade, and WTO compliant.

Here, hot off the Web, is reporter Mike Doyle's report from the Fresno Bee ("Ag Secretary holds farm-bill talk in Valley"):

WASHINGTON – The big farm bill debate kicks off in the San Joaquin Valley this week, with the local appearance of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

In a potentially telling choice, Johanns is bringing the Bush administration’s farm-bill campaign to the Stanislaus County Agriculture Center in Modesto.

We read the trip as an indication that Wednesday's announcement will be welcome news to the ranks of farm bill losers nationwide. Here's more from Doyle:

Already, Johanns has hinted that fruits and vegetables will be given more consideration than in years past.

“We heard a lot from the specialty crop area,” Johanns acknowledged last year. “They get basically nothing out of the farm bill. But the interesting thing is that in terms of value the specialty crops are of equivalent value to the program crops these days.”

In the first year (Nov. 2001 through Nov. 2002) the site generated about 100 million searches. We reset the counter on Nov. 29, 2004 (with the 2003 data update) and the FSD recorded about 69 million searches through the 2006 update (with calendar 2005 data), which went online Dec. 17.

Earlier today, some six weeks later, we broke 75 million searches--a rate of roughly 140,000 searches per day.

As Gordon Trowbridge reports in The Detroit News notes this morning, Michigan's important fruit and vegetable sector has heard the farm bill wake up call.

Food Fight: State vegetable, fruit growers want bigger piece of the pie, as the article is aptly titled, starts like this:

After decades of watching corn, wheat and soybean growers rake in big-money payments from the federal government, fruit and vegetable growers in Michigan and other states are hoping for a bigger slice of the multibillion-dollar farm bill Congress will take up this year.

The issue holds special importance for Michigan, which is unique among Midwestern states in its dependence on so-called "specialty crops" -- those other than commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans and rice. Michigan's $5 billion-a-year farm industry is at or near the top nationally for crops such as cherries, berries, edible beans and asparagus. But any changes threaten to roil decades of federal farm policy, which has focused almost exclusively on those big commodity crops.

It won't be easy. But Michigan's producers have a powerful ally as the 2007 farm bill debate gets underway: Debbie Stabenow, a resourceful, dogged politician who's taken up their cause. Trowbridge again:

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing., who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, says one of her top priorities this year is to add new specialty-crop provisions to the multiyear farm bill before Congress...

If Stanbenow has anything to do with it--and she will--Michigan's producers will come out of this round anything but a...

Or as we'd refer to it here at EWG, a farm bill loser.

Why? Because PA-17 ranks 108th nationwide for the market value of agricultural products sold (according to the 2002 Census of Agriculture). In farm subsidies, the district ranks a distant #164 for the period 1995-2005, with total payments just under $100 million.

Of course, for most of that period, the district's important dairy industry was supported by a subsidy structure that worked by propping up milk prices, artificially raising consumer prices, without significant direct payments from taxpayers.

The district is held by Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., the new vice chairman of the full committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research.

Here's PA-17 in the EWG Farm Subsidy Database.

And here's a look at the district via the 2002 Census of Agriculture. Note the importance of non-subsidized agriculture in Chairman Holden's district...seems like a good fit for conservation programs, marketing and research that would benefit producers even if they do grow the "wrong" things.

From The New York Times:

Bush Calls for Increase in Renewable Fuels

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 — President Bush, vowing to reduce the nation’s thirst for foreign oil, called tonight for a huge government-mandated increase in renewable fuels — mainly ethanol — and tougher mileage standards for cars and light trucks...

...Many supporters of ethanol and other renewable fuels praised Mr. Bush proposals. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that the alternative fuels plan could save 550,000 barrels of oil per day in 2017, while higher fuel efficiency standards could reduce emissions equivalent to “taking 14 million of today’s cars and trucks off the road.”

But many cautioned that the goals would be difficult to attain, might do little to reduce greenhouse gases and could lead to higher food prices as farmers cater to energy demand rather than food production.

Mr. Bush called for increasing the federal requirement for annual production of alternative fuels to 35 billion gallons a year. That would almost quintuple the current mandate of producing 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. Spurred by tax breaks and soaring oil prices, ethanol production has climbed rapidly and is expected to hit 6 billion gallons this year.

But energy analysts say that corn-based ethanol, which accounts for virtually all of today’s production, will not be able to produce more than about half as much alternative fuel as Mr. Bush envisions by 2017.

The most popular alternative to corn is “cellulosic ethanol,” produced from plants like switchgrass and even plant refuse. But cellulosic ethanol has yet to be produced in commercial quantities at anything approaching a competitive price.

“There is really no plan here except to take the ethanol industry through the roof,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, who has been a longtime supporter of alternative fuels but now worries about disruptions from huge increases in ethanol production.

“There is not much thought given to the impact it will have on land, wildlife, water pollution, the food supply, trade or anything else,” Mr. Cook said. “It’s unfortunate, because biofuels deserve better than that.”

But Mr. Bush also laced his proposals with numerous “safety valves” that could easily postpone the attainment of his goals.

EWG supports the development of the biofuels industry in the United States. But we do not support its expansion at all cost--to water pollution, wildlife, trade, food prices here and abroad--and with no thought given to these impacts, much less to mitigating them.

But why think when you can just...grow?

President Bush will propose in tonight's State of the Union message a federal mandate to add 35 billion gallons of alternative fuel per year to gasoline by 2017. The Corn Belt is already undergoing a wildcatting shift towards corn-based ethanol production as a result of the mandate in the 2005 energy bill that requires 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel per year by 2012. We may well see 30 percent of our corn used for ethanol this year already--the environmental implications of which are worrisome enough. But a near-fivefold increase? Those environmental impacts would be profound--especially since no one has charted a compelling, commercially feasible transition to more sustainable raw ingredients than corn, namely cellulosic sources like switchgrass or prairie grasses.

Several senators have proposed a 30 billion gallon goal for 2020. The president is simply outbidding them.

The steps the president is proposing to cut fuel consumption, on the other hand, by raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, are infinitely more timid. It amounts to a 5 percent increase in mpg.

We're seeing a lot of this these days in energy policy, on both sides of the aisle.

Unrestrained biofuels boosterism is easy. Taking on our gas guzzling car fleet is hard. Faced with that choice, what's a politician to do?

Surge.

Not if the chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees and America's pheasant hunters have anything to say about it.

As Jerry Perkins reported in the Des Moines Register from the "Pheasant Fest" meeting that Pheasants Forever put on this past weekend:

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., and U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., chairmen of the Senate and House agriculture committees, said critics who want to cut back the Conservation Reserve Program will have a fight on their hands.

