Farm Bill: A Down Payment In The Produce Aisle
The legislative language is yet to come. The numbers are all top secret. In fact, I'll only tell you what they are if you promise not to tell anyone else, including anyone who has already seen some of the numbers that were published hours ago here.
The fruit and vegetable snack program goes from relying totally on reserve funds to being allocated $350 million in real money over five years. Specialty crop block grants go from $265 million over five years to $365 million over five years. There is $215 million for specialty crop research and $30 million in additional funds for organic research. And more.All together, the new chairman's mark will reportedly include $1.6 billion for specialty crops over five years, well more than double from Peterson's first mark. Savings were found in crop insurance programs to help fund the increases in f/v programs.
We've seen some variations and additional detail (that we really can't tell you), but in general this is very good news for Mr. Cardoza's leadership. He pushed against the crop subsidy lobby until he got his message through that fruit and vegetable growers will settle for nothing less than a fair share of this farm bill--and every farm bill to come.
As with everything else in this farm bill, no one is taking these numbers for granted yet. They remain significantly under the objectives set forth in Mr. Cardoza's original marker bill, the EAT Healthy America Act. Without further committee concessions, the only place to close the deal in the House is on the floor.
But any time someone makes gains like this for a better, fairer farm bill, you have to tip your hat.
Chairman Cardoza, well done, sir. This is a down payment to be proud of, and signals the promise of an important new direction in a farm policy, and an important reconfiguration of farm bill politics, that in the past has been 92 percent at the service of just five crops.
Comments
Just this week the House Agriculture Committee released its Farm Bill outlining new changes to federal support for farmers. As the bill relates to sugar, it looks like consumers and workers might get less than a sweet deal.
For years our Sugar Program as it is known channels big subsidies to sugar growers to reduce their costs and let them grow more sugar. Yet that's not all Big Sugar gets. The sugar program also severely restricts the amount of foreign supplies of sugar that is allowed into the US market. These restrictions - a blend of very high border taxes and quotas - are designed to make sure that US consumers don't get the benefit of tasting sugar grown in other countries such as Brazil and Haiti.These trade restrictions on foreign supplies of sugar have actually been partly to blame for the elimination of 11,000 sugar refining and candy manufacturing jobs. These industries have had to close their doors to US operations and open shop overseas to take advantage of cheaper supplies of sugar abroad. Of course these jobs wouldn't be lost if Congress eliminated the combination of highly restrictive quotas and tariffs.
Instead of turning things around Congress has made this bad system worse. The recently released Farm Bill proposes to make it that much more difficult for US candy makers and consumers to get access to foreign supplies of sugar. In the end, it is workers and consumers that will pay for this kind of protection offered to such a wealthy few.
Check out more on this and other consumer issues at: http://www.cwt.org/blog/
Posted by: Sarah Press | July 18, 2007 1:46 PM