THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
“LIVING FOOD: FARM QUIZ FOR D'S”
July 24, 2007 Tuesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B6

House Democrats face a health quiz. Are they more concerned about Americans having good food or solidifying a few of their own members' political chances in 2008?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi already has made her scandalous choice with support for the subsidy-larded Farm Bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee. There's no apparent reason other than a desire to protect some of the freshman Democrats in farm states who helped the party take control of the House.
Democrats aren't alone, to be sure, in supporting the rotten committee bill, which extends the huge subsidies to wealthy growers of a few crops while doing little to encourage more diversified farming and better nutrition. But President Bush proposed a modestly better measure, with limits on subsidies for rich farmers. He properly threatens to veto the House bill as now written.

Reform will take bipartisan support. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., has co-sponsors in both parties, including Eastside Republican Rep. Dave Reichert, for a measure that would phase out subsidies, protect the environment and improve nutrition programs, including food stamps. Reichert said recently that he was encouraged by the interest from other state members of Congress. House Democrats Brian Baird, Norm Dicks, Jay Inslee, Adam Smith and Jim McDermott were early backers of the measure. Unfortunately, Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen fulsomely praised the weak reform measures in the committee bill. The Fairness on Farm and Food Policy Amendment deserves support from every Washington representative in a floor vote, likely to be held Thursday.

The country is facing obesity and diabetes crises. Pelosi and farm state representatives in both parties should put their politics on a diet this week and let the country have a healthier food policy.

WALL STREET JOURNAL ABSTRACTS
“REVIEW & OUTLOOK -- UNION DOOZY”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Pg. 14

Editorial warns that Democrats, at behest of Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, is adding provision to farm bill that would effectively ban states from working with private companies to improve administration of food-stamp and welfare antipoverty programs; notes objections by several governors, but suggests they will get no hearing as Democrats are preoccupied with getting out union vote next year

TELEGRAM & GAZETTE (Massachusetts)
“Agri-scam;
Wasteful farm subsidy system cries out for reform”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; IN OUR OPINION; Pg. A6

It's no secret that federal agricultural tax breaks and subsidies, conceived as compassionate aid to family farms, long ago devolved into a system of corporate welfare for agribusiness, big tobacco, sugar-beet growers, absentee gentleman farmers and a myriad of other interests. A new federal audit shows the situation is even worse than most Americans might have imagined.
As the House prepares to debate the agriculture appropriation bill, a Government Accountability Office audit of subsidies, requested by the Senate Finance Committee, has uncovered misappropriations on a massive scale. The audit found that in the seven years from 1999 through 2005, the Agriculture Department sent a total of $1.1 billion in payments to more than 170,000 dead people. Incredibly, 40 percent of those individuals had been dead for more than three years, including 19 percent - one in five - who had been dead for more than seven years.
It is truly scandalous that hundreds of thousands of survivors may be cashing in. It is equally deplorable that oversight is so manifestly incompetent that subsidies, in some instances, may continue in perpetuity.

The strangely blase reaction of Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Agriculture Committee chairman, was not reassuring. "Given extremely tight budget restraints," he said, "it is no longer tolerable to permit billions of dollars in farm bill payments to go to individuals who in instances don't even farm or are no longer alive."

In fact, a billion-dollar waste of taxpayers' money is intolerable regardless of how tight the budget is. Moreover, the audit findings suggest a culture of bureaucratic laxity at Agriculture that well may be costing taxpayers many billions of dollars more.
Far-reaching reforms of the abuse-prone agribusiness boondoggle are long overdue. House Speaker Nancy P. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders can show they were serious about ending business as usual on Capitol Hill by leading the way.

THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
“FOOD NEEDS TO BE HEALTHIER AND SAFER”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B7

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives will consider the reauthorization of the farm bill. Specialty crop producers account for nearly half of all federal farm policy and the legislation makes a strong investment in the needs and priorities of producers. However, our work is far from over.

As Congress continues to debate the farm bill, it is imperative that leaders in Washington focus on injecting more competition into federal farm policy with a focus on producing a safer, healthier and more nutritious food supply.
One of the priorities in the farm bill is the expansion of the USDA fruit and vegetable snack program. That program is one way we can turn the tide on childhood obesity by establishing a routine for children eating fruits and vegetables early in their lives. Five years ago, the program received very little funding but achieved great results.

In the farm bill, this program is budgeted to receive $350 million for five years, which will establish the program in all 50 states. One would think a program that is so simple and gives children an opportunity to eat fresh fruits and vegetables is a no-brainer, but our coalition had to work long and hard to achieve this level of support.

We are also advocating for the expansion of so-called state competitiveness projects, which concentrate on the local and sometimes unique priorities of a specific region. The 2007 farm bill needs to continue funding those projects, as it has yielded significant results for Washington specialty crop growers.

For instance, combating invasive pests and diseases is a major challenge for specialty crop producers. Washington's citrus longhorn beetle eradication program was extremely successful with protecting critical specialty crops. In fact, more than 1,000 trees were removed and replaced to stop the spread and harm from the non-native insect. The Washington State Fruit Commission developed a fumigation protocol in order to export sweet cherries to Australia. The new protocol resulted in more than half a million dollars of new sales of the delicious red fruit.

Our priorities provide critical trade assistance and market promotion tools that will grow international markets for specialty crops; expand research, increase resources to combat pest and disease reducing the economic losses to plant agriculture; and, invest in "cutting-edge" research making the nation's food supply safer, more economical, better-tasting and more nutritious.

In the coming weeks, Congress will put its seal of approval on a new farm bill. We hope the policies reflect a better federal partnership with specialty crop producers and enhance our industry's ability to contribute to safer, healthier and more nutritious eating habits.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
“An opportunity to end corporate ag subsidies”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: COMMENTARY/EDITORIAL; Pg. 30NEWS

Another opportunity to bring U.S. agriculture policy kicking and screaming into the 21st century will arrive on Thursday, in the form of a bipartisan House proposal that would start phasing out direct payments to many farmers.

The Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment by Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Ron Kind, D-Wis., would amend the House farm bill and eventually end much of the Depression-vintage regime of price supports for commodities such as corn and rice. The farm programs may have become the nation's most egregious form of corporate welfare, and any credible attempt to to rein them in deserves to move forward.

Instead of direct payments, in bad years the amendment would let farmers qualify for "risk management" payments that resemble insurance policies. Even better, the Flake-Kind amendment would finally bar payments to farmers with an adjusted gross income of more than $500,000; annual subsidies could not exceed $250,000 a year.

By contrast, the House Agriculture Committee bill would let individual farmers who earn $1 million a year continue to feed at the taxpayer trough. That would simply keep the status quo alive.

The Flake-Kind amendment could have gone further - an earlier version would have dissolved the federal sugar program - but it does offer a way to begin corralling agriculture programs that have long strayed from fiscal sanity.

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
Heaven for farmers, hell on taxpayers
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: Editorial; Pg. C06

The farm bill that Congress is debating this week has sent more than $1 billion in payments to dead farmers
The farm bill has a life of its own, year after year showering billions of dollars on favored crops and well-connected growers. Now, as Congress debates a new farm bill, a report shows that some farm supports are eternal --subsidies so heavenly they even prop up dead farmers.

The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture doled out $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of scores of deceased farmers. The watchdog agency examined 181 farm payments from 1999 to 2005 and found that in 40 percent of the cases the Department of Agriculture didn't bother to review the payments to see whether they were proper.

Many of them weren't. In one case, the Department of Agriculture sent $400,000 to a soybean and corn farm in Illinois on behalf of a shareholder who had died a decade earlier in Florida. The Illinois farm certified each year that the deceased shareholder was "actively engaged" in managing the farm.
This nation's farm policy has morphed into a huge, wasteful and misconceived free-for-all. The Democratic Congress has an opportunity this week to change the $25 billion system, which throws money at producers of just five crops --wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice --and offers nothing for most farmers or consumers.

The GAO report showing payments to deceased farmers should add more grist to the farm-bill debate in Congress. Look what the auditors found: farm payments continually paid on behalf of a person who died in 1973 ; $567,000 in payments to an Alabama estate on behalf of an owner who died in 1981; local officials in one Georgia county approving payments for 107 people who had died more than two years earlier.

The payments to the dead are far from the only waste and abuse in the farm bill. Last year, a Washington Post investigation of farm subsidies found more than $15 billion in wasteful or redundant spending in farm payments, including $1.3 billion to people who do not even farm.

Yet the farm bill lives on, defended by farm-state members of Congress who still are resisting long-overdue changes and reforms in the law. The current farm bill is not just riddled with waste; it is blatantly unfair. Half of all farm spending flows to just 20 congressional districts. Many large farm states, including Oregon, and 95 percent of farmers receive little or no farm-bill funding.

There is a better way. Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer is among a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers pressing for sweeping changes in the farm bill, including new investments in healthy food choices, family farms, hunger assistance and land conservation.
The farm bill reauthorization is a crucial issue that must not get lost in the debate over the Iraq war. Oregon and Washington lawmakers must join the fight for a better, fairer farm bill --one that supports good farmers, not dead ones.

The New York Times
“The Anti-Reform Farm Bill”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; EDITORIAL; Pg. 18

American farmers have seldom been as prosperous as they are today. Yet the House is poised to approve a subsidy-laden farm bill more nearly suited to the Great Depression.

The bill would perpetuate an outdated and hugely expensive -- $70 billion over the last five years -- system of price supports and direct payments that disproportionately rewards big growers of row crops like corn, wheat and soybeans. More than half of this spending is concentrated in about 20 Congressional districts.

Incredibly, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, touts the bill as a big step toward reform. Ms. Pelosi seems especially proud of a new means test under which farmers with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more would no longer receive subsidies, down from the present cap of $2.5 million.

Reducing an outrageous cap to a lower outrageous cap is not exactly our idea of reform. The $1 million limit is also five times the $200,000 cap proposed by the Bush administration, which Ms. Pelosi is constantly accusing of catering to the rich.

The bill modestly increases spending for land conservation, and offers new financing for fruit and vegetable growers. But none of this can mask the bill's denial of reality. Because of the boom in ethanol production, for instance, corn is setting all kinds of records -- 92 million acres in production, prices at $3.30 a bushel. Even so, under the House bill, corn farmers will receive $2 billion in direct payments for each of the next five years.

Soybean farmers are similarly favored, as are cotton growers, whose subsidized cotton floods world markets, distorting trade and making it hard for farmers in poor countries to compete.

When the House debate begins later this week, Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, and others will offer an alternative bill that would shift money from the subsidy programs to conservation, nutrition and other worthy objectives. That would be real reform.

The Baltimore Sun
“HUSH MONEY”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 12A

Pretend you're a member of Congress from Maryland, and thus keenly interested in more federal help in reversing the rapid decline of the Chesapeake Bay, a critical economic resource.

Along comes a proposal promising by far the largest investment ever of federal money into the bay: $400 million over five years, including $150 million specifically designated to help farmers reduce fertilizer pollution. But the money is attached to a national farm bill that would continue many wasteful and destructive policies for another five years.