Who knew pheasants were such tough customers? They sure seem to know their way around a farm bill fight...

Photo:USDA/NRCS

...and "Pheasant Fest" proved it. Perkins again:

Saturday's forum was the first joint appearance for Harkin and Peterson since Democrats won control of both houses of Congress and took over the chairmanships of congressional committees. They arguably will have the most to say about what goes into the 2007 farm bill, which will replace the law that expires in September.

It probably doesn't hurt that the (environmentalist/conservationist-invented) CRP is the third most important farm assistance program in Iowa, having pumped right near $2 billion into the state over the past 11 years. As for Chairman Peterson's district, the CRP has kicked in some $700 million over that period and is also the #3 source of farm bill funds.

Associated Press correspondent Nafeesa Syeed caught these observations:

Harkin said his idea is to give farmers money to convert land protected under the last farm bill’s Conservation Reserve Program to grow “energy crops that are by their very nature conserving crops.”

Tapping into that land must be approached with caution, said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota, who also spoke at the forum.

“What I’d like to do is add acres on top of the CRP to do some experimentation with switchgrass and mixes of switchgrass and other crops ... to see how they work,” Peterson said.

With a hat tip to Steven Colbert's superb reporting in his "Better Know a District" series, from time to time Mulch will profile congressional districts as we plunge into the 2007 farm bill debate.

We'll start with the districts of the newly named subcommittee chairmen of the House Agriculture Committee.

First up, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, California 18--the farmin' 18th!--who chairs a new subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture.

Cardoza is positioned to be one of the key players in the 2007 farm bill debate.

Here's the headline: CA-18 is a major farm bill loser. Why?

According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture, Congressman Cardoza's district ranks 18th in the nation for market value of agricultural production exceeding $2 billion in 2002. Yet CA-18 ranks a lowly 84 among congressional districts in the FSD for total subsidies paid (remember, half of all subsidies paid over the period went to just 22 districts).

Why the big mismatch? Because of the prevalance on non-subsidy crops in California 18, notably vegetables, melons, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and fruits, tree nuts and berries, and poultry. (Dairy is also big--but subsidized).

No wonder Mr. Cardoza was the lead Democrat on the "Eat Healthy America Act" legislation introduced last fall that is the legislative vehicle the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance developed to redress inequities in farm assistance--namely, specialty crops getting shafted. EWG supports the legislation because it emphasizes conservation programs.

So the 2007 farm bill is a test of whether CA-18 will continue to be a farm bill loser or not.

As the FSD profile for the district reveals, Chairman Cardoza's district has collected $405 million in subsidies paid to nearly 3,400 recipients between 1995-2005.

The top payment programs are as follows:

Commodity subsidies for cotton are the big ticket item in CA-18. At $233 million, cotton accounts for more than half the total subsidies paid.

Here are the top cotton subsidy recipients in CA-18.

Altogether, 79 recipients have collected at least $1 million total in farming subsidies over the past 11 years (1995-2005).

Check out John Phipp's blog, John's World, on Agweb.com. John, a 1,700-acre farmer from Illinois, is among a growing crop of farmers who are writing and speaking to more fully utilize their time and talents. He currently contributes to both Farm Journal and Top Producer magazines. Learn more about John at his personal website, or just check out the Washington Post farm subsidies piece (12/21/06) featuring John.

EWG has been on record supporting disaster aid for farmers hit hard by bad weather since 2005. As we put it last year:

EWG supports reasonable disaster aid for farmers and ranchers with proven, weather-related losses, unless provision of that assistance entails offsetting cuts to conservation, nutrition, rural development or other non-commodity program funds that have been slashed by Congress repeatedly for years.

The bad weather hits don't come much harder than the freeze that has decimated California's citrus growers, and producers of other crops. They, and the farm workers suddenly frozen out of work, deserve help, too.

As the Farm Subsidy Database makes clear, California farmers don't often collect disaster aid, because the weather tends to be good and the crops are irrigated. So California, the #1 agricultural state in the nation by far, ranks 8th in disaster aid between 1995-2005. Of course, the higher value crops grown there also usually mean higher disaster payments when they are made. That's a very different situation than we see with farmers and ranchers in the perennially dry Great Plains, some of whom receive disaster assistance every other year, if not more frequently. That pattern of aid over the past two decades looks like this:

(We did find 35 "chronic recipients" of farm disaster aid in California--recipients who collected disaster payments 11 years or more out of 21.)

EWG will issue a statement Monday encouraging an aggressive USDA response to the California disaster with resources already available to the department. And we'll make the case to Congress to consider aid to frost-bitten California growers as part of any disaster aid package this year.

We continue to oppose a "subsidy bonus" to compensate subsidy crop farmers, and no one else, for increased energy costs. And we continue to stress this point:

Agricultural disaster aid should be thought of as serving two distinct groups of farmers and ranchers. The vast majority rarely receives disaster checks from taxpayers, and the amount of assistance is modest. The second group, the primary source of the political pressure for disaster aid every year, is a small minority of its recipients, but they are chronically dependent on disaster aid and over two decades have collected it every other year.

As I noted in an earlier post, adding "permanent disaster aid" authority to the farm bill raises a whole other set of questions, principal among them cost. Philip Brasher made some of those same points in Sunday's Des Moines Register:

The views of Iowa's farmers will be important, because the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee is Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin. He hasn't taken a position on the issue yet, but he makes clear that he is concerned a new disaster program could take money from other priorities. Biofuels, conservation and nutrition programs are a few that he names.

Harkin is still stinging from a decision by Congress to slash a conservation program he authored to pay for disaster aid in 2004.

"We cannot again take funds out of other agriculture programs to pay for disaster assistance," he said.

The 2002 farm subsidy bill carried forward an invention of the 'freedom to farm' law of 1996: the provision of fixed, direct payments to subsidy crop farmers regardless of market prices.

Taxpayers spend about $5.2 billion per year on these fixed direct payment rates now. Here is the direct payment national summary information from the EWG Farm Subsidy Database.

Fixed payments are subsidies paid to recipients with qualifying land for no other reason than...the recipients have collected those subsidies in the past (payment formula explained in the jump). There is no requirement to actually farm, and the Washington Post's investigation found, in the first installment of the series, numerous examples of checks being sent to people who don't farm. Direct payments roll out of the treasury no matter what.

Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.

Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice.

An investigation by The Washington Post found that billions of dollars in crop payments were paid out over the past six years, with a good deal of the money going to people who don't farm.

Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

We think 2007 is the time to rethink this policy.

