Harvest of shame: Senate farm bill feeds subsidies to agribusiness
Tribune Editorial
Article Last Updated: 12/19/2007 05:47:56 PM MST
If you want to know why the American people have such a low opinion of Congress, do a little reading about the $286 billion farm bill the Senate passed on Friday.
The bill expands the already bloated subsidies for wheat, barley, oats and soybeans, despite record prices for those crops. It does not reduce direct payments, which many farmers receive for simply owning land and growing crops on it.
These antiquated policies subsidize rich investors, feed the unhealthy American diet, distort international trade and enable the rape of the environment. Yet the Senate rejected attempts to reform this entitlement program for agribusiness, despite the willingness of about half the Senate to vote for at least some reforms.
Both Republicans and Democrats supported efforts to plow under this archaic, wasteful system. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill. But so far, none of these pressures have been able to overcome the determination of powerful lawmakers from farm states in the South and Great Plains to bring home the bacon to Big Ag for another five years.
Ultimately, seeds of reform withered in the arid wasteland of the Senate.
Think the House bill might be better? Forget it. In many ways, it's worse.
Under current law, subsidies are banned for those farmers with incomes above $2.5 million who make less than three-quarters of their income farming. President Bush wanted to cut that ceiling to $200,000, and another amendment would have capped total payments at $250,000 per farm or end all payments to growers who make more than $750,000 from full-time farming.
The bill passed by the Senate would, by 2010, eliminate subsidies to farmers whose adjusted gross income tops $750,000 and who earn less than two-thirds of their income from agriculture.
So long as subsidies continue, however, they will distort the market. Advocates for subsistence farmers in developing nations argue, rightly, that U.S. farm welfare makes it impossible for local growers to compete with subsidized U.S. commodities. The families of impoverished farmers undercut by U.S. subsidies go hungry.
So, bumper crops fed by pork in the U.S. Senate create a harvest of shame abroad. That' s globalization for you.