WASHINGTON (ABP) — Justice for poor farmers and support for free trade are motivating a broad coalition of liberal, moderate and conservative groups to urge changes to an agriculture bill the House is considering.
But the legislation affects much more than farms, touching on everything from food stamps to rural development and global economic justice.
In a July 25 Capitol Hill press conference, leaders as diverse as Democratic and Republican House members, an African-American Baptist minister, spokespeople for anti-tax groups and environmental advocates argued for an amendment to the 2007 Farm Bill. The legislation, which emerged from the House Agriculture Committee the week before, has been touted by the committee and the House's other Democratic leaders as a “farm reform” bill, but a group of fiscally conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats are calling it a boondoggle.
“I think that the loopholes, in fact, with the committee bill [are] so large you could drive a combine through” them, said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), one of the chief sponsors of a proposed “Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment” to the bill.
“We don't need to be sending million-dollar checks out,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), referring to the crop subsidies that the federal government has given to farmers for decades in an effort to stabilize the farm economy.
However, in recent decades, the subsidies have begun to have an unintended effect, often subsidizing the owners of large, wealthy farms while providing little or no help to smaller farmers, many of whom are minorities.
“Minority farmers — especially black farmers — have been all but shut out of the subsidy programs,” said Earl Trent, executive director of missions for the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
The current farm bill, in place since 2002, is up for renewal. While many leaders — including several Christian groups such as Trent's PNBC and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — had urged the House Agriculture Committee to reform the subsidy program, the bill emerged from that panel with little real reduction in the caps on subsidies offered to the wealthiest farmers.
According to the anti-hunger group Oxfam America, the richest five percent of U.S. farm owners get more than half of all the “commodity payments,” or federal subsidies.
The committee bill, for example, would reduce the cap on the annual income of farmers who can receive the subsidies from $2.5 million to $1 million. But that reduction, according to a Department of Agriculture study, would affect only a couple thousand of the nation's million-plus farms.
Kind and Ryan's amendment would deny subsidies to farmers who make more than $500,000 a year or more than $250,000 annually if less than two-thirds of that income is derived from farming, ranching or forestry.
The amendment also would change the way the government tries to stabilize crop prices, targets money specifically to help minority farmers and uses some of the money saved on crop subsidies to help enhance federal conservation and food-stamp programs.
The nation's farm policy has, since the New Deal era, been largely controlled by the members of Congress who sit on the agriculture committees of each chamber. Usually from the Midwest and South, the committee members have steered much of the money for commodities to crops grown in those regions, such as corn, wheat, soybeans and cotton.
And, with strong backing from powerful farm-lobbying groups, they have resisted efforts to change the Farm Bill's structure. David Keating, director of the anti-tax Club for Growth, termed the bill a “special-interest bonanza.”
The unintended consequences of the bill, though, are manifold. Subsidies that go to large farmers but often bypass small operations have exacerbated the trend of smaller-scale farmers selling out to their larger, wealthier neighbors.
In turn, the exodus of such farmers from small towns in the nation's heartland has devastated local economies, creating an economic ripple effect. Baptists have begun to notice the problem due to their increasing involvement in rural economic-development efforts like CBF's Rural Poverty Initiative.
The subsidies also have an international effect: cotton growers in sub-Saharan Africa and rice growers in Haiti, for example, can't compete with subsidized American imports.
But reform in this year's bill may be difficult, despite the bipartisan opposition to it. Many of the House Agriculture Committee's members are freshman Democrats elected from conservative farm states. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has made it a priority to protect those seats from Republican hands, and farm lobbying groups are strong in many of those states.
The White House released a statement July 25 in which President Bush threatened to veto the bill if it passes the House without major changes. In response, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) said the bill was the most reform he could muster in a closely divided Congress.
“This Farm Bill is supported by a broad spectrum of agriculture, conservation, nutrition and renewable energy advocates. It represents a carefully crafted compromise that includes substantial reforms and new investments in programs that matter,” he said in a statement. “The House Agriculture Committee put together a balanced, fiscally responsible Farm Bill, and I am confident that the House of Representatives will stand with us in supporting this important legislation.”
The House is expected to begin debate on the bill July 26.
David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister who heads the Christian anti-hunger group Bread for the World, said if the groups pulling for more farm reform don't get it in the House, they'll try in the Senate.
“This is a David-and-Goliath situation,” he said, following the press conference with fellow amendment supporters. “But I believe in the Bible, and David wins.”
The bill is H.R. 2419.
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Read more:
House Agriculture Committee page on 2007 Farm Bill
Bread for the World page on “Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment”
Baptists, other Christian leaders push for reform in farm bill (7/18)