Chances are, you'd hold your nose when the legislation lands on the House floor tomorrow and vote for it - hoping the bad stuff comes out later in the process, but knowing the good stuff for the bay will almost certainly disappear if you cross the farm lobby.

That's an awful trade-off. But bay advocates would have a hard time criticizing the decision, especially because opportunities for reform of agricultural policy open anew in the Senate. What's alarming is the power an antiquated crop subsidy program continues to hold over Congress, even over such leaders as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco-area district is home base for activists backing an alternative approach.

The farm bill makes gestures to the reformers. Crop subsidy and conservation payments are limited to individuals with adjusted gross incomes below $1 million a year; fruit and vegetable crops would be eligible for benefits along with corn, grain and cotton; and funding for nutrition programs would grow.

But each of these gestures, much like the new bay money, seems intended primarily to quell resistance to a program that would continue to underwrite factory farms that are making record profits at the expense of family operations and the environment.

Maryland, with its small farms and tiny share of subsidies, would likely fare better if the reformers' alternative were favored by the House. But not if it failed - and with Marylanders on the wrong side of the vote.

With the status quo so well protected by folks with clout at the ballot box, even long-overdue reform is an absurdly uphill climb.

The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
“THE ISSUE:AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES; SEEDS OF SANITY”
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
SECTION: OPINIONS; Pg. 4

Billions of your tax dollars are being passed off as aid to struggling family farmers. Instead, a large share of agricultural subsidies goes to the nation's largest, wealthiest agricultural operations.

Congress has a chance to fix this charade in the 2007 Farm Bill.
But the version that's headed for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week is another grossly oversized helping of pork. These massive expenditures are worse than a waste of money. The subsidies are distorting prices, skewing land use, diverting funds from other needs and undermining America's ability to export agricultural products.

And the struggling farmers? They often end up worse off, out-competed and bought out by larger operations.

Arizona's Republican Rep. Jeff Flake is a leader in a bipartisan proposal that would start restoring sanity to our agricultural policy. The "Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment," which he worked on with Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Ron Kind, was unveiled at a press conference Tuesday.

It would scale back and revise a system of income supports and guaranteed prices that has cost taxpayers more than $70 billion since 2002. Subsidies would be capped at $250,000 per person and denied to large commercial farmers making more than $500,000 a year. A payment system that was supposed to wean farmers off subsidies in 1996, but instead turned into a $5 billion annual pork barrel of its own, would be pared back over time. Support for sugar would at least be returned to levels set in 2002. Crop insurance would be reformed to spread the costs more fairly.

The savings would bolster other programs that fall under the Farm Bill: food stamps, domestic hunger assistance, conservation and grants and research for fruit and vegetable production. It's a mixed bag, not all top-priority spending but a necessary tradeoff to get support.

Plus, we would still save $10 billion over five years. And we'd reduce the subsidies that are blocking trade negotiations and sparking lawsuits from other countries. America has maxed out on selling farm products at home, Flake warns, and "we've got to have access to new markets."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders should support a plan that supports conservation and nutrition while cutting corporate welfare. But so far, they're settling for token reforms to protect freshmen Democrats from rural states.

Congress blew the chance for major farm-subsidy reforms in 2002. Now, with prices for key commodities at record levels, there's a chance to make real changes with minimal transition pain.

The largest farms, with annual sales of $500,000-plus, received 32 percent of federal payments in 2003, up from 13 percent in 1989. And more than half of all farm spending goes to just 20 congressional districts. Meanwhile, landowners who did not farm at all, received $1.3 billion from 2000 to 2006, the Washington Post found.

We can't afford this kind of excess. Congress can't afford to blow it again.

Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
“BIG DAY FOR FARM BILL”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: A; Editorial; Pg. 8

Cynics who believe that American government operates of, by and for the best interests of big, powerful corporations might very well get the evidence they need today to support that position. Or, if an amendment to the 2007 U.S. Farm Bill passes in the U.S. House, those cynics might just face a "Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington" moment.

The farm bill is reauthorized every five years and covers just about everything that grows in this country and products that rely on things that grow. It has enormous impact on food prices, availability, quality and safety. It also involves energy and environmental policy.

The farm bill, in short, has a major economic effect in this country, and that is why special interests are all over it as it moves through Congress.

The House Agriculture Committee has sent a bill to the floor of the full House that essentially maintains the antiquated and failed farm policy of the past decades. It's a policy that provides enormous subsidies to major farm corporations while failing to do much at all to protect the dwindling corps of family farmers.

It's a policy that pumps most national farm aid to a select group of farmers, leaving well more than half of all American farmers without any aid at all. And the largest 10 percent of farmers rake in more than two-thirds of all the subsidies.

Current farm policy is a repainted, reconditioned version of the programs enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. The programs saved America's farms then, helping them recover from the dual scourges of the Dust Bowl and economic collapse in the nation's heartland.

But, just as FDR's 1930s transportation, communications and energy policies are outdated today, so is his farm policy.

To that end, a bipartisan group of farm reformers has been working to cut subsidies to the biggest and wealthiest farms, direct some of the savings to the small American farmer, improve farm conservation efforts and re-engineer the entire idea behind farm policy. These reformers, some of whom are conservative and some liberal, want to employ a revenue-based safety net for family farmers and phase out subsidies.

At the same time, the reformers would increase food aid to the poor both domestically and internationally, encourage farmers to protect water sources and help promote healthier food choices. And, if this sounds like a lot of new government spending, here's the bonus. The reform plan would reduce the federal deficit by about $10 billion over the next decade.

An amendment to implement these reforms will be heard in the House today as representatives consider the farm bill.

By the end of the day, we should know whether the cynics are right about our Congress, or if there truly is hope that meaningful reform will be made.

The Bismarck Tribune
July 25, 2007 Wednesday
BYLINE: CHUCK HASSEBROOK
SECTION: OPINION

Rep. Earl Pomeroy's vote to increase subsidies to the nation's largest farms, if it stands, will weaken family farms and exacerbate rural population loss.

The Farm Bill as passed by the House Agriculture Committee raised the true limit on direct payments made regardless of farm prices from $80,000 to $120,000. That covers nearly 12,000 acres of wheat and sunflowers; 24,000 acres for a father/son operation.

Mega-farms get an additional $40,000 each year to drive their neighbors out of business. The increase is only for married mega farmers. Widows and bachelors take a small cut.

Pomeroy said the provision was not sufficient, but endorsed it as a good first step toward tightening payment limits. It was not.
It was one of many steps over many years in the wrong direction on the central issue in the farm bill debate: Should the federal government provide bigger subsidies to the nation's biggest farms to drive their neighbors out of business? Or, should the farm bill focus on supporting family size farms and investing in the future of rural communities.

Pomeroy's vote went 180 degrees opposite the wishes of the vast majority of his constituents. He was not alone. The bill had the support of all House Agriculture Committee members and the backing of major farm organizations ranging from the National Farmers Union to the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Cotton Council to the Wheat Growers.

Those who know better justify their action by saying they cannot pass the Farm Bill if they include real payment limitations due to the opposition of southern plantation interests. That is bunk. Cotton and rice farmers are getting over $200 per acre annually under the farm bill. Are they going to kill a farm bill that pays them $200 per acre and hundreds of thousands of dollars total because of a payment cap?

It is the absence of effective payment limitations that makes farm bills hard to pass. Million dollar payments to mega-farms are destroying the credibility of farm programs.

Among all the supporters of increasing mega-farm payments, the most troubling is Farmers Union. Last winter, the organization's grass-roots members strengthened its stand in support of tighter payment limits. But today, Farmers Union leadership is endorsing a payment limitation increase in direct defiance of its policy and the majority of its members.

The farm organizations and the entire House Agriculture Committee apparently believe the key to rural political success lies in delivering more money quickly to farmers, even it if distributed in a manner that destroys family farming and weakens rural communities.

It is up to us - rural people - to prove them wrong. We must demand that our elected representatives say no to another farm bill that destroys family farming and weakens rural communities.
We can have a better future in rural America. There are proven strategies that work to revitalize family farms and small communities. But we need government that supports local entrepreneurial initiatives, rather than undermining them.

In recent years, the federal government has spent more subsidizing the 20 biggest North Dakota farms than it spent to support rural development in the 20 North Dakota counties suffering the worst population declines - counties comprised of 100 towns and over 80,000 people. The House farm bill worsens the imbalance.

It's up to us to say no and demand that our representatives do the same.

The Washington Times
“Reform the farm bill; We can and must do better”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: By David Beckmann, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
SECTION: OPED; A19

While foreign-affairs and national-security issues dominate the national headlines, another drama is unfolding in Congress that has all the makings of a national morality play. Last Thursday, the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the 2007 farm bill. Later this week, that bill will go to the House floor along with amendments to improve it. The outcome of those floor votes will give the nation a clear indication of whether this Congress can rise above special-interest politics and direct taxpayer dollars to people who really need help.

The initial indicators are not encouraging. The bill that came out of the Democrat-controlled Agriculture Committee last week is a status-quo bill. It was crafted primarily to serve special interests rather than meet the most pressing needs in rural America or do what we can to reduce hunger in our society.

A Republican-controlled Congress gave us the 2002 farm bill, with its big subsidies to large landowners. According to the Department of Agriculture, the top 16 percent of farms, which have average net worth of $1.8 million, receive 66 percent of the payments to farmers.

It would be possible to shift resources to programs that help the many farm and rural families who really need help and to strengthen nutrition assistance programs to hungry people. That same shift would reduce the negative effect of our current farm policies on struggling families in rural areas of Africa and other poor parts of the world.

Environmental, taxpayer and many religious groups are calling for reform. Since January 2006, editorial boards in 34 states and the District of Columbia have written more than 170 opinions calling for an overhaul.

But the members of the House Agriculture Committee have close ties to the interest groups that have benefited so handsomely from the 2002 law. They want to keep the commodity payment programs in place, with as little change as possible.

Proponents of the House Agriculture Committee's bill are now saying that it is a reform bill. This is hogwash. The committee has proposed only minor reforms to the commodity programs. Its bill would not end payments to millionaires. It would not shift significant resources to programs that help farm and rural families of modest means. It would not reduce the negative impact of our commodity subsidies on struggling rural families in Africa and other poor parts of the world. It does not provide additional funding for nutrition assistance to hungry families in this country.

As long as so much of the farm bill's funding is tied up in payments to the largest, wealthiest farms, funding will continue to be inadequate for programs targeting hungry Americans, family farmers of modest means and rural people living in poverty.

While rural poverty is rampant in farm country and 35 million Americans struggle to put food on the table, a farm bill that continues to be driven by payments to wealthy farms is an injustice. Unfortunately, the farm bill has remained a competition to balance interests for commodity groups - not to help struggling families. We can and must do better. House leaders of both parties can use this debate as an opportunity to show their commitment to fairness, the well-being of rural America and hope for hungry and poor people.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the committee's bill "a critical first step toward reform." I presume she means that there will be room for further improvement when the full House votes on a new farm bill later this week.

