Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ers to pay less for the crops that are their raw materials. Ending government payments to farmers will not
fix the problems in our food supply because the payments are the result, not the cause, of the low prices
farmers receive for their crops.
Timothy A. Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Envir-
onment Institute at Tufts University, who has researched the role of subsidies in farm policy confirms:
“Government subsidy checks are written to farmers, but they aren't the true beneficiaries of U.S. farm
programs. Agribusiness is. Input suppliers like Monsanto and John Deere benefit from the increased pro-
duction—and demand—the subsidies encourage, and agribusiness buyers like Smithfield and Cargill reap
the benefits of the lowered prices that result. Farmers remain squeezed between these oligopolies, paying
dearly for inputs and getting lower prices for what they produce.”
Farmers lose when crop prices collapse, but buyers of those crops win. Cheap grain prices are exactly
what big agribusiness processors want and what they have used to design their business models. With
lower-cost inputs of corn and soybeans, they can produce their processed junk foods and high-fructose
corn syrup much more cheaply. And instead of raising livestock on pasture, animals can be crammed into
factory farms and fed artificially cheap corn- and soybean-based animal feed.
Instead of encouraging overproduction and maintaining farm programs that benefit the big agribusiness
companies, it is time to restore commonsense supply management policies and price safety nets that make
agribusiness, not taxpayers, pay farmers fairly for the food they grow and we eat. This means bringing back
strategic grain reserves, requiring that farmers leave a portion of land fallow, and maintaining minimum
price floors for crops to ensure that at the very least farmers are paid for the cost of producing their crops.
Jim Goodman, a Wisconsin family farmer and a Family Farm Defenders board member, adds, “Farmers
need access to farm credit, a fair mortgage on their land, fair prices for the food they produce, and seeds
that aren't patented by Monsanto or other big corporations. Consumers need to be able to purchase healthy
and local food, and to earn a living wage.” 2
If we are to really change the politics-as-usual debate on the Farm Bill every five years and create a
sustainable food system for the long term, it is critical for progressives in the environmental and conserva-
tion movements to stop blaming farmers for the food policies that agribusiness and the food industry have
lobbied for and achieved incrementally over the past eighty years. Scapegoating farmers is not only unfair,
it also will not help us build the farmer-eater coalition that we need to advance enlightened agriculture and
food policy.
While it is easy to rile up food activists and get media attention by focusing on the subsidies received
by “greedy” farmers, this alienates a critical constituency for changing farm policy. The name-calling has
provided the shills of corporate agribusiness, food manufacturing, and other regressive economic interests,
such as the American Farm Bureau, the ammunition to divide farmers from progressive food and farm ad-
vocates.
We must be clear. We will not be able to change farm policy it we do not join forces with farmers so that
we can elect and hold accountable the members of Congress from the farm states. Food & Water Watch
researched the composition of the agriculture committees of both houses of Congress over the past thirty
years. Research director Patrick Woodall explains: “The members of the congressional agriculture com-
mittees have always represented more rural states and constituencies. Farm policy is written by legislators
from the Midwest, high plains, and across the Southeast, not from the biggest cities. Progressives need to
make common cause with the farmers and rural communities and not work at cross purposes by demoniz-
ing the farmers and rural voters that live under the boot heel of agribusiness power.”
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