After years of work and months of delay due to hard negotiation, the U.S. House and Senate overwhelmingly passed the farm bill. As many have pointed out it really should be called the farm and food bill since nearly three-quarters of the funding goes to nutrition programs, including an additional $10 billion to assist our nation’s hungry in this time of rising food prices.
The bill also includes major improvements and increased funding for working lands conservation, renewable energy and programs to promote healthy and local foods. The bill has broad bipartisan support and offers farmers the option of a new revenue-protection program that makes real gains in subsidy reform while providing better protection at a time of rising input costs.
Despite these improvements, the president is set to veto the bill, stating it has too little reform and is too expensive.
The final compromise bill does not include all the reforms we’d like to see, but there is no question it is better than the alternative of extending the existing bill. The new Average Crop Revenue Election program is an important reform, if not well understood. It represents a fundamental change in how U.S. commodity programs operate by reducing market distortions, cutting direct payments and reducing loan deficiency payment rates. Those cuts result in saving hundreds of millions of dollars that help fund other priorities such as nutrition and conservation.
At the same time, ACRE provides better protection against volatile markets and production shortfalls covering price and yield, rather than just price as with current programs. Farmers across the nation have asked for a more effective risk management tool and we expect farmers with nearly 100 million acres to enroll in the program.
People can pick and choose what they like or dislike about the bill and talk about what else they would have liked in the bill, but the question before Congress is: Override the president’s proposed veto to secure this bill or extend the existing policies. In that there is no question — the bill is better for farmers, consumers and the environment. It strengthens U.S. agriculture, stimulates rural development, advances renewable energy, improves our environment, and helps fight hunger across the nation and throughout the world. It achieves some very important first steps in reform and lays the groundwork for future improvements.
— Ron Litterer
National Corn Growers Association
— Ralph Grossi
American Farmland Trust
Washington
Farmers’ money
Your May 16 editorial “Rich harvest” decries the $290 billion farm bill, of which you say one-third goes to farm subsidies. Your editor may not understand this payment is identical in effect to the $150 billion stimulus bill. Both the farm bill and the stimulus bill pump billions into an economy starved for money. Yes, some of the farm bill money does go to wealthy farmers, which you find objectionable. But from an economic standpoint, it doesn’t matter who gets the money first, so long as the money goes into the economy.
What will the wealthy farmers do with the money? Three things: invest, spend and/or save it.
They can invest it by purchasing equipment, seed, fertilizer, trucks, farm buildings and by hiring labor, all of which provide jobs in the farm, equipment, seed, fertilizer, truck and construction businesses.
They can spend it by buying cars, fur coats, diamonds, airplanes and yachts, and by going to restaurants, throwing hotel parties and generally doing what rich people do, all of which provide jobs in various industries.
They can save it by putting money in banks, so the banks can do what banks do: Create even more money by lending it, which provides jobs.
In short, virtually everything the wealthy farmers will do with the money will provide jobs in many industries, benefiting the economy. Rather than criticizing the government for paying money to wealthy farmers, you should criticize the government for not having a manufacturers bill, a service providers bill, a teachers bill, a police and firefighters bill, a doctors bill, etc., so more money could be pumped into the economy and more jobs created.
History proves government payments, to any part of the economy, benefit the entire economy and, incidentally, have absolutely no effect on tax rates.
— Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Wilmette
Choosing famine
The steady stream of articles blaming biofuels, especially ethanol, for the rapidly rising cost of food worldwide is deeply troubling, both on the facts and because the accusation masks bad policy.
Numerous independent sources have attributed rising food prices primarily to rapid upsurges in demand in developing countries like China and India, as well as huge increases in petroleum costs, exacerbated by the weak dollar.
The availability of ethanol has in fact acted as a restraint on gas prices by as much as 40 cents a gallon, depending on where you live.
Perhaps more troubling: The attack on ethanol hides the refusal of many European countries and their former colonies to adopt new crop technologies that offer dramatically higher yields.
So long as these governments resist these safe and proven grains, they are choosing famine over human nourishment as a matter of public policy.
— David Miller
President and CEO
Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization
— Chicago