That improvement could come from the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment that will be offered by a bipartisan group of members, including Rep. Ron Kind, Wisconsin Democrat, and Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. This sensible compromise amendment is the only proposal that offers real reform. It would maintain a viable farmer safety net and still provide free money for anti-hunger, conservation and rural development programs. It would also reduce the total cost of the farm bill to taxpayers.

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation's decision-makers to end hunger at home and abroad. The Bible does not say anything about commodity payments, but it is clear that laws should be fair and helpful to people in need. Bread for the World and many church groups consider this year's farm-bill debate a test of our nation's values.

In the past, the special interests were able to push farm bills through Congress with little fanfare. But the abuses have become egregious enough that this year's farm bill is garnering widespread news coverage and voter attention. Mrs. Pelosi should support the Fairness Amendment, or, at a minimum, allow the full House to vote on it.

Rev. David Beckmann is an ordained Lutheran minister and president of Bread for the World.

The Washington Times
Farm-bill fiasco; Speaker Pelosi's sham reform legislation
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: By Pat Toomey, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
SECTION: OPED; A19

While the TV cameras and newspaper headlines have been focused on the Senate's struggle with high-profile immigration issues, a less-visible drama has been unfolding on Capitol Hill that also provides a clear test of whether the 110th Congress is capable of producing good public policy.

The farm bill, which governs a wide range of federal programs from farm subsidies to food stamps, is being rewritten this year. Previous farm bills, especially the 2002 version, are noted for their smoke-and-mirror rhetoric, fancy procedural footwork and bipartisan lack of political courage. So far, this year's farm-bill drama appears to be no exception and is rapidly moving from a predictable Kabuki dance to the theater of the absurd.

The agricultural committees' diehard allegiance to the powerful farm-subsidy lobby is nothing new. This time around, however, non-agricultural committee members and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are under unprecedented pressure from an array of outsiders to reduce and overhaul farm-subsidy spending. Since January 2006, for example, newspapers in 33 states have written more than 170 editorials about the need for change, and with good reason.

Since 2002, the subsidies have bled about $15 billion a year from the Treasury. Absentee landlords who don't farm, including a New York billionaire, creamed off billions. The top 15 percent of farm-subsidy recipients receive more than half of the payments and have an average net worths of nearly $2 million. These are hardly the nation's neediest families. In the meantime, overproduction caused by the subsidies has driven down crop prices earned by developing-country farmers, many of whose families subsist on one dollar a day. Contrary to the rhetoric of the farm-subsidy lobby, the program hurts many of our farmers by giving artificial advantages to the largest, richest farms and undermining the prospects of small farms and new farmers trying to enter the business.

Farm subsidies have survived largely because of congressional leaders' refusal to challenge the subsidy lobby's dominance and the propensity of urban and suburban lawmakers to view the farm bill as a back-scratching opportunity. This time around, however, the agriculture committees' prerogatives are coming under heavy fire as congressional members are being sent a message that the farm bill adversely affects their constituents and they are going to be held accountable for their votes.

Faced with the prospect of a rebellion on the floor of the House of Representatives, the committee has been rolling out one gimmick after another in a head-spinning attempt to maintain control of its own farm bill.

First, there was the creation of a so-called reserve fund in order to pour more money into an already bloated farm-subsidy program. It soon became clear, however, that the reserve fund didn't actually have any money in it. That led to talk of trying to persuade House leaders to exempt the farm bill from Pay-Go rules and allow increased spending on farm subsidies without the required reductions in spending elsewhere. There was also a disingenuous and short-lived call for input from all sides to help write the House farm bill in committee simultaneous to an insistence that the farm-subsidy programs would remain largely intact. Sure enough, the committee voted down all serious reform proposals. It then had the audacity to adopt a sham limit on subsidy payments to persons with taxable income of more than $1 million a year that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described as "a critical first step toward reform by eliminating payments to millionaires."

Red flags should be popping up all over the offices of the House Leadership. Only 25 percent of the public gives Congress a favorable rating despite the promises to clean up the legislative process and make it accountable to the public. No wonder. The public is tired of the endless corporate welfare, the legislative gimmickry and the end runs around budgetary controls that were supposed to produce fiscal responsibility. Apparently the House Agriculture Committee has forgotten the promises that House leaders of both parties made after the 2006 election. Obviously, the public has not.

While the farm bill may not be an eye-popping headline grabber, it will nonetheless be a major test of the 110th Congress' political courage and integrity. It's time for members of Congress to see the farm bill as an opportunity to put their house in order rather than a vehicle for maintaining the business-as-usual atmosphere that is steadily eroding the credibility of the institution.

Pat Toomey is president of the Club for Growth.

The Union Leader (Manchester NH)
ANOTHER VIEW: Make federal agriculture policy fair for New England farmers
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: By STEVE TAYLOR and JAY HEALY
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. A13

It should be no surprise that farmers in New England receive less money from the federal government than farmers in Iowa or Nebraska -- there are far fewer farmers in this region to support. But what is surprising is that while farmers in Iowa or Nebraska receive 15 cents from the federal government for every dollar they earn, farmers in New England receive just a penny.

Why the difference? Do farmers in the Midwest spend more per acre to grow their crops? Or are their operations riskier? Actually, the answer is much simpler: Midwestern farmers receive more federal money for every dollar they earn because the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are dominated by members from Midwestern states, who ensure that the money keeps pouring in to their districts.

Every five years Congress must pass a farm bill that addresses all government spending related to agriculture. The bill includes everything from commodity subsidies for row crops like corn and soybeans, to conservation, farmland protection, and renewable energy programs, nutrition programs and food stamps.

The farm bill comes with a hefty price tag. Farm subsidies and conservation programs alone cost taxpayers around $25 billion each year. Between 2003 and 2005 a quarter of this money went directly to farmers in districts whose representatives are on the House Agriculture subcommittee that is responsible for designing our farm subsidy policy.

Only a small fraction of farmers, ranchers and forestland owners in New England receive any farm subsidies. Farmers and forestland owners in New England face stiff competition from much larger farms in other parts of the country, as well as the highest development pressure in the nation. Despite this, the working farms and forests that are an integral part of New England's rural landscape continue to provide the region with a wide array of fresh fruit, produce and dairy and forest products.

Farmers and forestland owners in New England aren't looking for a government handout. Rather, they're looking for a hand up, in the form of assistance with conservation, farmland protection, farm viability and market access projects that will benefit the environment, local economies and consumers. Yet two out of every three farmers who apply for federal assistance with conservation on their farm are turned away due to inadequate funds.

Our region is leading the nation in creating low-cost entrepreneurial farm viability and farm business planning programs. These programs help farmers transition away from commodity products to more profitable value-added, direct-to-customer businesses, creating more rural jobs and strengthening our region's invaluable working landscapes.

The 2002 farm bill included a farm viability program modeled on those in place in New England, but funding was never provided. It is critical that this farm bill provide farmers with the tools to increase their profitability by funding this program.

There is growing recognition that our farm policies need to do more than just pay a few select farmers to grow more crops. Over half of all U.S. representatives, including New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes, have signed on to at least one of several bills that would reform the farm bill to provide more funds for the conservation, renewable energy, farm viability and nutrition programs that benefit more farmers and consumers.
The House of Representatives will debate on the farm bill today.

If it passes, the bill will ensure that more than half of all farm bill spending continues to flow to just 20 congressional districts for the next five years. However, the House will also consider the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment to the farm bill, which will provide a better safety net for family farmers and will do much more to help meet our hunger, health and environmental challenges.

The time is right to reform our outdated farm subsidies and ensure that farm bill programs benefit more farmers in more regions, including New England. New Hampshire's delegates should be ready to fight for a farm bill that actually works for New Hampshire's farmers, forestland owners and communities.

The Union Leader (Manchester NH)
“EDITORIAL: Soooey!; Slop for the farm belt”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: OPINION; Pg. A12

When it comes to providing federal subsidies for farmers, Democrats in the U.S. House draw the line at subsidizing millionaires. And they have the nerve to call that reform.
The new farm bill would stop farm subsidies for farmers earning $1 million a year or more. The Bush administration wants the line lowered to $200,000 a year.

"There is a point at which people graduate from receiving government cash subsidies," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touts the bill as a "reform" of farm policy. It is really just more pork for farm belt fat cats, as it continues big subsidies for big agribusinesses. So much for curbing special interest influence in Washington.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
“A chance for reform”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. D10

With crop prices high, this is an excellent year to reform America's off-kilter farm subsidy programs. But the House Agriculture Committee has delivered, instead, a warmed-over version of the existing flawed system that has cost taxpayers $75 billion since 2002.

Farmers earning up to $1 million a year would eligible for federal subsidy checks under the committee's bill. That's actually an improvement over the current $2.5 million cutoff point, but President George W. Bush had proposed limiting most payments to those earning less than $200,000.

The House committee bill would continue channeling nearly all of the nation's farm subsidies to farmers producing just a few crops - mainly wheat, cotton, corn, rice and soybeans.

Much of the payout still would be based on crop prices. Mr. Bush had recommended basing eligibility on farm income, which doesn't always follow price. That would be a fairer way to ensure that more money goes to farmers who need it, but the president's clout is much diminished on Capitol Hill these days.

The full House soon will get a chance to get the subsidy program under control. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., is expected to introduce a scaled-down version of his "Farm 21" reform plan, which is similar in some ways to the sensible plan proposed by the president. Mr. Kind's plan would link subsidies to income. It would spend part of the savings on farmland conservation and rural development programs. It would set aside more fruits and vegetables for school lunch and snack programs - an important source of food and nutrition for millions of kids from low-income families. Cost projections are iffy, but the best guess is that the Kind plan would save $8 billion over the committee's version of the bill over the next five years.

Our wasteful farm subsidy program is ripe for reform. Mr. Bush sees it. So do many members of Congress. The best hope lies in a vigorous debate when the bill arrives on the House floor.

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (California)
“Real reform down on the farm”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; EDITORIALS; Pg. B6

SAN FRANCISCO, a city where plows are found in museums, has some 20 farmers who collect more than $100,000 per year in crop subsidies. It's an oddity - and basic unfairness - that goes with a wasteful national farm bill that needs reforming.

Yet these farmers - who are mostly landowners of Central Valley cotton and rice acreage - are likely to continue collecting government checks under a five-year farm bill facing a House vote today.

Unless this misguided bill is reworked, the nation will continue to reward big operators, do little for the majority of farmers and ignore sensible changes touching on conservation, nutrition and research.

The message in the proposed farm bill is politics, not policy. Overseeing this mish-mash of favors, subsidies and outdated thinking is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to reward rural Democrats from the Midwest and South.

While farm incomes are soaring, thanks to boom times and high corn prices for ethanol producers, she is sticking with a set of market props born in an era of hard times.

Pelosi is billing her party's farm bill as reform, but it's hard to think she really believes that. The bill continues rich subsidies for a handful of major crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans. Aside from subsidies for cotton and rice, the package does little good for California, where high-value fruits and vegetables are grown without Washington's largesse. President Bush on Wednesday said he may veto the bill if it lands on desk.

