Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat
Farming Park Avenue: Farm Subsidies from Manhattan to Montana
By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 9-04-07
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| Caption: Farm Subsidies in Manhattan. View a Map of United States Farm Subsidies here. | |
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In early August, Mike Johanns, Secretary of Agriculture, spoke to Nashville farmers and ranchers about the 2007 Farm Bill, which regulates government expenditures for food and farm programs ranging from school lunch funding to farm subsidies. The bill is voted on every five years and is currently in the Senate where it will likely be reviewed in September.
After commiserating about the drought and insidious grasshoppers, Johanns discussed proposed changes to subsidies in the Farm Bill and how those will affect farmers and ranchers in this country. According to Johanns, the USDA proposed that if farmers make an annual adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, producers would “graduate” from receiving the Title I cash subsidies. Even that stipulation would only affect 38,000 farmers. By comparison, he argued that the House version of the Farm Bill, passed in July, will only affect 7,000 people because it will not graduate farmers unless they make $1 million annually.
For Johanns this system is inequitable and to highlight the misuse of farm subsidies in the United States, the Secretary turned to a map of Manhattan, the New York City borough in the most densely populated county in the United States where land sells for $1,500 a square foot. Each red dot on the map represents a farm subsidy payment made under the 2002 farm bill with the largest circles representing quarter of a million dollar payments.
In response to the blotted map of subsidies Johanns said, “…there isn’t a person…that believes that’s what should be happening with our farm programs. And I’ll go even further. I believe America supports our farmers, but we have to make the case whether we’re in town or in the country that these programs make sense, that they are a wise federal policy and a good investment for food security and now fuel security.”
While the map may seem like an over-simplification of farm policy and subsidies it is a shocking statement about the state of agriculture. There is certainly agriculture in New York City, as detailed in the recent “food” issue of the New Yorker. But the community gardeners and beekeepers with apiaries over Brooklyn are practicing the locally based, sustainable kind of agriculture that remains unmapped and primarily unfunded by the Farm Bill.
Throughout the 2007 Farm Bill revisions, many nonprofits and organizations such as The Farm and Food Project proposed various policy amendments that would support localizing efforts such as implementation of CSA programs and funding for community food projects. However, most were not included in the 2007 Farm Bill. (Full list of these amendments-opens pdf.)
Instead of implementing such innovations, legislators it seems must remain focused on fixing a broken subsidy system. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a public interest research and advocacy group that maintains a database of farmers receiving subsidies, 66 percent of crop subsidies go to 10 percent of program participants.
Again New York state is a prime example as it received $1.11 billion in subsidies from 1995-2005. But 73 percent of all New York farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments. Instead, the bulk of the money went to just ten percent of the subsidy recipients, including over 1,300 businesses in New York City.
These businesses are primarily large, multinational corporations such as the Westvaco Corporation of 299 Park Avenue, which received some of the largest subsidies ($½ million) in New York City from 1995 to 2000.
In the case of Westvaco, now known as MeadWestvaco, subsidies are paid for land producing corn and barley in other states such as Kentucky and Mississippi, but the funds are directed to the multi-national corporate owner.
Information on subsidy recipients around the country is detailed in EWG’s updated online database. EWG gleaned information from millions of previously unpublished USDA subsidy records in order to provide, “nearly full disclosure of federal farm subsidy beneficiaries for the first time.” The records include information on individuals whose subsidy payments move from plantation-scale farm businesses to the corporations that actually receive the payments. In many cases, the names of individuals had not been connected to subsidy payments prior to this database. These include some 350,000 people who had not been identified as direct recipients of subsidies but who actually received almost a third of the $34 billion in crop subsidies between 2003 and 2005.
Through this disclosure, EWG now reports that farm program benefits are concentrated into a small bastion of large operations. One percent of the beneficiaries received seventeen percent of the crop subsidy benefit from 2003 to 2005. These benefits averaged around $125,000 dollars annually for each person. These subsidies are also concentrated geographically with only 19 of 435 congressional districts getting half of the crop subsidies paid from 2003-05.
