Agricultural Subsidies / U.S. Can Aid Impoverished By Changing Farm Policy

By Rasa Sawson

As members of Congress think about drafting the 2007 farm bill, it is essential that we, their constituents, reflect on the impact this huge piece of agricultural legislation will have on family farmers here at home, but also on farmers thousands of miles away.

Back in 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt first implemented new agricultural policies that we now know as the farm bill, he did it to help rural America recover from the Great Depression. I doubt he could have imagined how the farm bill would look today. Today’s agricultural policies give large commodity subsidies to less than one-third of American farmers, most of them large-scale producers who grow a limited number of crops. Massive commodity subsidies actually fuel the consolidation of land, with family farms being forced to sell to fewer and bigger producers. Smaller farmers – especially historically discriminated groups – face even bigger challenges in trying to make a living from farming.

President Roosevelt surely didn’t envision a farm bill that does little for America’s struggling farmers or rural communities, but could he have imagined his policies turned on their head and actually threatening the livelihoods of millions of farmers beyond America’s borders?

CURRENT SUBSIDIES encourage overproduction because the more a farmer produces, the bigger the check is from you, the taxpayer. The surplus is then dumped on the world market, pushing prices down. It’s one of those elementary lessons of economics: If you have a lot of something, its value goes down. So struggling farmers in poor, developing countries, many who earn just a dollar a day even after working 15 or more hours, can’t make enough to put food on the table, send their kids to school, or help build a well in the village.

Being employed by an international organization working on hunger and poverty issues, I’ve spent many days trying to understand the very real impacts that American agricultural subsidies have on people’s lives. And then I saw them for myself.

In many of the villages I traveled to in Mali, West Africa, I saw no school, no medical clinic, and no well for water. We were told that it is common to go for two weeks without eating meat, and milk is available only in the rainy season. All the farms I saw were very small, most not even surpassing an acre. Entire families spend endless hours under the hot sun cultivating their cotton fields completely by hand, with no irrigation.

Seydou Coulibaly, a cotton farmer from Mali (who wrote a column for the Op/Ed page in May 2006), told me that for about six years now he has struggled to make enough money to feed and clothe his family. “It’s not because of drought, or war,” he said. “It’s because of the price of cotton on the world market.”

More than 10 million people depend on cotton for their livelihoods in West Africa alone. American cotton subsidies seriously undermine the economic value of trade for these farmers – and in some cases, losses associated with U.S. cotton subsidies exceed the value of aid West African countries receive from the U.S. government. It’s the old adage: give with one hand and take with the other.

Seydou found common ground with farmers here when he visited Virginia last year. He was surprised to hear from his American counterparts that they were struggling too – and that even they agree there are better ways to help American farmers, without rewarding overproduction of certain crops.

DESPITE DECADES of farm program payments, economic researchers have been unable to establish that these payments help sustain rural communities. In fact, studies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal Reserve Bank link commodity subsidies to rural population loss, economic stagnation.

But this year, Virginians have an extraordinary opportunity – not only to make a real difference for our own farmers and rural communities, but also to make a real and lasting impact on the world by helping to reduce global poverty. Yes, the 2007 farm bill is just that important.

Right now, Congress is deliberating on the budget for the next farm bill, which will in fact have a profound impact on the cost and nature of farm subsidy programs to come, as well as the probability for urgently needed reform of farm subsidies.

Working with a diverse coalition of groups, we at Oxfam are calling on Congress to reduce commodity subsidies and shift our taxpayer dollars to support worthy programs that don’t hurt farmers abroad, such as conservation and rural development programs, nutrition and food-stamps funding, and local foods initiatives.

We have the power to put our tax money to work for farmers, families, and the future. With so much to gain, why lose by sticking with the status quo?

Rasa Dawson is the Southeast field organizer for Oxfam America.

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