This farm bill fails the test in other ways. It offers less money than a Bush administration alternative for conservation. In California, such programs could reward farmers who don't burn off stubble, a source of severe smog in the Central Valley. Food and nutrition groups also want more support for fresh produce in schools and meal programs.

Mike Johanns, Bush's agriculture secretary, wants cuts in the payments and other changes that would remove the welfare syndrome around farming. The House measure, for example, touts changes that would end subsidies for farmers with incomes averaging more than $1 million, but this is a tiny group of 7,000 wealthy growers. Johanns favors dropping the ceiling to $200,000, which would hit 38,000 farmers.

There's another subterfuge. The money for this farm bill robs $4 billion in nutrition and food stamp funds. These essential programs must be paid for with a new tax, as yet unapproved. Where is the pay-as-you-go pledge that Democrats made when they took power in the House?

An alternative exists. A bipartisan bill backed by environmentalists, taxpayer and social-justice groups includes provisions that answer the shortcomings in the bill.

It would restore financial balance by cutting into the runaway payment programs. It would also reflect farm-country reality by rewarding conservation efforts, encouraging research on new crops and boosting nutrition programs. It's the real farm country reform.

Sacramento Bee (California) Also Fresno Bee
“EDITORIAL: Pelosi backs the wrong side in farm bill fight: The speaker puts her credibility at risk by rejecting reform in favor of partisan gains”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Jul. 26--The House is bracing for a food fight today. Yet even before lawmakers start debating amendments to the 2007 farm bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has egg on her face.

Purely for political calculations, Pelosi is supporting a five-year, multibillion-dollar farm bill that offers an unhealthy menu of continued taxpayer subsidies for big corn, wheat, soybean and cotton growers.

In so doing, Pelosi is rejecting alternative legislation that, while still bloated with excessive spending, promotes healthier foods, more sustainable growing practices and a partial transition to greater competition in the farm sector. Such a transition is essential if poor farmers in Africa and Latin America are going to compete against subsidized agriculture in the United States and other industrialized countries.

Pelosi knows this, yet despite a promise to lead a reform agenda, her priority is to retain power. Nine freshman Democrats from the Midwest and rural districts sit on the House Agriculture Committee, and several are worried about their re-election chances. By supporting a farm bill that continues to reward rich farmers in their districts, Pelosi can help Democrats retain control of the House -- but at a huge cost to her credibility.

Through this process, Pelosi has been corralled by Rep. Collin "Corn Subsidy" Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota who chairs the Agriculture Committee. Peterson has drafted a bill that offers a veneer of reform -- more spending for land conservation, wetlands preservation and nutrition programs -- while effectively maintaining the status quo.

Peterson says his bill would lower the ceiling for individuals receiving farm subsidies from $2.5 million to $1 million in adjusted gross income. But that's less impressive than it sounds. His proposal would affect only about 3,100 individuals nationwide who receive subsidies, saving a mere $55 million a year, according to analyses by the Environmental Working Group and the Congressional Budget Office.

By contrast, the Bush administration and bipartisan reformers want to end farm payments to anyone earning an adjusted income above $200,000. Such a ceiling would create three times the budget savings and would still affect only a small percentage of the 1.6 million individuals who receive farm subsidies.
The Depression-era arguments for the payouts -- food security, rural development -- have long since faded away. By continuing to subsidize millionaires and industrial farm corporations, the United States makes it difficult for small-scale growers to compete and innovate.

Here in Northern California, the rice growers who tend the waterfowl-rich fields argue that farm payments help them cope with trade barriers imposed by Japan and other countries. That's true. U.S. negotiators should demand more trade concessions from our industrial allies. But growers should also recognize that U.S. subsidies make us a pariah in certain international negotiations, such as the stalled Doha talks.

It's not every day this page finds itself on the side of President Bush and against Pelosi, but she's wrong on this crucial, 2007 farm bill. If she were to allow real reform to be added to the bill, she might be able to wipe some of the egg off her face.

East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Arizona)
“EDITORIAL: Down on the farm bill: It's past time to revamp the system, which rewards corporate ag businesses”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Jul. 26--We were going to push the nation's farmers off the welfare gravy train. We promised to remove the trade barriers protecting our agricultural industries from international competition, in part so that the poorest farmers in Africa could enter U.S. markets and raise their standard of living.

It was a commitment to expanding free markets and to promoting individual responsibility that was delivered by a Republican Congress and a Democratic president more than a decade ago. But like so many other pledges to roll back government, our leaders panicked in the face of a temporary economic downturn and emotional lobbying from agricultural interests. So today, the U.S. continues to prop up the fortunes of some farmers with $25 billion a year in subsidies.

But Congress has a new opportunity this summer to reconsider this heavily entrenched scheme that disrupts the balance of supply and demand while funneling most of the tax dollars to those who are the least likely to need or to deserve public assistance. Lawmakers must act to renew a series of complicated and conflicting agricultural laws often to referred to simply as the "farm bill."

The myth of U.S. ag policy is we are protecting hardworking farming families and creating an environment for them to produce daily sustenance for our tables at affordable prices. The reality is we have a system of subsidies that favors rich, corporate farms while driving the small entrepreneur out of business. Brian Riedl, senior budget and agriculture analyst for The Heritage Foundation, told us that a majority of subsidies go to large farms with average household income of nearly $200,000 and a net worth of nearly $2 million.

There is supposed to be a total limit of subsidies that any farmer can receive. But researchers and economists agree the restrictions are routinely bypassed with a series of shell corporations placed in the name of family members and other "partners." That's why one Arkansas company, Riceland Foods, received an average of $54 million in annual subsidies over a decade, according to the Environmental Working Group at www.ewc.org.

Some of our subsidies pay farmers who grow more when low prices mean they should grow less or switch to another commodity. Other subsidies encourage some farmers to grow nothing at all, in essence rewarding them for possession of unused land.

"The economic incoherence of American farm policy is staggering, even for government," Riedl said.

We also discriminate heavily, with 90 percent of the subsidies going to farmers who raise (or don't raise) just five crops -- wheat, soybeans, corn, cotton and rice. Such payments will continue even though corn is setting record prices this year with the ethanol craze (which we also subsidize heavily).
And cotton traditionally has been an important crop to Arizona. But humans don't eat cotton, so we don't have to raise it here to survive.

None of these facts are new. They were the driving forces behind the 1996 "Freedom to Farm" Act, a law that would have finally injected some sanity by phasing out crop subsidies while leaving a safety net with subsidized insurance and coverage for natural disasters.

But Congress and President Bush abandoned "Freedom to Farm" in 2002 and revived the old, bad system. As a result, we now hand over our tax dollars to "poor" farmers such as oil giant ChevronTexaco and former basketball star Scottie Pippen.
The House Agriculture Committee acted July 18 on a new bill that would offer a minor reform, lowering the maximum total assistance that a farmer could receive. But it also would raise the limits on individual direct subsidies that any eligible farm property could receive.

A much better alternative has been offered by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that include Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. The FARM-21 approach would replace crop payments with risk management accounts, or tax-free savings accounts for farmers to draw on when crop prices or farm income falls. Farmers who receive subsidies now would receive temporary government payments to help fill the accounts.

FARM-21 isn't perfect, as it also increases payments to farmers who hold their acreage for conservation. But this strategy would finally end decades of government dependence and declare that farmers should be just as capable of managing their own lives as bookkeepers, land speculators and dentists.

The Denver Post
“EDITORIAL Farm bill reforms are long overdue President Bush and environmentalists have joined forces to fight for a greener and fiscally responsible vision for U.S. agriculture.”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
SECTION: DENVER & THE WEST; Pg. B-06

In a rare alliance, environmental groups and the Bush administration have joined forces to reform New Deal-era farm subsidy programs that have wracked up a wretched record of failure over more than seven decades.

Alas, the reforms have run afoul of Washington's "politics as usual" approach and could be buried when the House votes on the farm bill today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown her power behind a status quo bill - thus undermining efforts to support healthy trends like farmers markets and organic farming that bring healthier food to consumers' tables while giving farmers a fairer share of the wealth they produce.

Pelosi has defended her support of a status quo bill because it would lower the means test for farm subsidies from the current ceiling of adjusted gross incomes of $2.5 million to "only" $1 million. In our view, $1 million isn't exactly the kind of grinding poverty that should tug at taxpayer heartstrings. In contrast, Bush, derided by liberals as an advocate of the wealthy, is fighting for a $200,000 cap.

Pelosi and House Agricultural Committee chairman Collin Peterson want a traditional bill that focuses taxpayer largesse on the five crops that have received 93 percent of past subsidies: wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice. Under this unfair policy, 60 percent of American farmers have received no subsidies at all, while checks go out to the favored minority even in years like 2007, when farm prices and production are high.

In contrast, President Bush and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns are backing reforms led by Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who want to steer more money toward conservation and to aid marketing of crops like fruits and vegetables. The Kind-Flake amendment would help get Western Colorado peaches, cherries, apples and other delights to Front Range markets. The bipartisan reform drive also wants to boost nutrition and rural development programs and focus on long-term issues vital to environmentalists and farmers alike, like clean water, soil conservation and global trade.

It doesn't take a genius to discover why one-time reformer Pelosi is now the biggest barrier to a greener farm bill. The Environmental Working Group has identified 10 freshmen Democrats whose districts received large subsidies between 2003 and 2005, ranging from Rep. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., whose constituents got nearly $900 million, to Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, whose district received $24.8 million. Pelosi fears the reform bill could upset these freshmen's bids for re-election, possibly endangering her fragile majority.

President Bush has said he will veto the farm bill if it arrives on his desk in the misbegotten form it left the House Agriculture Committee. If it comes to that, we'll certainly support the president, though we hope the Senate proves more responsible when it writes its own version of the farm bill in September.

But first, the farm bill is scheduled for a House showdown today. Colorado's delegation needs to follow the lead of the state's two members on the House Agriculture Committee, Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Democratic Rep. John Salazar, and support the effort to pass a sustainable and effective farm bill.

The Dallas Morning News (Texas)
“EDITORIAL: Opportunity Crops Up”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: The Dallas Morning News

Jul. 26--The House has a marvelous chance to change how farm programs operate. The stakes are high, though. If the House fails to approve a bipartisan amendment being offered today or tomorrow by Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and GOP Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, legislators likely will have to wait five years before they get another chance to reshape farm programs.
Here's the situation:

-- Mr. Kind and Mr. Flake plan to offer a substitute amendment that will change the guts of the proposed farm bill. Instead of maintaining the status quo with the two major farm subsidy programs, the Kind-Flake revision would reduce payments to both.

That's a very good move because Washington needs to continue moving away from subsidies to farmers, especially wealthy ones. Realistically, we will always have some federal involvement because of the vagaries of weather and international markets and because we need a steady food supply. But the more Washington meddles in agriculture, the more distorted the situation can become.

Just look at the rush of farmers to grow corn because of the big federal payments. The ethanol lobby has persuaded Congress to entice farmers to grow corn, so they are stepping up to take the nice payout, even though so much corn production has a horrible effect on water resources and food prices.

