Diary Of A Mad Voter: Nathaniel Hoffman
Farm Bill Gives Me Nada for my Corn
By Nathaniel Hoffman, 5-19-08
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A couple of years ago I called Idaho potato magnate J. R. Simplot to ask him about farm subsidies. There was an Associated Press story coming across the wire that listed billionaire-farmer Simplot as one of the largest recipients of government farm subsidies in the country, and since Simplot is a major player in southwest Idaho, my editor wanted his side of the story.
I forget now how much J.R. was raking in for not growing certain crops or for growing certain crops or just for being a magnate: the details are not important right now.
But I recall Simplot’s quick response to my question almost verbatim: “If I got it, I earned it and I’m not giving it back.”
Well last week billionaire farmers got a reauthorization of the Farm Bill through Congress. And even if President George W. Bush, who is actually concerned about excessive subsidy payments to wealthy farmers, vetoes the bill, Congress is likely to override the veto.
The subsidy lobby apparently dumps enough of this farm welfare cash back into votes and campaign contributions. In other words: they got it, they think they earned it and they are not giving it back.
Candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton praised the bill, citing increases in conservation programs, food stamps and healthy school lunches that are bundled in with the billions of dollars in subsidies. Candidate John McCain stood up against rampant government farm subsidies and the poor food policy they breed on the global stage.
There was a blip of stories on the Farm Bill passage in Idaho’s media, and there may be more stories if the veto battle comes to fruition.
But something else is going on in agriculture in Idaho and across the nation.
And it is related to the big dirt pile in my front lawn. I have been digging up a section of my lawn to plant corn. It’s hard work and it broke 90 degrees in Boise over the weekend, so I hope my corn grows tall this summer.
At a Green Expo in Boise on Sunday I heard a telling statistic: there are more farmers’ markets in the United States now than Wal-Mart outlets.
Farmers, to whom rows and rows of corn and wheat are mere abstractions, are creating their own food economies. Farm economist Benjamin Gisin, who publishes Touch the Soil Magazine, spoke about dozens of such projects spread across the country: urban orchards, local currencies, barter systems, suburban lawn farms and organic farm franchises.
But Gisin opened his talk with dispatches from Egypt where there are bread riots and the military has turned to baking and Indonesia where rice is scarce and street vendors are urged to skimp on this staple. I failed to see how a blossoming of local food economies in towns like Boise will help solve some of these global food crises.
But I fail to see how the Farm Bill does this either. U.S. agricultural policy has ruined farming in many parts of the world, including in Mexico, where we depressed the price of corn, sending millions of out-of-work farmers here to look for work.
What we should be exporting are these local food culture ideas and practices. Not that developing nations need our help in creating food cultures. Where we Americans are starting from scratch and learning how to eat from the ground up, Mexicans still know how to grow corn and how to prepare it in a myriad of naturally tasty ways.
America’s agricultural power lies in our ability to deemphasize food as a commodity to be traded on the global stage and reemphasize food as food. While provisions in the Farm Bill for food security and the development of local organic farms will help, the system of farm subsidies is stuck in the food-as-commodity days.
When my corn grows tall in a few months and I dry it and pound it into tortillas and give them to my neighbors I will have taken a small chunk of the commodity out of corn.
And I’m not giving it back.
Editor’s note: Nathaniel Hoffman’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
[End of article]George Bush also opposes the farm bill!
Strikes us as odd that both McCain and Bush would oppose a subsidy for big corporations until we realize subsidies for farm industries detract from the petroleum and pharaceuticals payments which support the empire building going on in the mideast.
Discrimination is as important in federal corruption as in all industrial concerns...
