Basic change in farm policy badly needed

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Criticism of existing farm policy is reaching a crescendo as the current farm bill expires. But in the heart of farm country, many are still clinging to the status quo.

That sentiment was on display in Nebraska earlier this month as the U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee heard testimony in a hearing at Grand Island.

And they might get their wish, at least in the short term. Although most acknowledge that current farm policy is rife with problems, there’s little consensus on the best way to change it.

This summer has seen the waste and abuse in farm programs exposed by the Washington Post series “Harvesting Cash,” which reported, among other things, about suburban acreage owners who collected farm subsidies without raising crops.

Syndicated columnist Alan Guebert regularly mocks hope that international exports will lift the U.S. farm economy. He cites another voice, Daryll Ray of the University of Tennessee, who pointed out in columns this summer that farmers collect loan deficiency payments — the so-called safety net to protect against low prices — even when prices are high.

“Get this! The season average price for the 2004 corn crop was $2.06, 11 cents above the loan rate. And still, loan deficiency payments were collected on 92 percent of the 11.8 billion bushel crop for a total payout of $2.9 billion!” Ray wrote.

Ideas for reform are being circulated, however. Ray, for example, seemingly favors a return to the days when farmland was taken out of production by designation of “set-aside acres.”

In a column carried on the Journal Star’s opinion pages earlier this summer, former ag secretaries Dan Glickman and Clayton Yeutter, a former Nebraskan, promoted recommendations from the American Farmland Trust. The Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons  (www.cfra.org) floats a host of ideas in three white papers on the 2007 farm bill.

The center and the trust have some themes in common. The trust suggests “green payments” for environmental stewardship. The center recommends building on the Conservation Security Program in the 2002 farm bill, although admitting the program is off to an “uncertain and shaky” start.

From a political standpoint, funding for conservation programs probably will be more palatable to urban constituencies than existing farm programs, which are regularly denounced as scandalous.

With fundamental change in the wind, support seems to be gathering for a temporary one-year extension of the current farm bill. As Brad Lubben, a farm policy analyst at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, noted, there are unresolved issues in world trade talks and anxiety about the national deficits.

But deep, basic change is needed in U.S. farm policy. Noting that some of those who testified in Grand Island said there was no future in farming, Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs said, “If there is no future in agriculture, then this farm bill is not working.”