Mr. Kind and Mr. Flake would limit such distortions by reducing direct payments to crops like corn, wheat and cotton. Their amendment would take the estimated $12 billion in savings from direct payments and invest it in incentives for better land conservation, stocking food banks and paying down the deficit, among other goals.

-- Their amendment would help stop agribusinesses and wealthy landowners like David Letterman (yes, the late-night comedian) from grabbing farm subsidies. Today, farmers with adjusted gross income of $2.5 million a year qualify for subsidies. The Kind-Flake revision would limit eligible farmers to those who earn $250,000 a year after deductions, expenses and credits. We'd like to see the income eligibility even lower, but the proposal would march us back toward helping only farmers who truly need a hand.

-- If the House doesn't pass the Kind-Flake reforms and the Senate doesn't take up the cause, it will be five years until the farm bill comes up for renewal. That would mean more wasteful spending and more reasons for nations to rightly complain about our farm subsidies.

n It's instructive that groups as diverse as the U.S. Chambers of Commerce, the Environmental Defense Fund, Bread for the World and the Cato Institute back this proposal. You don't often get business groups, the green movement, hunger-fighting organizations and libertarians on the same page.

These are among the reasons we support this reform. We also strongly urge the North Texas congressional delegation to vote for Kind-Flake. Five years of more of the same is not a good option.

Chicago Tribune (Illinois)
“EDITORIAL: Cut farm welfare”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: Chicago Tribune

Jul. 26--If you believe it's outrageous to pay federal subsidies to millionaire farmers, then root for U.S. Rep. Ron Kind on Thursday. If you believe that farmers reaping near-record prices for corn and soybeans have no business collecting money from taxpayers, then root for Kind on Thursday.

That's when the House will begin to debate the next farm bill. Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, has an amendment that would alter U.S. agricultural policy radically.

Most farm subsidies go to the richest farmers of just five crops -- corn, wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton. The Democratic leadership's farm bill would do little to fundamentally alter the system of subsidies.

Ah, but Kind and his band of reformers would. (Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana is leading the effort in the Senate.) They would greatly reduce the convoluted system of farm price supports and cash payments. This would end the distorting policy that discourages smart, market-oriented farming, increases the cost of food and is the major obstacle to any progress on world trade talks.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Kind to succeed, but at least he is one Democrat willing to buck a system that rewards the few at the expense of the many.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked a good game before Democrats took control of Congress, but she has praised the bloated five-year farm bill that came out of the House Agriculture Committee last week, calling it a "good first step" toward reform.

Is she kidding? The Democrats' bill would give subsidies to farmers who have adjusted gross incomes of as much as $1 million. Yes, that's lower than the current cap of $2.5 million, but it still amounts to a government handout for people who hardly need it.

Kind's amendment would put the income cap at $250,000. (Incidentally, the Bush administration, often criticized for catering to the fat cats, has proposed an income limit of $200,000.)

Under Kind's reforms, farmers could set up risk management accounts, something like an IRA, in which they could invest and draw on when their income drops. His proposal would save $12 billion over five years, putting money into federal deficit reduction, hunger assistance, minority farmers and other efforts.
American farm policy has been held hostage by powerful agricultural interests for decades. Those interests don't want to see any change because this system works just fine for them.

The members of the House Agriculture Committee, who unanimously voted to move the leadership's bloated bill onto the floor, come from districts that received more than 42 percent of all farm payments from 2003 to 2005, according to figures gathered by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group.

Wealthy farmers don't need subsidies. On Thursday, root for Ron Kind and a sane U.S. farm policy.

Bristol Herald Courier (Virginia)
“EDITORIAL: Skewed priorities”
July 26, 2007 Thursday
BYLINE: Bristol Herald Courier, Va.

Jul. 26--A nasty fight is brewing in Congress as a farm bill -- still bloated with subsidies for agribusiness millionaires -- waddles to the House floor.

Lawmakers should cut the bloat. Trimming the fat will help the nation's wallet and its waistline.

The nation needs a farm bill that drastically reduces subsidies for commodity crops -- corn, wheat, sugar, soybeans and cotton. Corn, in particular, is fetching record prices on the open market, due to increased demand for ethanol. Price supports for corn farmers make little sense in such a climate.

But this is not the only strike against the bill's present incarnation. The bill continues the completely unjustifiable practice of using tax dollars to subsidize some of the nation's wealthiest farmers -- those making up to $1 million a year. This amounts to redistribution of wealth from middle-class workers to the captains of agribusiness.

Those on the government dole also include professional athletes and wealthy celebrities with hobby farms, farm-land owners who grow nothing at all and, even in a few cases, dead farmers. The subsidy system isn't mildly out of kilter; it's broken.

The third strike against agribusiness-as-usual is this: We are subsidizing the foods that are contributing to the national obesity epidemic. Unless something changes, researchers predict that 75 percent of adults will be overweight and 41 percent obese by 2015. That's cause for alarm.

Farm subsidies keep the raw materials of junk food -- high-fructose corn syrup and trans fats in the form of partially hydrogenated oils -- unreasonably cheap. Thus, chips are cheaper than carrots, and Twinkies cost less than salad greens.
The need for reform is so obvious that it has drawn an unusual coalition of supporters. Health advocacy groups, environmentalists and conservative think tanks all support drastic cuts in farm subsidies. In Congress, liberal Democrats and fiscally conservative Republicans support reform, as does the Bush administration. They do not like the present bill; in fact, Bush has threatened to veto it. Good for him.

Meanwhile, centrist, farm-state Democrats, some Republicans and the Democratic House leadership support a puny reform measure that does little to repair the subsidy system or to keep millionaires from collecting government payments. They are putting politics before the public good. More to a point, they want to keep the gravy train rolling for their backers in agriculture so that they keep their seats safe. They should not prevail.

America needs a farm bill that helps small farmers, not big businesses. It needs a bill that makes healthy produce more affordable and makes junk food less of a bargain, because it is no longer taxpayer subsidized.

House debate of the bill begins today. We urge our representatives, Rick Boucher and David Davis, to do the right thing and vote against this bloated beast in favor of a farm bill that sets the right priorities.

Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)
“Farm Program's Persistence Reveals Continental Drift”
July 27, 2007 Friday
BYLINE: A. Barton Hinkle
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A-17

Farm subsidies have come to resemble continental drift, an awe-inspiring force of nature the world seems powerless to stop.

Outside of the roughly 20 congressional districts where the program's recipients rake in most of the money it confiscates from their fellow Americans, the federal farm program draws nearly universal derision. Newspapers and think tanks across the ideological spectrum denounce it. Conservatives quite correctly deplore its absurd manipulation of the free market. Liberals quite correctly condemn its reverse Robin Hood effect: It takes money from the poor through higher prices and taxes, and forks the dough over to the rich.

The farm program has reached such absurd heights - despite repeated attempts at overhaul - that this now passes for reform: A House version of this year's farm bill imposes a means test so that farmers will not get subsidies if their gross income exceeds $1 million. That qualifies as reform because the current cap stands at $2.5 million.

You won't often see The New York Times editorial page quoted approvingly here, but The Times hit the bull's-eye the other day when it noted that "reducing an outrageous cap to a lower outrageous cap is not exactly our idea of reform. The $1-million limit is also five times the $200,000 cap proposed by the Bush administration, which [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is con-
stantly accusing of catering to the rich."

THE FARM program persists because of demosclerosis - the concentrated benefits create a powerful lobbying incentive, while the dispersed costs do not - and because the consequences are largely unadvertised. Few Americans know the federal milk program sets minimum prices for milk, and that producers get checks from Uncle Sam when they suffer market losses. Import restrictions keep the price of cheese, dry milk, and so on artificially high. It's the taxpayers who are really getting milked by this program - which gives the term cash cow a whole new meaning.

Likewise, a complex loan program works in conjunction with import and production restrictions to keep the price of sugar artificially high and the number of producers artifically low. Incredible as it might sound, the federal government decides each year how much sugar should be produced in the U.S. and how much of the quota should be produced by which companies. The program sounds more like something out of the defunct Soviet Union's Gosplan than the putative citadel of free enterprise. Between taxes and higher prices, U.S. consumers will shell out an additional $20 billion in the next decade because of federal control of the sugar market.

Likewise, corn farmers are set to receive $10 billion in direct payments during the next five years - despite record high prices for corn driven in large part by demands for ethanol (which demand, in turn, is driven by federal mandates with the blessing, and encouragement, of President Bush).

THEN, TO HELP poor people afford to buy foodstuffs whose prices are driven up by federal policy, the federal government will hand out food stamps under the auspices of the very same agency - the USDA - that manages the farm-subsidy system. Presto! Another built-in constituency led to believe it is dependent on politicians for economic security. Got a problem with your benefits? Call your local congressman - and don't forget to vote.

These plate politics aren't really as inexorable as plate tectonics, of course. America could end the Soviet-style system of farm supports if the country genuinely wanted to. The fact that the program persists does suggest, however, that the continent - or at least the U.S. portion of it - has somewhat lost its moorings.

Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City)
“End all farm subsidies”
July 27, 2007 Friday
BYLINE: Deseret Morning News editorial

Democrats won a majority in Congress in part because they promised to reform things. But that reform apparently doesn't extend to wasteful farm subsidies that benefit only the rich. The fight this week to ram a five-year farm bill through the House has made that clear.

Farm subsidies stand as exhibit A in the case against believing any politician's promise. They began during the Great Depression as an emergency measure to help struggling farmers who were going bankrupt and having to stand by while their land was auctioned away. They were temporary relief measures.

But when times got better -- even much, much better -- the subsidies didn't disappear. They became entrenched. Not only that, they became tools with which to make the wealthy much wealthier. Today, about 2 percent of Americans live on farms, and the wealthiest of these receive the largest government checks. That's because the system is designed to pay subsidies per acre. The large corporate farms get the tax help, while family farms, which themselves average more than $80,000 in annual income, receive little, if anything.

Not only that, only some crops are subsidized. If you grow fruits and vegetables or raise livestock, you get little, if any, subsidy. And yet the prices of those commodities have remained stable, which argues strongly against the need for subsidies in order to avoid market volatilities -- a commonly heard argument. In farming, as in everything else, the free market ought to rule.

The Democrats would limit subsidies to only those farmers who earn less than $1 million a year, which still would make a lot of rich people richer. The Bush administration has threatened to veto that and would prefer a bill that limits handouts to farmers earning less than $250,000.

Neither side has even attempted to offer a credible explanation as to why any subsidies are needed at all.

Meanwhile, subsidies encourage overproduction and add to worldwide poverty. Cotton farmers in Africa, for instance, cannot compete in the U.S. market because of the subsidies paid to American cotton farmers. Perhaps this form of protectionism appeals to some, but it is just the kind of unfairness the United States often decries when it exists in other nations.

A series of measures has been added to the bill, including nutrition and conservation programs, to make it seem noble and increase its chances of passage. But no amount of lipstick can make this pig look pretty. It's time for lawmakers to see farm subsidies for the corporate welfare handouts they are and kill them entirely.