It was the doubling of "fixed" payments in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in the face of falling crop prices and protests from subsidy crop farmers, that constituted the abandonment of the 'freedom to farm' deal that had been struck with taxpayers to limit and phase down farm assistance. The resulting, dramatically increased funding level then became the 'baseline' in budget and political terms that the subsidy lobby insisted be enshrined in the 2002 bill--and it was when the White House acquiesced.

Some subsidy lobbyists, notably former Ag Committee Chair Larry Combest, are now bragging that taxpayer costs are 'lower' than the outrageously high levels set in the 2002 farm bill, but the reason is the surge in corn, soybean and wheat prices--not the wisdom or frugality of the subsidy lobby. Maybe that's one reason why Mr. Combest is afraid to accept my invitation to debate farm subsidy issues.

These fixed payments pose less of a challenge to WTO compliance than the price-triggered subsidies (countercyclical payments and various marketing loan payments). But it is hard to defend making payments to some farmers of a few favored crops every year no matter what the market prices might be. Why aren't cattlemen given a direct payment because they've raised cattle for a time? Why aren't peach growers or asparagus producers sent a few thousand dollars a year...simply because they've grown peaches or asparagus before?

It is especially hard to defend automatic payments when market prices are high and bringing subsidy crop farmers strong returns, as they are now for corn, soybeans and wheat.

I just came across a well-written background paper on farm subsidy policy by Troy Dumler, who is an extension economist with KSU.

"The Case For and Against Farm Programs" was published in August, 2006 but hasn't lost any relevance. You can access it here as a PDF file.

Here's Mr. Dumler's summary, and we heartily agree with his closing thought:

This paper discusses five of the most common economic justifications for farm subsidies. When analyzed in depth, those justifications are not always as valid as they may seem at first. Certainly, there are challenges facing U.S. farmers. Problems of variability of income are real to many farmers and rural communities. From the 1930s onward, the reaction of the U.S. government to these challenges has been to subsidize selected farm commodities. Those subsidies, however, often have unintended consequences that mitigate their intended purposes. Likewise, as time goes by, programs can become outdated and ineffective. So while the goal of farm subsidies may be noble, their actual effect may be limited. Therefore, the question rising out of this discussion may not be, Should we eliminate farm subsidies? Rather, the question may be, Are there farm policy options that would better serve U.S. agriculture, taxpayers, and consumers?

For the $125 billion spent on commodity and disaster subsidies between 1995 and 2004, taxpayers could have bought 25 percent or more of all the farms in 341 counties—land, barns, farmhouses and all.

Here's our story and we're sticking to it.

In the debate over the 1990 Farm Bill, EWG and numerous other conservation organizations sided with the House Agriculture Committee to defeat an amendment that would have reduced the amount of subsidy farmers could receive and required means testing for eligibility (EWG was then operating as the policy program of another group, the Center for Resource Economics, better known as Island Press). In return, the Agriculture Committee included an ambitious conservation title in the bill, which would have provided billions over the 1990s in incentives to farmers who voluntarily conserved soil, water, wildlife, wetlands and protected farmland and water quality.

Farmers and farm groups said then what they say now: they want to deal with these conservation challenges through voluntary, incentives-based programs administered by USDA, not with regulatory approaches. In the 1990 farm bill, major national conservation organizations agreed, and pushed for a massive conservation incentives package.

But when the time came to press appropriators to fund the conservation programs, they were not a priority for farm groups. Starting immediately after the 1990 farm bill and year after year thereafter, conservation programs (except CRP) had their budgets slashed, or went unfunded altogether. Appropriators diverted conservation funds to other purposes, and the farm subsidy lobby to did nothing to prevent it.

So we decided a bit of healthy competition might accomplish what cooperation clearly did not--and we decided to "follow the money" to make the case for conservation-minded subsidy reforms to the media, taxpayers and Congress.

It's a daily digest of stories assembled in the blog of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.

Terrific stuff--and it's free.

Email Al Cross, the Institute's director, and you'll get an email notice almost every day:

al.cross@uky.edu

An impressive coalition of "more than twenty wildlife, environmental, civic and landowner organizations along with several state agencies and private businesses Dec. 27, 2006, announced their formation of the 'Coalition for Conservation,' a cooperative organization to help educate the general public and policy makers on the benefits of farm bill conservation programs to landowners and the environment." (HT High Plains Journal)

They have long memories in Oklahoma of times when conservation and sound farming practices were neglected. This is the iconic Arthur Rothstein photo of farmer Arthur Coble and his sons caught in a Dust Bowl storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma in April, 1936.

(Here's a page of many of the more famous Dust Bowl photos, including some by Dorothea Lange.)

Conservation programs are not just good for Oklahoma. The FSD tallies just how good they've been to the state and its farmers and ranchers, too. A few facts:

Between 1995-2005, conservation programs pumped $468 million into Oklahoma. Only the wheat program and disaster payments provided more support.

The biggest contribution came from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), of course: $421 million paid to more than 15,000 recipients. Today the CRP protects over 1 million acres on about 6,500 farms in Oklahoma.

Let's not forget that when conservation and environmental groups invented, proposed, and lobbied for passage of the CRP back in 1985, farm groups were at first resistant, thinking it would take money away from commodity programs. Instead, it has become a bulwark of economic assistance and conservation throughout the Midwest, today protecting 33 million acres on 276,000 farms.

Ahh...that's better (USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service photo of CRP land).

It stands to reason that they will--strongly.

Many groups in the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership have a long history of farm bill advocacy for the simple reason that Conservation Reserve Program lands are prime hunting grounds throughout the Midwest and on the Great Plains. And the farm bill is a TRCP priority.

So in addition to fighting to protect public lands from being drilled and mined into oblivion, expect this new enterprise to play in the 2007 farm bill.

Blaine Hardin, reporting in today's Washington Post ("Conservation Group, Unions Joining Forces Saving Habitat, Ensuring Access Sought", Jan. 16, free subscription):

In a first-of-its-kind alliance that could fundamentally reshape the environmental movement, 20 labor unions with nearly 5 million members are joining forces with a Republican-leaning umbrella group of conservationists -- the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership -- to put pressure on Congress and the Bush administration...

..."We can make the union movement and environmentalism compatible and not antagonistic," said Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists. "As of late, an awareness has grown that our goals are the same. We want good air, clean water and access to the outdoors."

Jim Range, chairman of the board of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which includes most of the nation's mainline hunting and fishing groups, said his organization forged an alliance with the unions in large measure because of their manpower, money and lobbying savvy.

"It opens up a tremendous amount of territory for us to work on the both sides of the aisle," Range said. He predicted that the alliance will create a sudden and historically unique influx of millions of new people to the cause of land conservation.

House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson and some farm state senators have announced that they want to replace the ad hoc disaster aid process with permanent disaster aid authority inside the next farm bill.

