So it looks like the farm bill's pretty much dead, a flattened carcass of Beltway roadkill covered in tractortracks, waiting to be scraped up and sent to the landfill (too fullof inorganic matter and toxins to be compostable.)
Whokilled it? You might be inclined to blame partisan wrangling, but, infact, the farm bill is one area of legislation where regionalalliances routinely trump party allegiance. So we can thank "the age-old coalition of Democrats and Republicans that has preservedDepression-era farm subsidies for most of the past century,"according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which cites the mutuallybeneficial "formula of buying off urban interests with food stampsand environmental money in return for keeping crop subsidies."
Most Americans don't give the farm bill a single thought,and those who do tend to assume that all those subsidies to corn andsoy farmers constitute some sort of commodity crop/corporate welfaresystem that's largely to blame for our dysfunctional food chain.
But is that really what's ailing American agriculture? TomPhilpott, who tills the soil at Maverick Farms when he's not toilingfor Grist, posted a suitably contrarian take on the whole farm billdebate earlier this month, "It's the Agronomy, Stupid," in which he makesthe case that the subsidies are only a symptom, not a cause, of theinsane overproduction that drowns us in high fructose corn syrup,cheap livestock feed, ethanol, and all that other corn-based crap wethink we need.
Oddly enough, as Philpott points out,Agribiz giants like ADM and Cargill seem willing to relinquish thecommodity crop subsidies because they're holding up all kinds ofinternational trade agreements. President Bush, too, favors severelycurtailing the subsidies; it's a win-win position for him--makes himlook fiscally responsible while catering to his corporate cronies'desire to hasten globalization.
So who still supports thesubsidies? According to Philpott, "The voice for preserving subsidieshas come from large-scale farmers themselves, mostly through theAmerican Farm Bureau Federation."
Iowa alone gets some $500 million in fixed paymentsto farmers annually, so you can see how politicians who hope toget reelected in the heartland might be reluctant to withdraw--or evenredirect--such a big chunk of change.
So what does theSenate's failure to pass the farm bill mean for the average consumer?According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it "blocks an increase inspending on a vast array of popular programs to improve the Americandiet, make farming practices more environmentally sustainable, andprovide California fruit and vegetable growers a place in federalpolicy."
With all due respect to the creators of "