Atlanta Journal Constitution
“OUR OPINIONS: End big-farm welfare;
Time is ripe to cut off subsidies to operations that reap more than $200,000 a year”
BYLINE: JIM WOOTEN; Staff
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 14A

If a piece of legislation before Congress is so awful that it manages to unite both left and right in indignation, surely it's headed for the compost heap.

But unfortunately, there's no sign that a Depression-era farm subsidy program that has cost taxpayers up to $35 billion a year --- $19 billion in 2006 --- is in any danger of serious reform.
There's no time like the present to begin easing well-to-do farmers and farm corporations off welfare. Prices for many crops, including wheat and corn, and for livestock are at or near record highs. The value of harvested corn is expected to reach $40 billion this year, according to the Agriculture Department, up from $22 billion in 2005. But even with corn at $3.30 a bushel, and even with a boom market in corn-based ethanol driving up milk and other commodity prices, corn farmers stand to collect $10 billion in federal crop subsidies over the next decade.

The bulk of those payments go to a relative few. The top 10 percent of beneficiaries have collected 72 percent of federal subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group, an organization opposed to subsidies. It has compiled a state-by-state list of subsidy recipients.

In Georgia, which ranks 17th among the 50 states in subsidies, the top 10 recipients collected more than $29 million in taxpayer handouts during the 2003-5 fiscal years, EWG reports on its Web site at farm.ewg.org/farm/. All Georgia farms collected $941 million; farm businesses, $367 million.

One farm business, PGC Farms of Brinson, in southwest Georgia, is among the top 10 nationally, EWG reports, collecting subsidies of $4.15 million in those years. Tops nationally was a Louisiana farm partnership that collected $7.9 million, followed by two Mississippi operations that received subsidies of almost $5.9 million and $5.4 million.

One fair and simple provision of the proposed five-year farm bill now being debated in the House would have put an adjusted gross income cap of $200,000 on farmers eligible for subsidies, down from the present $2.5 million. That's income after deducting operating expenses. About 38,000 farmers would be affected, said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, who supports the cap proposed by the administration.

But the House Agriculture Committee, whose 46 members account for just over 10 percent of the House but represent districts that get 40 percent of the handouts, instead set the income cap at $1 million. About 7,000 farmers would be affected.
Opposing the overly generous subsidy payouts is an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats, who think the bill does too little for conservation and nutritional programs, and conservative Republicans, who object to the price tag of $80 billion over the next 10 years in price guarantees, subsidies and other benefits. Another $690 billion will go to nutritional programs, conservation, research, rural development and biofuel development.

The time has never been better to get rich farmers off the dole. The $200,000 cap is a vital reform, fair to farmers and more fair to taxpayers.

These are prosperous times for agriculture --- and it's well past time for the rich to move off welfare.

The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
Our view: Legislators must be mindful of the big picture while they're addressing, among other issues, a flawed subsidy system
July 27, 2007 Friday
BYLINE: The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Jul. 27--If you care about what's on your dinner plate, you need to pay attention to the Farm Bill being debated in Congress.
The bill, which should more accurately be called the "Food and Farm Bill," determines how the government will fund many food and nutrition programs across the country for the next five years. The bill covers the food-stamp program that aids poor families; land conservation; nutrition programs in public schools; farm subsidies; and rural development, research and energy programs.

We urge members of Congress, and particularly Arizona's delegation, to carefully weigh all aspects of the bill and strike a fair balance in funding that will do the most good for the most people.

One flaw in the Farm Bill that Congress should address is the subsidies that U.S. farmers receive to grow five types of crops -- cotton, corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. Those subsidies will amount to $42 billion over the next five years under the legislation under consideration in the U.S. House. The Senate has yet to take up the measure.

The total Farm Bill would cost $286 billion, meaning subsidies make up about 15 percent of the Farm Bill's cost. That might not seem like much when considering the size of the pie, but subsidies do more than put money into the pockets of the nation's farmers.

A panel of activists who met with the Star's editorial board last week said subsidies take away money that could otherwise go to make diets healthier, conserve rural land, boost family farms and help the poor receive nutritious foods. Subsidies may also play a role in exacerbating the problem of illegal immigration.

By subsidizing certain crops, the U.S. government is essentially giving those foods a leg up in the marketplace. Corn, for instance, becomes cheaper and is more prevalent in the American diet instead of fruits and vegetables, which are supported with fewer Farm Bill dollars.

One activist, Dereka Rushbrook of the border humanitarian group No More Deaths, said subsidies, along with the North American Free Trade Agreement, have resulted in many Mexican farmers being put out of work because they are unable to compete with cheaper U.S. commodities. Out-of-work farm workers are more likely to immigrate illegally to the United States, Rushbrook said.
An amendment written by U.S. Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., would cut back on subsidies and route more money to specialty crops like fruits and vegetables, conservation efforts, and nutrition and rural development programs.

The issue is almost as complicated as the immigration-reform bill that failed in Congress earlier this summer. There are many competing interests, and no bill will satisfy all lawmakers.
Most Republicans and some Democrats oppose the Farm Bill, while President Bush has promised to veto it. The bill is supported by the Democratic leadership and most lawmakers from farm states.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., said she supports the Farm Bill because it increases funding for specialty crops, though not as much as the Kind amendment would.

"I don't want to see the Farm Bill killed," said Giffords, whose district has received about $10.6 million per year in subsidies over the last five years, according to Environmental Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group. "There are a lot of very good things about this bill."

We urge lawmakers to keep the big picture in mind, however, and consider all the ramifications of helping one group at the expense of another.

A boost for big farmers won't necessarily be good for schoolchildren who deserve healthy meals, or a farmer in another country who is trying to scratch out a decent living.

The Washington Post
“Rush for Credit; Congress records some modest -- and dubious -- achievements as it heads toward summer recess”
July 28, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A18

THE DEMOCRATIC congressional leadership is anxious to put some points on the legislative scoreboard before it leaves for its summer break. This week, lawmakers made progress with one of their top priorities: a homeland security bill contains some useful improvements, though it is not as good as it could have been or as its sponsors claim. Meanwhile, Democrats slid back into farm business as usual with passage of a bill that preserves wasteful subsidies.

The newly brokered deal to pass a bill based on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations revives the first proposal the House considered this session and a part of the Democrats' "Six in '06" campaign platform. The bill was stuck for months after differing versions passed each chamber, but House and Senate negotiators settled their differences this week. The resulting legislation contains some helpful provisions. It would authorize grants for improving security on vulnerable public transportation networks, for example. It would also rejigger the formula for distributing homeland security grants to states, decreasing the amount each state must receive under the law -- which would have the effect of increasing the amount of money available to the areas of the country most at risk.

Even so, we see no compelling reason for any amount of money to be reserved for states that face little chance of terrorist attack. The bill also would require the Department of Homeland Security to develop in just five years the technology, know-how and international agreements necessary to scan all sea containers bound for the United States -- an almost certainly impossible task. This mandate was approved even though Congress already created a pilot program last September to test the feasibility of scanning all containers. Fortunately, congressional negotiators inserted language that would allow the homeland security secretary to push off the deadline by two-year increments under certain circumstances -- a loophole that will no doubt create a biannual ritual for the DHS.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her House leadership also deserve discredit for forcing through an irresponsible farm bill that renews an indefensible subsidy system. The legislation does include some necessary funding increases, in nutrition and conservation programs, for example, and a (high) income cap for subsidy payments. But it otherwise fails to significantly improve on the bad farm payments system designed in 2002. This farm bill might help a few Democratic lawmakers from predominantly agricultural districts, but it defrauds nearly everyone else in the country. Unlike the Sept. 11 bill, this is no accomplishment, and President Bush would be justified in vetoing the House's version.

Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
“Political games Congress again ineffective in attacking serious issues; this time, farm policy.”
July 28, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 06B

The so-called compromise farm bill being protected and advanced by congressional Democrats shows the power of political inertia, particularly concerning farm policy and particularly in swing states.

Because of political and not practical considerations, more money than needed will be spent on subsidies, a significant part of which would be vulnerable to legal challenge through the World Trade Organization and endanger trade. This, despite a year of record prices and projected farm profits.

Understandably, a farm bill is written for five years, not one, so there is a need to plan ahead for potential downward cycles. But this political opportunism is ridiculous. In all, the bill proposes approximately $42 billion in subsidies and farmer support. By contrast, it would spend $29 billion on promising programs in rural development, research and alternative energy.

Instead of focusing on the needs of farmers, rural communities and the needs of American trade in nonagricultural industries, House Democrats are playing tired games with tired slogans.
To divide the rural bipartisan momentum that had been building, they inserted a tax provision for multinational corporations -- one that plays on a returning theme of class warfare -- because partisans knew industry groups would push Republicans to oppose the bill.

Let that sink in. The farm bill that resisted a bipartisan attempt to rein in subsidy spending to more reasonable and internationally acceptable levels now includes a provision to increase taxes.

And before apologists can frame this as some attempt to make corporations pay their fair share, questions should be asked about whether the food-stamp funding provided by this creative corporate tax could be self-fulfilling.

The reason: How many Americans could join the ranks of the unemployed because their multinational employers would pay new taxes under the farm bill?

Observers have been talking for years about how crucial the farm bill revamp would be this year. Now that the time has arrived, it has become an occasion not for sound policy deliberations but for status-quo thinking and partisan machinations.

Farm bill supporters have resisted even modest reforms on spending, preferring instead to nibble around the edges of politically dicey issues.

A sensible administration push to improve the fiscal health of American farm policy has been paid just enough lip service by Democrats to protect the status quo for large-scale Southern farmers.

And newly elected farm-state Democrats get to go home and show off the bacon they have brought. Regardless of the party in charge, regardless of an issue's importance, Congress has dodged its duties.

With the House's opportunistic approach on the farm bill, Washington is again proving itself an ineffectual means of addressing real issues and real problems. Perhaps the Senate will be able to steer matters toward a more sensible approach. But don't bet on it.

The New York Times
Still Waiting for Farm Reform
July 28, 2007 Saturday
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; EDITORIAL; Pg. 14

Doling out last-minute benefits as only a speaker can, Nancy Pelosi managed to kill a progressive farm bill on the floor of the House. The House then passed a bill that further enshrined an outdated and excessively costly system of guaranteed subsidies. It is now up to the Senate, which will address the issue in September, to devise a new and improved bill that eliminates the old subsidies and uses the savings for food stamps, conservation and other causes worthier than making big farmers even richer.

The sweeteners that Ms. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders used to squelch the reform effort, mostly improved the final product. More money was added for conservation programs, for school lunches and for international nutrition.

Even so, the bill perpetuates a lopsided system of price supports and direct payments for producers of major row crops like corn and soybeans, even though crop prices, fueled by the ethanol boom, are at an all-time high. These same generous handouts also complicate international trade negotiations, and -- especially in the case of cotton -- discriminate against poor overseas farmers who cannot compete with America's subsidized producers.