It will be very expensive, however--billions per year--and those will be new costs in the farm bill context. Ad hoc disaster aid has been provided most years through emergency spending that is off-budget, though in recent years Republicans and some Democrats have insisted on a budget offset. A few years ago, a disaster payment offset took a huge bite of funding away from conservation, rural development and other programs.

Here's the FSD page summarizing disaster aid for the past 11 years, which has totaled about $15 billion.

If past is prologue, then ten states will get almost 60 percent of the money.

Twenty-two congressional districts will get half.

Year in and year out, most of the disaster aid goes to states and congressional districts that also receive most of the commodity crop subsidy money from taxpayers (though there are some exceptions).

As we've pointed out before, one of the hallmarks of disaster aid payments over the past two decades is a pattern of chronic dependency amongst a fairly small segment of disaster-prone farmers and ranchers, mostly in the perennially dry Great Plains, who have collected disaster payments every other year or more often.

Delegates to the Farm Bureau convention did not vote to include permanent disaster aid authority in the farm bill. Apparently cost was a big concern (on the flip).

Freshman House Republican Kevin McCarthy is already hearing from fruit and vegetable growers in his congressional district (CA-22) that historic disparities need to be remedied in the 2007 Farm Bill.

As David Whitney reports in The Tribune of San Luis Obispo (Jan. 15):

The Bakersfield Republican is just settling in.

He has hired a staff, cast his first votes, delivered his first floor speech, and written his first letter asking for money for his district. Last week he was appointed to the House Agriculture Committee...

Kern County farmers, particularly those in the cotton business, have received $416 million in federal subsidies in the last decade, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. San Luis Obispo County farmers, who largely produce fruits and vegetables and grow wine grapes, received $70 million in subsidies.

This year, these so-called specialty crop growers have organized nationally into a coalition to seek a greater share of the federal purse, perhaps at the expense of the traditional growers like Kern County’s cotton farmers.

Paul Clark, president of the San Luis Obispo County Farm Bureau, said the organization is "thrilled" McCarthy landed on the Agriculture Committee.

He said the county bureau has been working for years on the subsidy imbalance and has confidence that McCarthy can help them in the effort.

"Every little bit helps as far as congressional interest," Clark said. "Kevin knows the issues we are facing."

Looks like San Luis Obispo county farmers are tired of being...

A daily rundown of important news stories, new studies, and USDA and Hill developments related to farm policy. I recommend it highly.

And it's free. Sign up with this email:

farmpolicy-on@list.farmpolicy.com

Or if you prefer, go to the Web.

Of course. Here is the list of the top subsidy recipients in LA (for the years 1995-2005) from our Farm Subsidy Database.

You simply have to have an ownership interest in a farm that has qualified for various USDA subsidy programs, even if that farm is thousands of miles away. Ownership qualifies you as "actively engaged" in farming for purposes of collecting taxpayer subsidies.

Mind you, most farmers don't get these subsidies. According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture over 90 percent of all farm operations in California (and two-thirds of farms nationwide) do not collect USDA subsidies, mainly because they produce the 'wrong' (i.e., unsubsidized) crops.

Click on the recipient for more detail (farm location, ownership information, type of subsidy, and more).

Fronting the Sunday Business section in The New York Times (Jan. 14) is a fascinating story, "Out of Africa: Cotton and Cash" (subscription required) about the investments big-time U.S. cotton trading company Dunavant Enterprises has made in the cotton sector of poor African countries. Some of those countries joined Brazil's successful WTO challenge to American cotton subsidy programs.

From the top of the Times piece, by G. Pascal Zachary:

Finding Dennis Okelo used to be easy. The old woman — and most other people in a village outside of Lira, the provincial capital of northern Uganda — went directly to Mr. Okelo’s fields. He was always in one of his “gardens,” with his slacks rolled up above his calves and a short hoe close by. Or he was seated outside of his mud-brick house under a banana tree.

Then cotton growing revived in Uganda, and Dunavant Enterprises came to town about five years ago, paying cash on delivery. After three seasons of growing cotton for Dunavant, the world’s largest privately owned cotton broker and one of the biggest family-owned agribusinesses in the United States, Mr. Okelo, who owns less than three acres and has two wives and a passel of children, had saved $300, about double his annual earnings before Dunavant started buying his cotton.

Last summer, Mr. Okelo opened a grocery store, which is where the old woman finally found him: smiling, standing behind the wooden plank that serves as his service counter in a shop the size of a utility shed. The grocery, one of two in the village, carries dried foods, cooking oil, matches, cosmetics, batteries and candy.

“Before Dunavant, no one came to help us,” says Mr. Okelo, 40, who has farmed a variety of crops in these parts for about 20 years.

Photo: UN/FAO

William Dunavant, the chairman of the privately held firm, pulled his company out of the National Cotton Council in November, 2006.

As Jane Roberts reported at the time in the Memphis Commercial Appeal ("Strings cut to cotton lobby," Nov. 11)

Dunavant Enterprises Inc., one of the largest cotton merchants in the world, has severed its ties with the National Cotton Council of America, saying the lobbying group no longer represents its interests.

"We just determined, after a lot of soul searching, that we wanted to do our own thing in Washington," said chairman Billy Dunavant. "The Cotton Council did not represent our interests like it did 10 or 12 years ago. We're going to go our own way.

"Dunavant Enterprises had been a member of NCC for 38 years. If necessary, the company is prepared to hire its own lobbyist...

"The Cotton Council is recognized in Washington both on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Agriculture as the voice of the cotton industry," said Woods Eastland, president and chief executive of Greenwood, Miss., Staplcotn, the largest cotton co-operative in the world and longtime member of NCC. "When someone wants to get the pulse of the cotton industry, they call the National Cotton Council."

But for several years, Dunavant, who was chairman of the NCC in 1988, has publicly expressed his opposing viewpoints, chief among them the company's unhappiness with the U.S. cotton subsidies, which bolster the price of U.S. cotton when world prices are low.

He also says that the Council's structure is compromised "because the co-ops and the producers are the same people. The people who own warehouses also gin cotton. They're choking us out."

...Last spring, when the NCC failed to support the cotton merchants' wish to ban outdoor storage of cotton in West Texas, Dunavant said he lost money because the cotton was damaged in the weather.

"The council didn't represent us like they should have. They allowed the ginners and the warehousers in West Texas to have a bigger voice."

"The reputation for U.S. cotton suffered. Our customers don't like it when we ship damaged cotton overseas," he said.

The fractured response, he said, sent the wrong message to Washington.

