Farm Bill
Dorgan-Grassley: The End of Southern Agriculture
No, make that the end of all US agriculture, and dependence henceforth on "foreign sources" for everything we eat.
I think that was the gist of Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-AR) appraisal on the Senate floor this afternoon of the most controversial policy choice now looming in that body's farm bill debate: the Dorgan-Grassley farm subsidy cap of $250,000 per farm, per year (fact sheet from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in the jump).
Evidently it comes down to this: eat poisoned foreign food, starve, or provide unlimited subsidies to the very largest rice and cotton operations in the South.
Forever.
Never mind that the subsidy lid in Dorgan-Grassley will affect only a relatively small portion of Arkansas farms. It couldn't possibly affect very many operations if it is reducing commodity program spending by just over $100 million per year (against projected annual expenditures of more than $8 billion).
Never mind that any of the operations that might be affected will have options for dealing with it, as the Commission on the Application of Payment Limitations To Agriculture made clear in 2003, in response to a congressional mandate in the 2002 farm bill. Here are those options, in one concise chart from Chapter 5 of that report.
This is a graphic depiction of how a gigantic farm might respond to tightened subsidy limits. It's not a chart of how America will become "dependent for our food like we are for our oil" on foreign countries if Dorgan-Grassley becomes law.
Let's also note the irony of the cotton and rice lobby scaremongering about the United States coming to rely on imported food if subsidy limits are tightened, when those very commodities rely so utterly for economic solvency on the export of their products. About half of the U.S. rice crop and 70 percent (or more) of the cotton crop is exported each year. That's right: cotton and rice survive by the grace of foreign countries who are willing to rely on a "foreign source" of food and fiber--us.
Take a look at the top farm subsidy beneficiaries starting with the Arkansas Department of Corrections, and subsidized farm businesses in Arkansas, for the three "program" years 2003-2005. Click on a few of those businesses and you'll commonly see a dozen or more pass-through beneficiaries collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars every year from taxpayers through these big operations.
And now, to steal a page from Dan Owens over at the Blog for Rural America, check out this example of what some of these operations look like: the 9,875 acre "Mississippi River Plantation/ Rice & Deer & Ducks" spread at the top of this page. Asking price: $35 million. Click through, scroll down, and see one of this property's biggest selling points: Government money, charted by year, and every single year it's above $200,000.
You can Google up any number of operations like this where the most important streams flowing through the property are not of fresh water but taxpayers' loot.
Based on the chart, had Dorgan-Grassley's farm subsidy cap of $250,000 been in effect, it would have trimmed the money for this $35 million Mississippi operation. But not by much in most years, and in some years, perhaps not at all.
Since when were taxpayers obligated to provide unlimited subsidies to cotton and rice businesses, when those businesses can comply with Dorgan-Grassley and still be worth $35 mil?
Since we started giving unlimited subsidies to gigantic rice and cotton plantations, that's when. It's time for change.
Mind you, it's not easy to explain to most American how $250,000 per year can possibily be called a non-repayable subsidy "limit." I've been trying for years, and here's the answer that works the fastest with almost anyone.
"But of course $250,000 is a limit--in Washington."
Fact Sheet on Dorgan-Grassley from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
Background:
In recent years, many of the original goals and methods of commodity programs have been abandoned and replaced with production subsidies that encourage overproduction and often low prices. Negative consequences of these policies include farm consolidation and the disappearance of mid-sized family farms, land prices rising well beyond market levels, reduced farming opportunities for a new generation of farmers, and the growth of industrial animal feeding facilities. While a variety of reforms are needed to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of current commodity programs, the very effective first step Congress could take in the 2007 Farm Bill is to cap subsidies to mega farms through the Dorgan-Grassley Farm Program Payment Limitation Reform Amendment.
The Dorgan-Grassley Farm Program Payment Limitation Reform Amendment would:
--Limit annual per farm commodity subsidy payments to $250,000. The amendment would establish effective caps of $40,000 on direct payments, $60,000 on counter cyclical payments, and $150,000 on loan deficiency payments and marketing loan gains, including gains on generic certificates and forfeited commodities. The combined limit would be $250,000.
--Close loopholes. No longer would farmers be able to use generic commodity certificates or forfeitures to the government to evade the limits. Those limitation avoidance mechanisms would now count against the limits. All payments would count toward an individual’s limit, whether received directly or through a corporation or other type of entity. All beneficial interests in an entity would be subject to payment limitations, making it more difficult to create “paper” farms for the purposes of exceeding the limits.
--Ensure that payments flow to working farmers. The amendment creates a measurable standard to determine who is eligible to receive farm payments. It requires that management be personally provided on a regular, substantial, and continuous basis through direct supervision and direction of farming activities and labor and on-site services. Landowners who share rent land to an actively-engaged producer remain exempt from the “actively engaged” rules provided their payments are commensurate to their risk in the crop produced.
The $1.15 billion in savings from the Dorgan-Grassley Payment Limitation Amendment will be shifted to:
--Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program ($60 million)
--Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account Program ($20 million)
--Pigford black farmer lawsuit settlement with USDA ($100 million)
--Rural Microenterprise Assistance Program ($40 million)
--Farmers Market Promotion Program ($15 million)
--Organic Certification Cost Share Program ($3 million)
--Community Food Grants ($50 million)
--Grasslands Reserve Program ($45 million)
--Farmland Protection Program ($52 million)
--Emergency Food Assistance Program ($315 million)
--Food Stamp Benefit Enhancements ($396 million)