The good news is that there is a core group of influential farm state senators ready to break with the past and with the lobbyists for big agriculture. They include Tom Harkin, the agriculture committee chairman from Iowa; Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat; and Richard Lugar, a moderate Republican from Indiana.

All have expressed interest in a redesigned farm program that would replace guaranteed subsidies that simply encourage overproduction with programs that would protect farmers against price swings and natural disasters -- helping, that is, at moments when farmers truly need help.

Billions of dollars would be redirected -- at far higher levels than the House envisions -- to conservation, renewable fuels, food stamps and growers of specialty crops who are now largely frozen out of the system. President Bush, who is threatening to veto the House bill, favors many of these ideas. With his help, the forces of reform may yet prevail.

The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
Reform farm subsidy system
July 29, 2007 Sunday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 14

CAMPAIGNING for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, Ronald Reagan railed on those who look to government for handouts. The chief villain in Reagan's speech was what he called the "welfare queen."

"She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veterans benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names," he said.

Reagan continued using the welfare queen example for several years, even after it became well known that his tale was an outrageously exaggerated version of a real case in Chicago. While Reagan's "welfare queen" may have been fictional, she did become an icon of sorts for conservatives: an irresponsible black woman who got rich off honest taxpayers' dollars. She helped fuel a fallacy that would remain at the heart of the liberal-vs.-conservative culture wars that have engulfed this country ever since: the inaccurate belief that minorities were the main recipients of welfare and were the primary drain on the U.S. economy.

WE WONDERED last week what Ronald Reagan, now venerated among conservatives, might have said about millionaire farmers - or farmland owners, or relatives thereof - collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in government money through federal farm subsidies. Or of a program that is set up so a farmer can collect a government subsidy if the market price of a crop drops to a certain level, then store the crop and sell it when the market price goes up. Of a program meant to keep farmers in business to ensure the stability of the American food supply that has largely become an accounting game that sends millions of dollars to nebulous corporations and people who have never driven a tractor.

There is no question that protecting America's food and agricultural commodity supply is among our government's most important duties. Thus, we have come to accept that subsidizing the country's farm industry is a necessary step toward ensuring stability in this important part of our economy.

But the current farm subsidy system is in desperate need of an overhaul. As currently written, it creates a battleground that pits actual farmers - those who are supposed to receive the subsidies - against mega-farm operations and large landowners. It creates a system that helps the giant operators thrive while rent prices for many farmers rise and slice into already thin profits. It lets people with incomes as high as $2.5 million collect subsidies. And like Reagan's phony "welfare queen" analogy, it creates an inaccurate public perception that farmers are getting rich on the public dole.

FARM SUBSIDIES should go to those who work in the fields and do real farm work. Those who earn substantial incomes, say $250,000 annually, should not be eligible for government money on top of it. And subsidies should be calculated on yield and revenue, not market price alone.

Those are ideas embraced by a farm bill proposed last week by Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. The bill is a marked contrast of a measure passed by the U.S. House on Friday, which does little to reform the current system.

"I'm concerned about the absentee ownership, that so many of our larger farm payments are going to people who haven't seen a farm in generations," Durbin said. "I really want to focus our help to the family farmers and local farmers, and to put a reasonable payment limitation as a means to avoid the embarrassment of past subsidies."

We couldn't agree more, and we hope Durbin's Democratic colleagues in the U.S. House are listening.

Monterey County Herald (California)
Small farms take a stand
July 29, 2007 Sunday
BYLINE: Brian Brennan The Art of the Possible

The Farm Bill that sets U.S. agricultural policy every five years is typically big news in America's heartland, but usually makes no better than page 3 in much of the rest of the nation. This year is different. A struggle for the heart of the bill is currently playing out in Congress, and Monterey County has a big stake in the outcome.

America's farmers have not managed to buck the image of U.S. agriculture policy as a glorified trough of government handouts, largely because U.S. agriculture policy has been a glorified trough of government handouts.

Those rugged individualists out on the Plains received $34.7 billion in farm subsidies between 2003 and 2005. Of course, most of the subsidies did not go to individuals at all, but to sprawling industrial farms. The largest 8 percent of farms received 58 percent of payments. Farmers with annual gross incomes up to $2.5 million are currently eligible.

Monterey County farmers have had little to do with this embarrassment. The lion's share of subsidies is for The Big Five: corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat. Monterey County farmers received almost nothing. The vast majority of Monterey County's farm production involves "specialty crops," an odd term that essentially means all American crops other than grains.
The bill making its way through Congress includes some wisps of reform, including for the first time a significant allocation for specialty crops: $1.6 billion over five years. But this is a relatively small piece of a pie that included $19 billion in subsidy payments for The Big Five last year alone.

Specialty crop growers are falling over themselves to point out that any funding for specialty crops will not come as subsidies.
"We don't believe in subsidies. We want a competitive marketplace," said Jim Bogart, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of the Central Coast.

Monterey County Farm Bureau head Bob Perkins calls the idea of propping up prices by suppressing supply, paying farmers not to farm, a thing of the past. Instead, he argues for expanding market access abroad to increase demand for U.S. produce.
Newly organized as a force on Capitol Hill, specialty crop growers are also calling for investments of federal dollars in agricultural research and pest eradication programs, as well as a new infusion of fruits and vegetables in the nation's school lunch and food assistance programs. They are finding common cause with health-care organizations and anti-poverty advocates. Yet the congressional establishment in both parties is hesitant to upset the farm state electorate that will be keys in the 2008 campaigns.

A bipartisan group of legislators led by Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake has been trying to upend the agricultural powers-that-be with an amendment that would scale back subsidies while boosting funding for conservation and hunger programs by nearly $10 billion. And the total bill would be $13 billion less than the version favored by House leaders. Moreover, the Kind/Flake amendment would increase funding for specialty crops by 75 percent.

Regardless of the fate of the Kind/Flake amendment, President Bush has threatened to veto any farm bill that cleaves too closely to the status quo. And he is right to do so. The specialty crop money will go to areas where government has a place: that is, areas like agricultural research and disease prevention/mitigation programs, where there is clearly a public interest in new investment.

A new direction for our school nutrition programs is due as well: we would do well to substitute more fruits and vegetables for the obesity bombs that too often pass as snack food. These are reforms that make sense: They're good for Monterey County, and they're good for the country.

The Denver Post
Organic food for thought Eaters should speak up on 2007 farm bill
July 29, 2007 Sunday
BYLINE: Cindy Torres Boulder County farmer; manager, Longmont Farmers Market
SECTION: PERSPECTIVE; Pg. E-01

It's tempting to take for the granted the summer's first rush of peaches and sweet corn. But if you're a conscientious eater who's concerned about how those sweet and delicious foods got to your table, you might want to delve into the 2007 farm bill.

Like certain comets, farm bills come around only once every five or six years. But make no mistake about it, they are the most important food and farm legislation that Congress enacts because they set the direction of the American food system for years to come. And for the first time in the history of farm bills, the 2007 version could be as helpful to consumers as it is for farmers - that's if eaters also speak up as food citizens.

One problem with the farm bill has been its historical lack of balance. Colorado farmers and ranchers, very few of whom were fruit and vegetable farmers, received only 1.1 percent of all the crop subsidies in 2005. Also left out of the picture are African-American, Hispanic and Native American farmers, making it difficult for Colorado to establish a healthy, culturally diverse local food system.

Imbalances like these have consequences for eaters as well. The combination of aging farmers selling off farmland at a rate of 250 acres per day in Colorado and lack of funding for beginning farmer programs is contributing to the decline in local food production. And in what may be the most severe imbalance of all, 500,000 Coloradans are hungry or don't know where their next meal will come from. For these people - most of whom are children, elderly, and single mothers - the Food Stamp Program, which is part of the farm bill, is all that stands between them and hunger. Many Colorado farmers markets are equipped to accept food stamps, but the food needs to be there for the program to work.

How do we put "food" into the farm bill? There are several good ideas that could make our food system healthier, such as the one that would supplement school meal programs with hundreds of millions of dollars of additional fresh fruits and vegetables. This would encourage children to eat better, and open up large new markets for local and regional farmers. The stumbling block is the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has told local school districts that they cannot give a preference for food purchases to local farmers. The irony here is that by allowing a local preference, existing federal expenditures for school meals would strengthen thousands of fruit and vegetable growers at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

Innovative ideas like local preference are also being spawned through a small USDA grant program known as Community Food Projects. To date, this program has enabled 250 communities to develop solutions to their own hunger, nutrition and farm problems. Community Food Projects promote up-by-the-bootstrap community problem solving, but it receives only $5 million a year. Because of such limited funding, only five projects have been funded in Colorado since the program's inception.
As even eaters know, if there are no farms, there is no food.

Federal funds must be directed to rebuilding the capacity of regions to store, process and transport food. We must push for the allocation of conservation funds, distributed through the Conservation Title of the farm bill, to assist with better management of natural resources, promoting sustainable farming. As agriculture has gotten bigger and more concentrated, local farmers have lost canneries, slaughter facilities and flour mills. The less distance food must travel, the less negative impact our food system will have on climate change, and the stronger our local food economies will be.

The 2007 farm bill can take us down the road to healthy food and farms, or it can perpetuate the imbalance that has existed for too long. It will be up to the eaters to decide.

The 2007 farm bill Environmental groups have joined with the Bush administration in an effort to dramatically revamp farm policies that date back to the New Deal of the 1930s. Instead of traditional subsidies for wheat, cotton, rice, corn and soybeans, reformers want more emphasis on fruits and vegetables, farmers markets and freer international trade.

House reformers and supporters of a traditional bill battled last week, after President Bush threatened to veto an old-style bill. The Senate will take up the farm bill fight in September.

Bristol Herald Courier (Virginia)
EDITORIAL: Farm bill politics
July 29, 2007 Sunday
BYLINE: Bristol Herald Courier, Va.

Jul. 29--An outdated, Depression-era commodity crop subsidy system skews the nation's agricultural policies.

The U.S. House had a chance to enact real reform by dramatically cutting the subsidy system. Politics got in the way.
Instead of improving the farm bill, the House made it worse -- larding it up with all manner of unrelated pork to persuade reluctant Democrats to support it. The add-ons included international food aid money and funds to settle racial discrimination claims of black farmers. While these programs might deserve funding, they should be debated on their merits -- not added to a bloated farm bill to buy congressional votes.
This bit of legislative sausage-making allowed the commodity crop subsidy system to pass through the process largely intact.

Reforms will be relatively minor, and total commodity crop subsidies will actually increase. For instance, under the present system, farmers making up to $2.5 million a year can receive government subsidy payments. The House version of the farm bill lowers the cap to $1 million a year, but this isn't enough.
The Bush administration's reform proposal eliminated subsidies for farmers who make more than $200,000 a year and set stricter rules to keep farmers from collecting payments for multiple farm businesses. It also would have prevented some of the outright abuse of the system, including farm-land owners who collect subsidies, but grow no crops, and payments to dead farmers.