Dear Mr. Hoffman,
It saddens but does not surprise me that you called ole J.R. to get his response on farm subsidies. The ONLY news I keep reading about is billionaire farmers receiving this money. Why don't you call up the AVERAGE family farmer & have a little sit down and discuss how these subsidies affect our lives. I have read national and international opinion on this farm bill, and frankly I am so nauseated that I'd love to send you the results via email but solids don't transfer as well as I'd like on the World Wide Web. We real farmers out here DO NOT enjoy waiting on the government to see if we're still going to be in business for another year or two. Do those of you who have opinions on the farm bill actually know what it costs to produce a crop and what the prices for commodities are at the present time? If you do the math (yes, I have a college degree-can do the math-do it EVERYDAY) the business of farming (honest farming-not ripping anyone off including the government or taxpayers), is NOT a well paying career. We are third generation farmers and are NOT, I REPEAT NOT, mulitmillionaires. We produce cotton and soybeans on 2500 acres and we would be THRILLED to not need subsidies from the government. I would be happy to tell you every penny it takes to produce a crop. Next time you have an opinion on something you know nothing about, please talk to real, hardworking Americans.
Virginia: Thanks for your comments and I appreciate the tough position you're in. I called Simplot because I think there is pretty wide distaste for government subsidies to rich farmers. The company, by the way, explains that it gets subsidies on each smaller individual farm that makes up the corporation and that each farm has to be able to stand on it's own and that it is only through government handouts that this is possible.
I'd just add this point of view: Writers do not make much money either, but I pay top dollar for organic produce and fresh milk and eggs. If you figured out how to make tofu and onesies from your soybeans and cotton and sell them to your neighbors maybe you could get yourself out of the system you're in, charge whatever you wanted for the fruits of your labor and change the way things are done. No one is forcing you to wait on the government to see if you are going to be in business next year...
Thanks for adding your view... I'll admit there has been a dearth of coverage of the average farmer in the Farm Bill debate. And thank god for email, I'd rather not receive your solids in my mail box...
Nathaniel
No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
If not for government subsidy you Real Farmers would have gone the way of the wooly mammoth when the Alzheimeric-in-chief was still peddling Boraxo.
This U. S. Economy has been based on credit cards since just about the time Dick Nixon began to make used car salesmen look like honest men. Real Farmers would never have lasted without the government bailouts; because there is no place for you to mount a transactor at the barn door...
Nanthaniel,
I just had to respond to your comments because a few of them hit me very hard. First of all, don't pity us for the "tough" position that we are in. "Government handouts" wouldn't even be in this conversation if we were getting paid as much for our product as we should. Soybean prices only went up in the last year. Corn prices have only gone up in the last two years. Cotton prices are about what they were in the 1960's. Last year cotton paid $.62 a pound! A bag of cotton seed is $420!!!!!!!!!!!!! That plants 5 acres. A bag of soybean seed is $32 to plant one acre! There are many, many variables that all lead back to government -i.e. Monsanto pretty much has monopolized the seed and insecticide industry. Ask someone why the U.S. imports cotton(Cotton Council website) when we have had a surplus in recent years? Everything that we put into our crops has doubled or tripled, but NOT the payoff. I won't even mention diesel! Find me a solar tractor & we might be friends...
The comment on tofu & onesies is infuriating! I guarantee you make more as a writer than we do! Everyone makes a choice, and you're right, no one is forcing us to stay in farming--but God help this country when all the family farmers are gone. We do have 2 cows that we get our own meat, a chicken to lay eggs, and a garden every year. I am a chemist as well as a teacher so I homeschool our incredibly gifted son who was not getting an appropriate public education in our local school that is full of those "foreign out-of-work farmers kids here to look for work" that the US agricultural policy affected. Oh yeah, by the way, remember that farm bill spends 2/3 on welfare, which by the way, does NOT affect the farmer.
Well, I'm pretty much disgusted on the whole topic now. I have to get my rest because we work 7 days a week making those millions..........
It was my understanding that the subsidies were for small farmers, not the megacorps that ended up getting them. Of course, the large corporations have lawyers and accountants on staff to figure out how to get every penny they can from any source. It's just a case of the fat hogs getting to the trough first, crowding out the smaller, more in-need farmers.
From 1996 through 2001, USDA subsidy payments to Simplot totaled $699,246.
Visit http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/subsidies091201.cfm for more current information.
<quote>"Government handouts" wouldn't even be in this conversation if we were getting paid as much for our product as we should.</quote>
Whenever somebody says that I always ask how much they think they should be getting paid.
Would you care to comment?