Bush Farm Policy Draws Fire: Proposals Would Limit Subsidies, Spend More on Conservation
By Tom Webb, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Feb. 1–The Bush administration upended America’s farm policy debate Wednesday, urging that the next farm bill include much stricter payment limits to well-off farmers but more money for conservation.
Those proposals delighted longtime farm program critics, but left some traditional farm groups biting their tongues.
“This is not your grandfather’s farm bill,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based green group. “I know there are a lot of folks in the subsidy lobby who’d like it to have been more of the same, but I think the secretary of agriculture and the Bush administration have planted the flag of reform.”
This year Congress is writing a new five-year blueprint for American agriculture, and its direction will resonate all across rural Minnesota. Among the 50 states, Minnesota ranks fifth in collecting farm-subsidy payments, with $1.36 billion in federal checks coming to the state in 2005, and probably just as much in 2006.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns wants to reduce the cost of the farm bill by $12 billion, compared with the existing bill, and cut off farm payments for anyone with more than $200,000 a year in adjusted gross income. That’s sure to be hugely controversial, especially in regions where farms are very large, and so are the harvests.
“Farm Bureau policy does not support payment limitations,” said Kevin Paap, a Minnesota corn and soybean farmer who is president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau. His group likes today’s farm policy. “We believe the farm bill is working.”
Even at Farmers Union, a farm group with populist roots, the idea of stricter payment limits drew a cool reaction.
“This is a new wrinkle they’ve thrown out there, that we haven’t had an opportunity to fully analyze,” said Farmers Union national President Tom Buis, who added that the topic “tends to be very divisive.”
The last farm bill was written in 2002, and much has changed since then. Soaring hopes for ethanol and other biofuels have sent investor dollars pouring into the sector, and caused corn prices to double in the past year. Land values have climbed. Farmer income is broadly higher. The prosperity has renewed the old debate about the need for farm subsidies.
Buis said it reminds him of the mid-1990s, when a Republican-led Congress wrote the “Freedom to Farm” bill during a temporary run of high grain prices, which stripped away parts of the farm safety net. This year, Johanns’ plan keeps a safety net, but not as much of one.
“That works if prices stay high, but if they go low, we’ll be back in the soup the way we were in the mid-’90s,” Buis said.
Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement: “They have some ideas that are very interesting… although I don’t agree with everything they are suggesting.”
Tom Webb can be reached at twebb@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5428.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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