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For decades, politicians and lobbyists have shaped American agricultural policy to favor big corporate farms and agri-business generally. In fact, most of that $100 billion is spent on subsidies and insurance for a very few crops – notably corn and soybeans. And these are precisely the crops that the largest farms specialize in. The result? Over half of this spending goes to the largest farming operations. And since these farms are so mechanized, they typically don’t spend much or employ many folks in local communities. And what about small farmers? They are mostly on their own to… sink or swim. It gets worse when one looks at the indirect impact of the way the farm bill is shaped: First, it turns out that all those subsidies have pushed the price of corn to below the cost of production. That is great for the huge cattle feeding operations, as they get corn so cheaply that even farmers who grow their own corn can’t compete. (Yes, it turns out that it is cheaper to buy corn than to grow it.) As a result, the corporate feed lots have taken over the cattle business.
Finally, there are some parts of the Farm Bill that do fund programs that really matter to rural communities—including supporting rural development, building up farmers markets, and agriculture extension. But the total spending for all these programs? Less than 1 percent of the entire Farm Bill! A true reform agenda? In theory, the new Farm Bill is supposed to be written by this fall, but it will certainly take much longer. Congressmen from urban areas will fight hard to protect SNAP spending. Meanwhile, the agri-business lobbyists will spend heavily to make sure that farm-state congressmen insist on maintaining the present favoritism for Big Ag. Who, then, will speak up for small farmers and rural communities? Hmm… That is how we end up with a “Farm Bill” that is not a true farm bill. The good news, however, is that there are more and more people working to shape a true reform agenda - one that is rural-community focused. The Reimagining Rural Policy initiative at the Brookings Institution and the American Farmland Trust’s Farm Bill Policy Platform are both examples of emerging ideas for more effective rural policy. In Congress, a good example of innovative thinking is the Rebuild Rural America bill. It would set aside $50 billion in the farm bill for rural development. Of course, it won’t be easy to overcome the muscle of the traditional lobbies. However, as voters, all of us also can tell our legislators that this new bill should not just be a “pork” bill (pardon the pun) for Big Ag – it should also be a bill for rural communities.
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