Big kudos to President Obama for trying to kick-start a debate in this country about agriculture subsidies - and how they are a huge part of the kleptocracy that is destroying family farming. Unfortunately, congressional Democrats have signaled they aren't interested in having any kind of discussion. Well, other than one that continues portraying massive taxpayer handouts to the handful of mega-corporations that now oligopolize American agriculture as help for the smalltown folk depicted in the American Gothic painting.
Notice this excerpt from the Washington Post article about Obama's attempt to cut some subsidies:
Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) said he would oppose "any cuts" in agriculture subsidies because "farmers and farm families depend on this federal assistance."
Yes, earnest Mike Ross, trying to help "farm families"...it sounds so Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, doesn't it? Sure, until you find out that this guy has raked in a cool half-million bucks of USDA-subsidized campaign contributions from the agribusiness industry to spew this kind of nonsense.
The fact is, as I reported in my column this week, after thirty years of lax anti-trust enforcement and deregulation, a handful of mega-corporations now control most of American agriculture - call them Big Farm. And as Big Farm consolidated, its quest for vertical and horizontal integration was aided and abetted by government subsidies tilted to big corporations and against small family farms. Note the Washington Post's investigative piece from 2006 pointing out that the benefits of current subsidies "are heavily tilted to large commercial farmers growing a few row crops in a handful of states":
There may be no better sign of the changing debate over the nation's farm subsidies: A Midwestern governor running for president calls for cuts in a system that has steered hundreds of millions of dollars a year to his state.
"I didn't get much of a reaction from farmers," said Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D), "because deep down most of them know the system needs to be changed."
Politicians such as Vilsack have joined a host of interest groups from across the political spectrum that are pressing for changes in government assistance to agriculture. They want the money moved from large farmers to conservation, nutrition, rural development and energy research...
But these groups will be going up against one of Washington's most effective lobbies as Congress takes up a new farm bill next year. The farm bloc is an efficient, tightknit club of farmers, rural banks, insurance companies, real estate operators and tractor dealers. Many of its Washington lobbyists are former lawmakers or congressional aides.
That's only part of the story, really. As a Tufts University study recently showed, even the huge factory-farms and factory meat-packing businesses that don't get direct subsidies nonetheless indirectly benefit from our current subsidy policy.
I genuinely applaud Obama's attempt to start taking on this issue, and I expect that he doesn't just want to cut all subsidies, he actually wants to re-orient them to have them benefit small farms, and not just huge corporations. I'm sure after campaigning throughout rural Illinois as a senate candidate and throughout so many rural areas as a presidential candidate, he understands that the most dishonest lawmakers are going to present anti-reform spin from the ADMs and Smithfields of the as little guy populism. But I'm also sure he agrees with Vilsack's statement to the Washington Post: "Deep down most [family farmers] know the system needs to be changed."
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