Does U.S. farm policy need to change?

We asked some stakeholders to give us their thoughts on the upcoming farm bill debate. Their short responses are on today’s Opinion pages. For example, Jim French, a Reno County farmer and rancher, and lead organizer for Oxfam America’s farm bill campaign, argues that “current crop subsidies have actually contributed to farm consolidation, rural decline and economic stagnation while distorting international markets and hurting our global trade interests.” Larry Steckline of Mid-America Ag Network/KSN, Channel 3, argues that “tweaking and not a major rewrite of the 2002 farm bill will result in a 2007 farm bill to meet the needs of Midwestern farmers.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

7 Comments

  1. Doug
    Posted January 28, 2007 at 12:46 pm | Permalink

    One change that needs to be made is to end payouts to people who live on farm land who don’t produce crops. The Republican Congress changed the policies allowing for developers to build housing projects on old farm land and declare the land as farm land so the occupants can receive a nice government check each year.

  2. Michael Reed
    Posted January 28, 2007 at 6:35 pm | Permalink

    A major reform would be to remove all non-farm departments and activities from USDA.Programs such as “Food Stamps” and the School Lunch program (among many others) are obviously not legitimate parts of Agriculture and distort budget issues. This would allow everyone in the department, and those with the purse strings, to be a little more focused on real reforms.

  3. RD
    Posted January 28, 2007 at 9:10 pm | Permalink

    Doug,

    It was the government itself that called for farmers not to produce crops, not the farmers asking not to produce. Perhaps you’re to young to remember why that happened? Keywords: surplus crops

    The quote above–“current crop subsidies have actually contributed to farm consolidation, rural decline and economic stagnation while distorting international markets and hurting our global trade interests.”–shows the essence of the current problem.

    Subsidies are not making small farmers wealthy. Subsidies are making large corporate farmers wealthy. There’s a big difference.

    In instances that I know of where farmers have SOLD their farmland for housing developments, they are not receiving farm subsidies for those lands.

    More small family farmland is being sold to developers because it bails said families out of the debt they’ve incurred for continuing to farm in an era where crop prices have remained stagnant for more than one generation.

    Unless you’re the owner of a small family farm, I suggest you do a little more research by talking to a few. There are plenty around this area.

  4. ksfarmgrrl
    Posted January 30, 2007 at 2:16 pm | Permalink

    …and the WE asked, um WHICH representatives of small farmers, organic farmers, ag tourism farmers? They dont think these groups represent “stakeholders”?

    I thought so.

  5. Vaughn Tolle
    Posted January 30, 2007 at 2:23 pm | Permalink

    Yeah, ksfg, the silence due to the omission speaks volumes.

  6. Doug
    Posted January 30, 2007 at 2:42 pm | Permalink

    RD, the people getting farm subsidies don’t even have farm land. They live on housing developments that were once farmland. So I’ll have to repeat again, these aren’t even farmers getting the subsidies. Thanks for informing me I don’t know about something you clearly know nothing about.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962_pf.html

  7. Doug
    Posted January 30, 2007 at 2:43 pm | Permalink

    the rest of the link:

    /AR2006070100962_pf.html