Farm Bill Follies

Via Kevin Drum, a nice precis of the disastrous new farm bill which will make our current disastrous agricultural policies even worse. Bad for the environment, bad for public health, and bad for international development and trade -- it's really, really bad. Frustratingly, consensus that our current policies are bad is about as widespread across the ideological spectrum as it could possibly get and yet given the realities of U.S. political institutions it doesn't make any difference.

Photo by Flickr user Aunt Owwee used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

What I don't understand is if there's some deal to be cut. Can we promise to pump money to the countryside in some less unhealthy, less environmentally hazardous way?

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | April 10, 2008 1:55 PM

Unfortunately, the only Senators and Representatives with constituents who really care are those on the wrong side of the issue.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 10, 2008 1:56 PM

I listened to NPR this morn and they had a segment on rice shortages in Asia and Africa. It was portrayed as a very serious problem bordering on panic and civil strife. Assuming this is so maybe that rice being grown in water starved California isn't as disastrous a crop choice as appears on first blush. What can we get for rice on the world markets? Maybe quite a bit. Or maybe it could be used as a bargaining chip for concessions in the political/military or energy realms. Just wondering.

Posted by steve duncan | April 10, 2008 2:03 PM

consensus that our current policies are bad is about as widespread across the ideological spectrum as it could possibly get and yet given the realities of U.S. political institutions it doesn't make any difference.

Well it's a broad consensus, but it's not a particularly passionate one. If more people talked about it more often, and put some effort into doing keeping up awareness of the perverse effects, we might actually get somewhere. As it is, it has absolutely no salience as a political issue.

Posted by right | April 10, 2008 2:08 PM

What I don't understand is if there's some deal to be cut. Can we promise to pump money to the countryside in some less unhealthy, less environmentally hazardous way?

There were deals ventured along those lines. They were killed.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 10, 2008 2:21 PM

Well, the author is either ignorant or purposely scaremongering if thinks the permanent disaster program would mean the plowing up of prairies. The "Sodbuster" and "Swampbuster" provisions of the farm bill have been in place since 1985 explicitly forbidding the conversion of grasslands and wetlands into cropland. The conversion of cropland into suburban cesspits, however, continues unabated. He also demagogues that 1/3 of the farm bill goes "elite commodity groups" without saying that the other two thirds goes to nutrition programs like food stamps and WIC. Out here in the country we'd call him a horse's patoot.

Posted by justawriter | April 10, 2008 2:22 PM

This is an area where my guy (Obama) gets it wrong. Of course, being a politician who is interested in being elected (and reelected) in a state like Illinois, he almost necessarily has to be on the wrong side of agricultural and biofuel issues.

Ultimately, pushing for reform on this issue has to happen on a grass-roots (ha!) level. Politicians are not going to pick a fight with their constituents on this - the constituents have to pick the fight with their elected leaders.

But it's interesting that once people start to look at how the government funds and supports agribusiness in this country, and all the backassward things that are done in the name of agriculture, it's easy to see how effed up it is.

Posted by Craig | April 10, 2008 2:24 PM

1) End all agricultural socialism

2) End all agricultural protectionism

3) If you really need to spend $300 billion, at least give it to poor people directly (that's over $8000 per person in poverty in the US). Keep your socialism simple and non-market-distorting.

Posted by Mr. Econotarian | April 10, 2008 2:52 PM

I should just note that the best coverage of the Farm Bill I've seen has been done by Dan Owens.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 10, 2008 3:07 PM

Maybe instead of paying people not to farm, we could pay them not to drive those enormous vehicles.

Posted by mike | April 10, 2008 4:24 PM

Maybe we should tie the farm issue to obesity more often. Subsidies to corn help make high fructose corn syrup artificially cheap, so it gets put in everything and makes everyone fat. It's everywhere and it's hard to find should-be healthy foods like yogurt without HFCS.

Posted by Reality Man | April 10, 2008 10:36 PM