While some Farm Bill reforms might change these inequitable subsidy systems, EWG believes that “…on balance, this House farm bill will be remembered as a missed opportunity for reform of federal farm policies that are broken at their core. It also represents a failure of House leadership to serve the broader needs of the nation; instead they took their cues at every turn from the farm subsidy lobby.”
With such large and controversial issues looming over the Farm Bill, it seems apparent that the Senate will continue to focus on these reforms rather than focus on ways to support the beekeepers tending hives above Brooklyn and small family farmers selling vegetables in Missoula, Salt Lake and around the country who are farming without such financial protections.
You can thank democrat Nancy Pelosi et al. for this. See The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070813/blake
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The new House Democratic majority could have produced a different outcome. Instead, reformers say, Democrats expediently protected subsidy-heavy Congressional districts. "It is the status quo with an illusion of reform wrapped around it," declares Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, an organization that keeps a database on all government subsidies to farmers. "The House bill was about entrenched interests who managed to push it off as reform," asserts the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. The farm-bill reform movement--armed with editorial-page support from more than seventy daily newspapers--will next vigorously lobby the Senate, which is scheduled to come up with its own overhaul of the subsidy system in September.
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Pelosi is taking heat for it in the SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/07/ED8SRDQ6K1.DTL
Please send the enclosed to your Senator, Senator Harkin and others for their reaction to what is really going on with farm spending and what will happen under the House bill. Thanks Alan Roebke (rebkey)
Senators needs to look at Hector Minn and see the storage expansion of Hector farms II on the south end of town along 212. Then go one mile east north east and see the storage for Charles and Barb Melberg. Do our Senators really believe we need to continue to subsidize farms like these? A good question for all Senators, Congressmen Peterson and your readers. Alan see enclosed questions.
Real Farms, for U.S. Senators debating Farm Policy!
How will the House farm bill affect top farm couples that averaged $240,000 per year in subsidies for the last eight years fare under new House limits?
Then analyze the House bill based on the "Top Producer of 2007" Tom Farms, Leesburg Indiana! Compared to a traditional operation Max and Gina Deatsman in Leesburg. Including two similar specialty farms in Congressmen Peterson's district. Hector Farms II and Charles and Barbara Melberg, Hector Minnesota. For a view of spouses, with separate payment limits under well managed farms.
These top operations will give the Senate Ag Committee a strong base needed to ask and understand the missing economic questions of the present bill and the House bill.
Is it right to focus on payment limits or is it best to focus on the economic realities of today's diverse farming community and show how subsidies are actually handled?
Should we be subsidizing farms that have farm operations in both North America and South America? Should the number of counties and total acres farmed matter?
When seed corn sells for up to 100 times the House target price of $2.63/bushel for field corn used as livestock feed and ethanol production, should it be subsidized?
How will a historic tomato producer benefit under the house tomato pilot project. Why is it needed and who is the real benefactor? Then how will this top producer and others specialty farms benefit if the WTO total flexibility request is adopted. For many WTO members are demanding that for all specialty crops have full flexibility.
Should there be a limit on the acres or amount of crop insurance subsidized per individual or operation. If calculated, how much would crop insurance increase total ewg.org subsidy totals? Has crop insurance become a profit center for most crops?
Do these and other specialty farms need the additional historic investment in fruit and vegetable production that is contained in the House bill?
What has crop flexibility and huge subsidies done to their land cash rents, farmland values and net worth? Should Senators add land values and net worth to the debate?
Does the House farm bill really continue the traditional farm safety net with today's high production costs? For when comparing target prices and average yield's, compared to USDA projected costs per acre, some real deficiencies appear!
What is "ensure the U.S. cotton/rice is competitive in world markets mean in the House bill? Does this mean we continue to export at least half of the cotton/rice crops below the Farmers cost of production?
