Subsidy-laden farm bill is worth your attention

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Last week’s election gave America’s richest farmers reason to be upbeat about getting even more federal subsidies than the eye-popping levels they now enjoy, delivered over the years by the mega-powerful ag lobby and its congressional friends.

The next U.S. Senate will be controlled by Republicans, who’d likely support adding billions for growers of commodity crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat and rice. And, President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House where, in his first term, he made the largest-ever taxpayer-funded payout to farmers, an extra $26 billion, to offset effects of trade tussles with China.

Some may rightfully wonder why well-off farmers should get so much more — up to $47 billion — from the public dole.

There’s more: The big fight in farm bill development has been over helping increased farmer payments by cutting $30 billion from programs to feed the low-income poor. Senate Democrats have stopped a raid on food aid so far, but they’ll be in the minority next year.

Farm policy is complicated, and tuned-out taxpayers seem unaware that the ag industry receives so much public money. That’s overlaid with prevailing belief that “family farms” deserve help in their struggle to grow our food.

Both are largely myth. The “family farm” isn’t like Old MacDonald’s, where mom and pop work a few acres and raise barnyard animals. Today’s farms are big business, with past and ongoing consolidations amassing thousands of acres to grow single crops, like corn and soybeans in the Upper Midwest.

The lion’s share of subsidies go to well-off growers. The Environmental Working Group says 40% of landowning “family farm” federally subsidized growers rent out their cropland and live in cities (the Twin Cities area is home to 720 growers). Very little goes to smaller farms, and less to nothing to organic growers or those selling their produce at urban open-air markets.

In reality, more than 80% of Minnesota’s corn is exported, ground into animal feed or distilled into ethanol. Less than 5% is for domestic food (mostly high-fructose syrup and highly processed foodstuffs that nutritionists say are unhealthy and shouldn’t even be considered food).

The big subsidies are authorized in a farm bill that Congress renews every five years. The 2018 law was to be addressed last year, but it dangles in extended status due to a standoff controversy over how to reallocate billions.

The bill’s sheer size should be reason enough for greater public scrutiny; the law would cost $1.4 trillion over 10 years to stabilize income for commodity growers, for crop insurance to protect their down side, and for rural land and water conservation.

Three-fourths, or about $1.1 trillion, of farm bill spending goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to address hunger. SNAP helps 41 million low-income Americans buy food, including 27 million kids and elderly.

SNAP has long given heartburn to conservatives who are generally opposed to “welfare” safety nets — never mind that nearly a fifth of SNAP recipients are rural, or the conspicuous hypocrisy of paying billions to wealthy farmers and billions more to pay most of their crop insurance premiums.

But as the University of Iowa’s Silvia Secchi points out, having SNAP in the farm bill helps commodity growers win bipartisan Congressional support from advocates of nutrition aid. Either subsidy would struggle to win approval on their own.

In addition to cuts in nutritional aid, House Republicans are looking to make the farm bill revenue-neutral by rescinding $17 billion from President Joe Biden’s special funding for long-overdue climate-smart ag practices. That action would match up with Trump and congressional acolytes who call climate change “a hoax.”

The mammoth cost of the farm bill highlights another concern of the effects of big subsidies to big farms.

The Environmental Working Group documents that the payouts effectively drive up land prices, making it near impossible for new entrants to farming. High land costs have also incentivized farmers to plow up 12 million fragile acres in conservation reserve, adding cropland along with harmful fertilizers and pesticides. (To compare, Minnesota’s BWCA is 1.1 million acres.)

Water contaminated by nitrogen crop fertilizers continues to saddle farmland families and towns with high costs to remove nitrates and make drinking water safe.

Some may recall when ag advocates chortled that farmers, as good land stewards, would voluntarily improve farm practices to prevent pollution and reduce greenhouse emissions with no-till plowing, better chemical control, rotating crops and planting cover crops. That pledge was 30 years ago, and while it shielded farming from unwanted regulation, the environmental assaults have ominously worsened.

The billions handed Big Ag is beyond reason, and a bright light needs to expose legislators who approve the ginormous subsidies.

The farm bill will be taken up early next year by House and Senate Agriculture Committees. Sen. Amy Klobuchar will be ranking Democrat on the Senate committee, where Sen. Tina Smith (D) also serves. Minnesota Reps. Brad Finstad (R) and Angie Craig (D) are on the House committee.

Watch party, anyone?

Ron Way lives in Minneapolis and grew up on a Midwest farm. He’s at ron-way@comcast.net.