This piece by Sarah Bradshaw in the Poughkeepsie Journal makes clear that New York's farmers don't want another farm bill to pass them by. Nor does incoming New York Commissioner of Agriculture Patrick Hooker, who attended the annual meeting of the New York State Agricultural Society.

Only a few hours before his speech, Hooker listened to a roundtable discussion on how the federal Farm Bill affects agri-business in the state. The society's afternoon breakout forums were set up with an innovative approach — the farmers did the talking and agriculture leaders did the listening.

On behalf of one breakout group, New York Farm Bureau's Nancy Weber reported farmers felt the current federal Farm Bill doesn't address the needs of New Yorkers. One solution proposed was for New York agriculture to speak to politicians in one unified voice.

Other issues farmers want addressed in the 2007 farm bill were what they contended are unfairly distributed funds, little representation for New York farmers, especially "specialty crop" farmers, and ineffective risk-management programs.

Bradshaw was awarded the The Cap Creal Journalism Award for her coverage of agriculture this year by the New York State Agricultural Society during its annual conference.

Begun in 1978, the award honors of Harold L. "Cap" Creal, a prominent farmer and member of the state Assembly from 1939 to 1950.

So we have yet another group of farmers who are tired of being thought of as...

They're farmers, alright. They're just not recognized as such by USDA subsidy programs that have been aimed almost exclusively at just five crops.

And that's starting to bug them, according to this perceptive story by reporter Jennie Jones Giles of The Hendersonville News.

Fruit and vegetable growers, not only in Western North Carolina, but throughout the United States, are tired of five crops in the country receiving funding in the national Farm Bill.

They plan to educate Congress this year.

"This is the first year Congress is making a genuine effort to balance the program for specialty crops," said Kenny Barnwell, president of the N.C. Apple Growers Association.

Specialty crops include fruit, vegetables and nursery and greenhouse production. These crops are traditionally not included in the Farm Bill.

Ninety-three percent of the money for commodity crops is in the form of subsidies for five crops, said U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler.

Those five crops are corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat.

"Our farmers are starting to organize," Shuler said. "I'm setting up a committee in the 11th District to talk to our farmers."

Agriculture is very important to the economy of the 11th Congressional District of North Carolina, with the value of agricultural production estimated at $184 million in 2002. But you'd never know it to look at the farm bill support to the district (we'll update the FSD with the new members of Congress later this week--it says Charlie Taylor but this is Heath Schuler's district).

What do these NC farmers want?

U.S. fruit and vegetable growers want Congress to issue block grants to states for promotion and infrastructure and give conservation initiatives focused on fruits and vegetables. Currently, much of the conservation programs focus on cattle producers, Parker said.

Farmers want Congress to increase the dollars for fresh fruits and vegetables in the food stamp and food aid programs, including the programs for women and children and seniors.

Agriculture Secretary Johanns, among others, has been talking a great deal about the need for a 2007 farm bill that is fairer--more equitable--so that public funds don't end up so overwhelmingly in the hands of a relative few very large, subsidy crop farming operations year after year after year.

Conservation programs are central to that aspiration.

Unlike commodity subsidies, over 90 percent of which go to producers of just five crops (cotton, rice, corn, wheat and soybeans), conservation programs are available to all farmers. But research by USDA economists Robert Hoppe and David Banker suggests other ways in which more conservation spending in the mix can make the 2007 farm bill fairer to a wider range of farmers (notably small and "limited resource", i.e. low income) and rural residents.

As Hoppe and Banker point out:

Commodity program payments to farms are made roughly in proportion to their share of harvested acreage of traditional program crops. Medium-sales, large, and very large farms accounted for 13 percent of all farms in 2003, but they together received 77 percent of commodity-related payments, reflecting a similar share of program crop acreage.

Residential/lifestyle farm operators spend most of their work time off the farm. The low labor requirements of the CRP also appeals to many retired farmers (average age of 69 years) and some low-sales farmers—56 percent are 55 or older. A substantial share of all three farmer groups find the CRP financially attractive and have cropland available to enroll in conservation land retirement programs.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns addressed the Beltwide Cotton Conference in New Orleans yesterday.

And reading between the lines, he told them that the US should expect to lose more WTO commodity cases, including the pending request from Brazil for further reforms to reduce the 'serious prejudice' represented by cotton's countercyclical and and marketing loan programs.

Almost two years ago, a WTO panel, and then an Appellate Body because we appealed the ruling, ruled against several U.S. cotton programs. We disagreed with the panel. But we made changes in an attempt to comply with the ruling. We eliminated a program that was probably very popular in this room, the Step 2 Program. That was done as of last August.

We made major changes in our Export Credit Guarantee Program as you know. And at this time we are not even using two of our programs.

But despite those efforts though, Brazil has not accepted our reforms as a solution to the ruling. And they are now before the WTO in another proceeding. They are claiming that we did not comply. They say our credit reforms did not go far enough. And what they have targeted is the Marketing Loan and Countercyclical Programs.

In fact this case established that other parts of the Farm Bill programs under the 2002 Farm Bill are vulnerable to additional WTO challenges. Now we are working with every industry affected to do our best to put up our strongest case and defense. We know that there are many factors at work in the U.S. cotton market, not just the subsidies that are contributing to the export situation.

But hard as we explain and defend our position, the opposition continues to argue that our growing exports are the result of the subsidy programs. However the current proceeding may turn out -- and I might tell you that we anticipate a final ruling, a final WTO report, this summer, the summer of 2007 -- the fact remains that our subsidy programs continue to be debated, continue to be challenged.

It's impossible to read Secretary Mike Johanns' Jan. 8 speech to the Farm Bureau convention as anything other than a call for significant farm bill reform: more money for conservation, rural development, and specialty crops; changes in law that bring commodity subsidies into compliance with WTO rules; pursuit of tighter payment limits; and so forth.

I just hope the Bush Administration sticks to its guns on reform this time around, and doesn't abandon Johanns in 2007 the way it abandoned former Secretary Ann Venneman during the 2002 farm bill debate. She espoused some very bold reforms in this report, but the White House undercut her by supporting the bloated, wasteful House farm bill (after originally criticizing it).

For now, the Farm Bureau and everyone else who pushed for "extension" of the Farm Bill a year ago is having to find words to explain why that push failed--as did the push for a 'subsidy bonus' for selected farmers and, for that matter, a disaster assistance bill of any kind.

The Johanns speech is a good read overall. I especially appreciated the passage on conservation (below the fold).

Bread for the World ("Seeking Justice, Ending Hunger) is making the case for reform, pew by pew.

Phillip Brasher has it in last Sunday's (Jan. 7) Des Moines Register ("Farm bill debate coming to the church near you").

Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger group, plans to distribute thousands of educational kits to churches around the country in hopes of getting congregants to urge members of Congress to overhaul federal agricultural and nutrition programs...

..."What we have learned is that the current system does not work for rural America," said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. "Disproportionately, the money in the farm bill is going to a relatively few people, mostly prosperous people."

Nor, he adds, does the system work for poor farmers elsewhere in the world when U.S. production-stimulating subsidies push down commodity prices.

"Some of the same things that would make the farm bill better for rural America would also make it better for rural Ethiopia," said Beckmann.

Lots of hits when you search "University" in the FSD, but the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne tops the list, with $3.7 million in payments over the past 11 years.

When Scott Pendleton, a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, called about the payments back in 1995, he found out they were used to support the Marching Illini. ("Who Feeds at Farm Subsidy Trough?", CSM, Aug. 9, 1995)

As Pendleton concluded:

The money relates to ''dozens and dozens'' of sharecropped farms bequeathed by alumni, [U. of Illinois] Agriculture Dean W.R. Gomes says. But it doesn't always go to his department. Half of a recent bequest, which would include subsidies, was earmarked for the university's marching band.' 'I'm for marching bands,'' [EWG's Ken] Cook comments. ''But is this the way to fund them?''

A few points from the EWG Farm Subsidy Database (FSD). (Most of the analyses below are available for states, congressional districts and counties, BTW).

Between 1995-2005, corn was the #1 subsidy program in terms of recipients (1,531,926) and total subsidies ($51,261,278,801). Go here and scroll down to "Top programs in the United States, 1995-2005.

This fact probably caught the eye of Canadian agriculture and trade officials: We spent more in 2005 on corn subsidies--$9.4 billion--than in any year previously (this chart shows payments back to 1995).

Top state for corn subsidies? Iowa, of course, Senate Ag Committee Chairman Tom Harkin's home state; Illinois is a very close second. Almost half the corn money goes to three states, and 10 states collect 80 percent.

Top congressional district? Nebraska 3 with $4.3 billion in corn payments over 11 years (formerly held by Rep. Tom Osborne, but now held by freshman Adrian Smith). House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson's district ranks #7 with $1.7 billion in corn payments over that period. Half of all corn subsidies over the past 11 years went to just 13 congressional districts.

Corn payments are highly concentrated in the hands of relatively few, very large farm operations. From 1995-2005, 70 percent of all corn subsidies went to just 10 percent of the recipients. (For all subsidies nationwide, 10 percent of the recipients collected 73 percent of the payments.)

At the very top, 1 percent (30,737 operations) collected a full third of the payments, totaling $15 billion and averaging $499,766 (or about $45,000 per year).

Top recipients? The national list starts here. But again, top recipients are also listed by state, county, congressional district, city, even zip code in the FSD.

That's how Congress Daily's Jerry Hagstrom reported House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson's remarks Monday (Jan. 8) at the Farm Bureau convention in Salt Lake City.

Peterson also said he does not favor tighter payment limitations because they could lead to an end to cotton and rice production in the United States.

Payment limits also could deny the bill enough votes from
Southern lawmakers to pass...

Another way of saying this: without unlimited subsidies from taxpayers the nation's very largest rice and cotton producers, rice and cotton production--and with it, Southern agriculture--could cease to exist. We've certainly heard some Southern politicians make this claim.

I'll be shedding more light on this topic when we publish the "benefits tracking" database USDA developed in response to Section 1614 of the 2002 Farm Bill. EWG received the data from USDA in December 2006, after seeking it for years under the Freedom of Information Act. It won't be long--and from what we've already seen in the data it will not show that tighter payment limits will extinguish southern rice and cotton production. Far from it..

But for now, I'll simply point out the very different conclusions reached by the 2003 Report of the Commission on the Application of Payment Limitations for Agriculture, Submitted in Response to Section 1605, Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. in its review of a study FAPRI conducted of on stricter payment limits (Chapter 5, pages 125-6).

FAPRI (2003) examined the possible implications of limiting any operation as defined by the Census of Agriculture to no more than $40,000 in direct payments, $60,000 in counter- cyclical payments, and $175,000 in marketing loan benefits over the period 2004-12.

That study found not an end of U.S. cotton and rice production, but modest decreases in cotton and rice acreage, accompanied by higher prices for those commodities, and increased acreage for other crops, under those tighter payment limits.

In 2004, FAPRI estimates the stricter payment limitation would reduce the area planted to cotton by about 510,000 acres and the area planted to rice by about 250,000 acres (table 5.3). Cotton acreage is estimated to decline by 4 percent and rice acreage drops by 8 percent while acreage of other major crops changes by less than 1 percent. Longer-run impacts on planted acreage are assumed to be much smaller as producers adjust to the stricter limits on payments and reduced acreage leads to higher market returns. In response to the drop in acreage, FAPRI projected cotton prices would increase by 2 percent and rice prices would increase by 8 percent in 2004, while prices for other major crops would not change significantly (table 5.3). The effects on prices also tend to moderate after 2004, reflecting the smaller adjustment in planted acreage.

The impact of tighter payment limits on House or Senate floor passage of the farm bill was not reviewed by the commission. Nor did the commision examine the prospects for passage if nothing is done about the current, unlimited taxpayer subsidies to the very largest operations.

Sure seems like it.

"Serious prejudice" is WTO lingo for "fix this policy or we'll see you in court."

The Government of Canada is of the view that existing U.S. corn subsidy programs cause serious prejudice to Canadian corn growers through their effects on prices in the Canadian market.

Canada's press release and backgrounder on the flip.

Before former Rep. Tom Delay resigned in disgrace and under indictment for allegedly breaking Texas' campaign finance laws, in order to bankroll his plan to gerrymander the state for House Republicans, he made clear to the Texas Farm Bureau that they had to abandon their longtime champion, Rep. Charlie Stenholm, a cotton farmer who was then the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, in the 2004 mid-term election.

But the Texas Farm Bureau didn't just stay neutral in the race. No, they actually endorsed Stenholm's opponent, freshman Rep. Randy Neugebauer, whose primary link to agriculture to that point had been turning farmland into subdivisions outside Lubbock.

As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on Oct. 4, 2004:

Neugebauer has raised more money than his opponent and has received the influential endorsement of the Texas Farm Bureau. That endorsement is particularly painful for Stenholm, who holds a senior position on the House Agriculture Committee and has consistently received the Farm Bureau's nod since first running for the U.S. House in 1978.

"The real strength of Stenholm over the last two decades is that
he has a very strong constituency with the cotton and agriculture
community," said GOP political consultant Ted Delisi.