Why has Congressmen Peterson not adopted any of his Districts sugar beet policies? For sugar is the only remaining Farm Program that operates as a no-cost farm policy. Compared to the 2002 acts dumped no-cost peanut policy, with new taxpayer costs?
Will the Senate expose the windfalls for both peanuts and rice under the 2002 act?
Why is there no inventory management section for farmers in the House farm bill? For these are all non-perishable crops that have inventories that can be stored until the next marketing year. Giving farmers increased marketing or usage options for profit.
Please pass this page to your U.S. Senator! http://www.Truepolicy.com Alan Roebke Chaska Mn.
George Will said it well: “The world is divided between those who do and do not understand that activist, interventionist, regulating, subsidizing government is generally a servant of the strong and entrenched against the weak and aspiring.”
Comment By Dean, 9-07-07Look under EWG Farm Subsidy Database-Montana. Who do you think continues to recieve the most in farm subsidy checks? Our Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation DNRC. How can this be??? Follow the money trail.
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Blowing the Whistle on "ACRE", A New Farm Subsidy Option!
New farm policy has a $10 billion annual cost potential that need’s public debate. To examine it’s costs and USDA’s decision to administer ACRE using 2007-2008 crop prices and not 2006-2007 needed to control costs!
This option to maximize subsidies will become policy on August 14th 2009 if not challenged by the public in an open forum. For President Obama asked Congress for one Billion in annual Farm Subsidy savings over the next 10 years and targeted farm subsidies in his speech to the nation. Which Congress replied, "Dead on Arrival" and in fact, Committee action is asking for about $3 billion more for fiscal 2010 without exposing the cost of ACRE!
Yet just released data from major land grant colleges reveals high potential cost. Yet this data was only designed to help farmers select the best option to maximize farm subsidy dollars through 2012, without any consideration or release of potential taxpayer costs. Showing only that corn Farmers in Ohio and other major corn producing states. Could pocket $118/acre on their 2009 crop if their state corn revenues drop. While the "Traditional Option" that U.S. Farmers have been subsidized under since the 2002 crop, would cost taxpayers no additional subsidy dollars for the three major crops. Leaving Soybean production with a potential $86/acre gain and Wheat production the potential for about a $50/acre average gain for wheat producing states!
So while President Obama fails to find or deliver any government spending cuts. Farm subsidy amounts could actually double or more over the next four years, compared too present estimates. This, as Obama’s own Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack works to administer the costlier option of the ACRE guidelines, chosen by former Secretary Ed Schafer. That would best be described as maximizing farm subsidy costs, rather than minimizing farm subsidy outlays through 2012. This without even warning the Public, President Obama and Congress, of huge Farm subsidy cost potential triggered by an option little understood, even by today’s Farmers.
What’s even more disturbing about Vilsack and USDA’s administration of farm policy is this. There is no standardization of likely economic examples on ACRE. For farmers to best understand this new policy called ACRE. Even after all major Universities have shown their hand or examples, designed to best explain ACRE’s pro’s and con’s. So I’m calling for a oversight summit, of our key University data sources, who are distributing info to Farmers relating to the ACRE option.
For after reviewing the ACRE explanations coming from Iowa, Kansas and Ohio. There still are math and formula differences or mistakes that need addressing or standardized by a summit of just a few key analysts, if ACRE is to be implemented with either price option as it’s base.
For correcting proven errors today, within our modern academician world without public exposure isn’t possible. Nor does the public have a chance to see true governance, when the only public meeting’s are controlled by politicians and lobbyists. So if Secretary Vilsack, would just chair a public meeting of Glauber, Barnaby, Babcock, Zulauf and Roebke. The elitism and cost of all farm subsidies can to be addressed in an environment of meaningful economic light.
So Secretary Vilsack, it’s time for an open forum on Farm Subsidies and Policies and not just business as usual from politicians! Alan Roebke (REB-key) Alexandria Minnesota!
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