A bipartisan reform of the subsidy system, known as FARM21, would have accomplished many of the administration's goals. The House killed this reform measure last week, after big farmers used to receiving big government payments lobbied for its death.
Reps. Rick Boucher and David Davis were among those voting against FARM21's real reforms. They've got some explaining to do.

Cutting the subsidy program wouldn't harm this region's farmers -- most of whom collect nothing at all under it. The proposals contained in FARM21, meanwhile, would have increased farm and food spending in both men's districts, according to an analysis by Environmental Defense. Boucher's district would have reaped an additional $40 million; Davis' district an extra $30 million.
Under the reform bill, much of the new money would be directed at small farmers who grow fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops. The current system favors millionaire farmers and factory-scale farms that produce corn and soybeans for America's junk food industry.

The House was set to take another vote on the farm bill late last week, but the best shot at reform -- FARM21 -- was already dead. Reformers' last hopes may rest with the Senate, which takes up the matter in September, and with President Bush, who has pledged to veto any farm bill that preserves the bloated subsidy system.

We urge the Senate and the administration not to pass on this golden opportunity to craft a sensible agricultural policy that benefits small farmers and consumers, rather than lining the pockets of those in the wealthiest sliver of agribusiness. Don't play politics with the nation's farm policy.

The Roanoke Times (Virginia)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
July 30, 2007 Monday
EDITORIAL: Subsidy system stuck in a time warp

BYLINE: The Roanoke Times, Va.

SECTION: COMMENTARY

LENGTH: 402 words

Jul. 30--Congressional Democrats are more interested in protecting vulnerable farm-state incumbents than in trimming billions of wasteful spending from the farm subsidy program.
Despite a brutal series of stories in The Washington Post that laid bare the waste and abuse of the multi-billion dollar subsidy system, it appears poised to survive largely intact in the 2007 Farm Bill.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is backing a bill advanced by the Agriculture Committee -- whose members' districts received more than 40 percent of all farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005 -- because she fears freshmen Democrats in rural districts could have a hard time winning re-election if subsidies are cut.

President Bush is threatening to veto the bill in its current form.
"The bill put forth by the committee misses a major opportunity," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "The time really is right for reform in farm policy."

Johanns is right. Prices for the major subsidized crops -- corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat -- are very high, and not expected to drop.

Of the $21 billion in farm payments last year, 92 percent went to those five crops. Some wealthy farmers made millions from selling their crops, and millions more in subsidy payments.
As Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. said, "If we can't reform these farm programs at this moment in our history, we will never be able to."

But the Bush administration is hardly a poster child for reform. Bush supports keeping direct payments made to farmers even when they are selling crops at high prices.

The subsidy system is stuck in a time warp. It needs a complete overhaul to reflect modern agricultural practices and needs.
Abuses reported in The Post include $1.3 billion in subsidies to people who aren't even farmers, including $490,000 in checks to a Houston heart surgeon for land that hadn't been farmed in at least a decade.

The 2007 Farm Bill is the perfect vehicle for major reform, but it appears that politics will win instead.

That's a $21 billion shame.

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA.)
OUR VIEWS; Subsidy Insanity
July 30, 2007, Monday
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B10

Middle-class Americans should not be responsible for bolstering the incomes of millionaire farmers and multibillion-dollar corporations. Yet despite promises of reform, Congress on Friday passed a bloated and pork-laden farm bill. President Bush would do well to veto the legislation.

The House of Representatives last week had a chance to fundamentally alter U.S. farm policy. Instead, members defeated a shrewd amendment to HR 2419 to phase out federal subsidies for farmers who earn more than $200,000 a year. The proposal by Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., would have set up savings accounts in lieu of direct payments, to help farmers insure against disaster. The five-year, $88 billion bill now heads to the Senate, but President Bush has already threatened a veto. Good.

Legislators' approach to farm-subsidy reform would only perpetuate unfair policies that benefit wealthy landowners. The current subsidy formula lets farmers collect generous payments if their adjusted gross income does not exceed $2.5 million a year. HR 2419 would drop that ceiling to $1 million a year.
While that may seem an improvement over the status quo, it still means middle-class earners will pump up the incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. Among the farmers that collected crop assistance from the federal government last year: ExxonMobil, Tyson Foods and Bill Gates.

The bill would further waste taxpayer money by spending billions on crops in no danger of failure. The treasury doled out $17 billion in farm payments last year, compared with $7 billion in 1996 - the last time Congress seriously attempted to restrain subsidies. HR 2419 would continue federal payouts for corn, soybeans, cotton and rice - crops enjoying record prices. And the bill would create new subsidies for "specialty crops" such as almonds and hops.

The federal government launched its extensive price-support programs in the 1930s to help struggling farmers survive the Great Depression. Today, in the midst of a booming global economy with crop prices reaching all-time highs, the New Deal rationale for farm subsidies no longer applies. If farm-subsidy reform means anything in the 21st century, it should mean an end to anachronistic policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

The Washington Times
Growing farm subsidies
July 31, 2007 Tuesday
SECTION: EDITORIALS; A18

With the prices of many subsidized row crops at or near record levels and with farm incomes very strong and likely to remain so for some time, this was the perfect moment for Congress to begin reforming the trade-distorting, welfare-laden farm-subsidy programs. Regrettably, the House balked last week. Real reform will now be up to the Senate, where Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana and Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa could lead a bipartisan reform agenda. The Senate will be considering its own five-year farm-overhaul legislation after the August recess.

However, if the Senate follows the House's path to failure, President Bush will need to exercise his veto threat and force Congress to reconsider. Otherwise, an opportunity for real reform will have been lost for at least another five years, and the prospects for rescuing the multilateral Doha trade negotiations will suffer another major blow.

The good news is that the five-year, $286 billion House measure, which was passed last Friday by a 231-191 vote, did not achieve a veto-proof two-thirds majority. The bad news is that scores of Republicans decided to vote against this previously bipartisan measure only after Democrats added a provision that would have increased taxes by $7.5 billion over 10 years for foreign multinational corporations operating in the United States. If the tax increase were not part of the bill, a veto-proof margin for a very bad bill almost certainly would have been achieved. In other words, it is fair to say that the House remains a bipartisan obstacle to real farm reform. Indeed, House GOP Minority Whip Roy Blunt declared that the farm bill could "easily have been a huge bipartisan victory" without the tax provision.

A much-preferred substitute bill, offered by Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, was resoundingly defeated 309-117. A similar substitute bill that Mr. Kind offered in 2001 garnered 200 votes, including the vote of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker. In an effort to protect the new Democratic members who were elected from rural districts last year, Mrs. Pelosi opposed the Kind reform bill this year and embraced the business-as-usual bill produced by the Agriculture Committee. Worse, more than 75 percent of Republicans opposed the Kind-Flake measure as well.

Farmers are notorious for gaming the present system of price-based counter-cyclical payments, which the Kind-Flake bill would have reformed. The substitute bill also would have barred farmers with annual adjusted gross incomes of more than $250,000 from receiving subsidies. The Democratic version, which most House Republicans supported absent the tax measure, allows subsidies for farmers earning up to $1 million per year. To its credit, the White House wanted the limit to be $200,000. The Kind-Flake bill also would have limited direct payments, which are made to qualified farmers (and their wives) irrespective of crop prices, to $40,000 per person. Direct payments should have been eliminated altogether, but the measure passed by the House actually raises the individual limit for direct payments by 50 percent - to $60,000.

The Senate will have its hands full. Let's hope it has a backbone.

Sacramento Bee (California)
New Democrats support same old U.S. farm policy
July 31, 2007 Tuesday
BYLINE: Daniel Weintraub
SECTION: EDITORIALS; Pg. B7

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have listened to Berkeley chef Alice Waters, or to Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Instead, she went with the Farmers Rice Co-op, King Ranch and Buttonwillow Land and Cattle Co.

Waters and Pollan were among those urging Pelosi and the House of Representatives she leads to overhaul the nation's farm policy, shifting billions of dollars from subsidies for corporate agribusiness to a means-tested safety net for real family farmers, plus policies to promote healthier foods and sound stewardship of the land.

But Pelosi last week turned back their pleas and sided with big agriculture -- and her political instincts. She is supporting a farm bill that would preserve the worst parts of U.S. policy and, perhaps, help farm-state Democratic incumbents maintain their tenuous hold on districts they captured in the 2006 elections.
Pelosi says that the bill she supports includes the "first steps" toward reform. But at best those steps are tiny. And since the United States sets farm policy only once every five years, this was a rare opportunity for Democrats to show that their newly ascendant leadership in Congress will fight for real change. They've failed that test.

U.S. farm policy is a remnant from the Great Depression, when more than a quarter of Americans made their living off the land and were vulnerable to changes in the weather and market conditions. Today, farming is a big business increasingly dominated by large corporations. But the subsidies originally adopted for the family farmer continue and have been warped to favor the largest companies at the expense of the little guy.
According to Environmental Defense, 10 percent of farming operations now collect more than 60 percent of direct subsidies paid under the farm bill. And according to OxFam America, a non-profit working to end world hunger, 92 percent of the subsidies go to the growers of just five commodities: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice.

California ranked 10th in the nation in payments received from 1995 through 2005, but 91 percent of California farmers and ranchers do not get any payments at all, according to the Environmental Working Group, which tracks the subsidies and publishes a database of the recipients. The Rice Co-op was the biggest California recipient last year, with payments of more than $5 million spread among its members. Texas-based King Ranch, with operations in California, and the Buttonwillow Land and Cattle Co. were not far behind.

The subsidies encourage farmers to grow big-volume crops, flooding world markets at the expense of small farmers in other countries and drawing complaints against U.S. policy at the World Trade Organization. The current subsidies also lower the cost of raw materials for the processed food companies that rely on corn syrup and soy, while doing almost nothing for the growers of fresh fruits and vegetables and the consumers who want to buy them.

While it would be better to phase out all subsidies, that isn't feasible in today's political climate. The next best thing might be the idea pushed by the movement Waters and Pollan helped lead. Their coalition is pushing for a third way -- not ending the subsidies but overhauling them to put them in the service of a different set of policy goals.

Those goals were reflected in an amendment authored by Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. Their proposal would have replaced price guarantees and direct payments with a safety net to protect farmers from declines in prices and crop yields. It would have denied subsidies to farms making more than $500,000 a year (or $250,000 per person), and it would have shifted some of that money into programs to preserve fragile land and promote specialty crops, organic foods and farmers markets.

But with the House Agriculture committee dominated by farm-state Democrats, including nine freshmen looking to strengthen their hold on their seats, it would have taken strong leadership from Pelosi to steer the debate toward reform. Kind's proposal failed, and the bill that resulted protects the status quo. While it purports to limit payments to $1 million per person or $2 million per farm, critics say that it opens new loopholes that will actually let some operations collect more than ever.

The irony is that the reform proposal would have distributed more money than current policy to the vast majority of congressional districts. That's because the farmers in just 20 districts now collect more than half the subsidies. According to Environmental Defense, 36 of 55 freshmen would have seen their farmers do better under the Kind amendment, with only 7 doing worse. For the others it would have been a wash. But in each district, large and powerf