But that record wasn't enough for the Texas Farm Bureau when Tom Delay called on them to sell out a loyal friend who, had he prevailed over Neugebauer in 2004, would be chairman of the House Agriculture Committee today.

I've had my disagreements with Mr. Stenholm over the years, but he has been a very strong leader on conservation issues for decades (water quality in particular) and would have been a formidable chairman (a sentiment with which Collin Peterson surely would agree).

So put this Farm Bureau award in the category, "With friends like these..."

Stenholm, Miller Earn Distinguished Service Awards SALT LAKE CITY, January 7, 2007 – The American Farm Bureau today gave its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, to former Rep. Charlie Stenholm of Texas and Cecil Miller, a longtime Farm Bureau president in Arizona. The award was announced during the opening General Session at the 88th AFBF annual meeting.

Stenholm, the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee during consideration of the current farm bill, has been actively involved in agriculture all his life. Stenholm was nominated by Texas Farm Bureau for “his expertise in agriculture, forged as a farmer, teacher and agricultural association executive, which was so broad and deep that he often counseled fellow members of the House on agricultural matters.”

A primary force in every farm bill since the late 1970s, Stenholm was one-half of a unique partnership with Larry Combest, who was the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and the representative of a neighboring congressional district, during consideration of the 2002 farm bill. Together, they worked in a bipartisan fashion to draft and pass the legislation in place today.

“We thank Charlie Stenholm for his many efforts over the years to lead the charge in Congress on issues vital to the nation’s farmers and ranchers,” AFBF President Bob Stallman said, citing Stenholm’s long record of legislative achievements spanning his 25-year career in the House.

I might note that Stallman is a Columbus, Texas rice farmer who is literally indebted to Charlie Stenholm's 25 years spent fighting for farm programs.

Looks like the Oregon Department of Agriculture has decided their state should stop being a farm bill loser.

"Traditionally, the Farm Bill has focused on primary program crops, mostly grown in the Midwest and South, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, and tobacco," said Brent Searle, special assistant to the director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "It has evolved and now includes an emphasis on conservation and resource management. Oregon has taken advantage of those programs."

In Oregon, only wheat and some feed grains are considered program crops and have received price support payments as part of the Farm Bill. But given the tremendous diversity of agriculture in Oregon, other commodity sectors want to see more help directed their way. In other words, they no longer want to be a farm bill loser.

One of the issues of key interest in current deliberations is assistance for specialty crops.

"These would include primarily fruits, vegetables, nuts, and horticultural crops like those found in the nursery industry," Searle said. "These are crops very important to Oregon. Historically, they have not been part of the Farm Bill or have received any kind of significant assistance."

Oregon agriculture is coming to the same conclusions as agriculture leaders and politicians from other states that have been by-passed by farm bill spending in the past, like California.

"The grain sector has a long history with the Farm Bill and has an interest in seeing traditional price support programs continue or be slowly modified," Searle said. "But a broader sector of Oregon agriculture is looking for those other benefits in the Farm Bill - ranging from conservation and renewable energy opportunities, to assistance with marketing and agricultural research."

Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer has already been hard at work on farm bill reform.

As Jonathan Rauch wrote in last week's National Journal:

In 2007, agricultural subsidies come up for reauthorization. Numbingly complex and arcane, farm bills have traditionally been of interest mainly to the agriculture lobbyists and farm-region legislators who wrote them in the Capitol's back rooms. In 2007, however, all Democratic lawmakers, not just the farm groupies, would be well advised to pay attention.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., is certainly taking notice. Though not a member of the Agriculture Committee, "I've been preparing for this reauthorization, and I plan to be actively involved," he said in a recent interview. "It's critically important to my state, which is shortchanged by the farm bill." His district has fruit, wine, nurseries, and "the largest Christmas tree farm in America" -- all outside the charmed circle of federal farm subsidies.

Blumenauer's political calculus, however, is national as well as local. "I think the farm bill is perhaps the best example of federal policy frozen in time, in a mixture of inertia, political considerations, and complexity," he says. "It currently is not serving most states, it's not serving most farmers, it's not fiscally conservative." He sees agriculture as one of only two ripe opportunities for Democrats to prove themselves as reformers in 2007 (the other being energy). "We have a chance," he says, "to send the message that we're serious about making government work right."

We're going to be hearing the president talk about farm-derived biofuels as a vital component of "energy independence" in his State of the Union address (SOU) on January 23. We're going to hear him say switchgrass again, as he did last year:

We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass.

Switchgrass is a much-discussed candidate for the next generation feedstock for ethanol, after, that is, ethanol expands beyond corn grain and goes cellulosic.

The question for this post: is corn-based ethanol a transition, or an enduring endpoint?

The pluses of switchgrass are usually enumerated from the farmers' (and ostensibly the environmentalists') standpoint: it's a perennial plant (doesn't have to be planted every year like corn), requires less herbicide and fertilizer (corn uses both prodigiously), controls erosion, and provides habitat for wildlife. Plus it captures carbon dioxide instead of emitting it, and sequesters carbon in its root system. From those standpoints, and several others, it is superior to corn and far superior to oil as a fuel stock.

But switchgrass-based ethanol does not hold the same attractions for agricultural input suppliers. If you're in the business of making and selling seed and herbicides every year, especially seeds you've bioengineered to sprout plants that resist your herbicides, a massive shift to a perennial crop that doesn't have to be reseeded each year and requires next to no herbicide for its culture is not exactly an attractive turn of commerce.

These companies might well prefer to position corn as the cellulosic feedstock of the future by continuing to increase its utilizable biomass--grain and stover--meaning that ethanol production would entail removal of virtually all the vegetation above the soil surface at harvest. That vegetation--referred to it as 'agricultural waste' in media accounts from time to time--is currently left in corn fields after the grain is combined (well over 90 percent of the corn ground). It's about the only thing preventing even more of the Midwest from ending up in the Gulf of Mexico. It's mulch. To an aggie, calling it 'waste' is like calling topsoil 'dirt'.

Even as the technology for converting ethanol plants from corn grain to cellulosic feedstocks comes online, corn will have a big advantage over switchgrass: investment in plant breeding for corn, almost all of it in the private sector, beggars that for switchgrass, which has been mostly a public sector enterprise. To that should be added the sunk cost in corn equipment on the farm (and the stance equipment manufacturers will take) and in existing ethanol plants.

One more factor favoring corn: have you ever heard of the powerful switchgrass lobby?

If this is the direction the ethanol economy takes--corn as the cellulosic feedstock of choice--we have to ask if we are looking at the technological equivalent, in biofuels, of the old, dirty, coal-fired power plant or the infernal combustion engine? Will we be stuck with a first-generation system that does indeed provide energy, but at a high environmental cost, and that becomes extremely difficult to displace with smarter, cleaner, more efficient systems down the road?

