THE WAY FORWARD - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 185

practices, or help farmers financially to change their practices. Programs such as the Environmental Qual-
ity Incentives Program (EQIP) can help farmers implement cost-effective, environmentally beneficial pro-
duction methods such as grasslands and wetlands management and better management of manure.
But too often, these funds are used to subsidize short-term, technology-heavy “fixes” to the pollution
problems of industrial livestock and crop operations. Under EQIP, the 2008 Farm Bill delivered a subsidy
to factory farms by dedicating 60 percent of program funding to livestock operations. Between 2003 and
2007, taxpayers paid $179 million to cover manure management costs for factory dairies and hog opera-
tions (not counting chickens or cattle) under EQIP. One way to address this problem is to cap the size of
individual grants given under the program, and to limit grants to smaller and mediumsize facilities.
Farms receiving benefits from Farm Bill programs should have to comply with good conservation prac-
tices, and conservation compliance provisions in the Farm Bill can help ensure that they do. These provi-
sions focus on maintaining proper soil conservation on land that is subject to erosion and protecting wet-
lands by cutting off access to some Farm Bill funding if minimum environmental standards are not met.
These requirements should be maintained and strengthened in the next Farm Bill. Conservation program
funding should be targeted to operations that provide the greatest long-term environmental returns. Funds
should facilitate the transition to and maintenance of farm management strategies that improve biod-
iversity; minimize air and water pollution; and conserve soil, water, and other essential resources. Con-
servation programs should support the transition to organic farming and help farmers identify crops and
techniques appropriate to their region's water resources and climate.
Farm Bill research dollars should be geared toward supporting organic agriculture, helping farmers
transition to more sustainable methods, and developing publicly available technologies and plant and an-
imal breeds. In the past, federal dollars have been shifted toward applied research that is conducted jointly
with the private sector. Agribusinesses are thus able to develop and market the fruits of USDA-funded re-
search for private gain.
Future Farm Bill research titles should shift toward policies that will benefit smaller-scale farmers in-
stead of agribusinesses, with research being performed for the public, not private interests. It should focus
on alternatives to industrialized production, including reviving research into non-genetically engineered
crops and livestock breeds and low-input and sustainable production methods such as grazing livestock.
Putting an End to Gene Tinkering
Genetic engineering involves manipulating the genetic makeup of plants or animals to create new organ-
isms, a process with many unintended consequences. Promoted by the biotech industry as an environment-
ally responsible and profitable way for farmers to feed a growing global population, despite all the hype,
genetically engineered plants and animals do not perform better than their traditional counterparts.
Lack of vigilance by the federal government, including a dearth of responsibility, collaboration, or or-
ganization from the three U.S. federal agencies responsible—the FDA, the USDA, and the EPA—has put
human and environmental health at risk through inadequate review of genetically engineered (GE) foods, a
lack of postmarket oversight that has led to various cases of unintentional food contamination and a failure
to require labeling of these foods.
The real winners are the handful of biotechnology companies that patent specific genetic crop traits and
sell the GM traits in seeds and affiliated agrochemicals to farmers. A few major chemical and pharma-
ceutical giants now dominate the seed industry, which once relied on universities for most research and
development. Between 1996 and 2007, Monsanto acquired more than a dozen smaller companies, and it
now controls an estimated 70 percent of all GE corn and 99 percent of all GE soybeans planted in the Un-
ited States. The few firms that do exist often have cross-licensing agreements for their patents that create