Even if you see positives in the ethanol revolution that's underway, as I do, there are many more questions to ask about it, including the questions my friend Lester Brown has been raising.

But clearly one of the central policy issues in the 2007 farm bill will be how to make the transition happen from grain ethanol to a more sustainable biofuel economy.

This is an official FSD hypocrisy update.

"Iowa senator got big farm subsidies." Mike Glover, Associated Press, April 25, 2005, datelined Des Moines:

A state senator who referred to public workers as "bottom feeders with their hand out" for seeking better retirement benefits confirmed that he received $713,765 in taxpayer-financed farm subsidies over a nine-year stretch.In addition, records show that Sen. Mark Zieman's wife, Jennifer, received $360,806 in federal farm subsidies over a four-year stretch.

"I readily admit I am one of those people who is using the system," said Zieman. "I don't like the system, but I know how to work the system."

Zieman apologized for the "poor choice of words" about Iowa's public servants. But let's update those numbers by adding 2004 and 2005 payments, shall we, to see just how much deeper the hypocrisy has gotten.

Mark Zieman $856,563.88
Jennifer Zieman $503,605.47

I make that $142,798 more for him and $142,799 more for her, or over $70,000 apiece per year (but most came in 2005).

Wonder how those "bottom feeder" Iowa state employees made out?

More on the flip.

Farm Subsidy Database (FSD) recipient Prison Enterprises, part of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, has hauled in over one million in cotton, soybean and corn subsidies this past decade.

According to their Web site, Prison Enterprises:

...operates a diversified group of industry and agriculture operations located at nine different correctional facilities throughout Louisiana. These operations provide work opportunities to 1700-1800 inmates in almost 900 different industry and agriculture positions.

Today, there are nearly 20,000 inmates incarcerated in state correctional facilities. Prison Enterprises plays an important role in Department of Corrections operations by providing work opportunities for inmates, utilizing the resources of the department to produce food and other necessary items used by the inmates in order to lower the cost of incarceration, and providing products and services to other state agencies and local governments.

We're all for smart corrections policies, if indeed that's what these are. But the fact that Louisiana's prison system collects crop subsidies from U.S. taxpayers shows just how far our farm policies have strayed from helping family farms.

Even more shocking: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice gets less.

Dairy ranks a modest #10 on EWG's ranking of farm subsidy programs by amount spent over the past 11 years.

But dairy is often the program that makes or breaks a farm bill deal. So I'll be writing about dairy policy and politics from time to time this coming year.

The FSD tracks about $3.1 billion that has been paid to 147,635 recipients under various dairy programs. About a billion came through "market loss assistance" bail outs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Around half of the payments ($1.5 billion) have been made under the "Milk Income Loss Contract" (MILC) program created by the 2002 Farm Bill.

Dairy subsidy recipients rank #8 in dollars per recipient, about $21,191--just above wheat and soybeans. And because of firmer payment limits, the dairy program does not concentrate subsidies in the hands of larger operations, the way crop programs tend to do.

For all programs, 10 percent of the recipients collected 73 percent of the money for the past 11 years. For dairy, the top 10 percent of recipients took in 43 percent of the support from taxpayers. So you could make a case that the dairy program is one of the fairer, more equitable subsidy programs.

There is an excellent July 2006 ERS dairy background paper, by James Miller and Don Blayney. A few facts caught my eye that have special bearing on farm bill policy and politics (below the fold).

Our first report from the Farm Subsidy Database was City Slickers, back in 1995. Reporters all over the country tracked farm subsidy recipients living smack in the middle of America's biggest cities. Most of them had little or nothing to do with the farms. They just happened to own land that was enrolled in a subsidy program.

Bill Lambrecht, the crack reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Washington Bureau, found that the top city slicker in St. Louis was St. Louis.

Good thing we fixed that problem, eh? How absurd would it be to have the federal government funelling money to cities through a program meant to help family farmers? The only thing more absurd? Funelling farm subsidy money to 520 city governments.

(How we did it: enter "City of" in business name search box at the bottom of this page.)

EWG's Farm Subsidy Database tracks $164.7 billion in payments to nearly 3.2 million subsidy recipients between 1995 and 2005.

It's sometimes hard to believe who some of those farm subsidy recipients are.

FSD Follies, an occasional feature here at Mulch, will highlight some of our favorites.

Here's a reenactment of the original FSD Follies entry--the very first search we did late one Friday night back in 1994, when the pre-Internet version of the database was completed and we wanted to take it for a spin.

Are there any farm subsidy recipients in zip code 90210, we asked?

There were 82 between 1995 and 2005, and they collected a total of just over $608,000 in subsidy payments.

We'd welcome any FSD Follies you'd care to identify. One good place to search from: the bottom of the FSD's National Summary page (and similar state pages) where you'll find open search boxes by city, zip code, or recipient and business names.

Sam Donaldson's
Farm Subsidies

ABC Newsman Sam Donaldson will be a keynote speaker at the Farm Bureau's upcoming Annual Convention in Salt Lake City.

It will be interesting to see how he handles the issue of farm subsidies--since he's also received them. Donaldson's payments are in the FSD, of course. They amount to just over $88,000 over the past 11 years through the wool, mohair, and "sheep meat" programs. If we draw on our archived data, a full accounting of his subsidies back through 1985 looks like the table to the right.

The revelation of Donaldson's subsidies created an uproar in media circles back in 1995. The late Bruce Ingersoll, investigative reporter par excellence with the Wall Street Journal, disclosed Donaldson's payments using the pre-Internet version of the FSD, which tracked subsidies between 1985 and 1994 by 9-digit zipcode.

Here are some of the questions we'd love to hear Donaldson address:

Do you agree with the Farm Bureau that the 2002 Farm Bill has been a great success and should be extended? Or how about the revised Farm Bureau position, that the 2002 law should be extended with a few "tweeks"?

Subsidies obtained through various commodity loan programs (forfeiture gains and certificate exchanges) currently are unlimited, a policy that exclusively benefits the largest subsidized farms. The Farm Bureau wants to keep it that way. Do you agree?

Right now, the only "means test" for farm subsidies applies to the very wealthy (those whose 3-year adjusted gross income exceeds $2.5 million, unless they can show that at least 75 percent of their income comes from farming, ranching or forestry--plus plenty of other loopholes). Does that policy make sense, or should farm subsidies be subjected to a more stringent means test? Or should anyone be entitled to subsidies, no matter how wealthy they are?

Do you think the wool, mohair and "sheep meat" programs should be extended? And what is the "sheep meat" program anyway?