Currently browsing posts about: Farm-policy

There is much fuss these days over the American Heritage Foundation’s extreme right-wing 2025 Mandate for Leadership project, and whether presidential candidate Donald Trump supports it or not and, if so, to what extent (see account in The Guardian).

The Project 2025 plan includes calls for replacing civil servants with Trump loyalists, eliminating the education department, putting the justice department under the president’s thumb and banning the abortion pill…Among the plan’s more drastic proposals are to fire thousands of permanent civil servants and replace them with hired conservative Trump loyalists, dismantling the federal education department, asserting presidential power over the Department of Justice – which is nominally independent – and a ban on the abortion pill.

The 2025 project’s 900 pages aim to pack the government with extreme radical conservatives, make them political appointees, and put them in charge of—and staffing—every government department.

Overall, this blueprint for destroying any inconvenient aspect of government says “trust markets, not government.”

I took a quick look at the agenda for federal agencies dealing with food issues.  Here are a few things I noticed.

USDA

Understand that the word “reform” in this context means “dismantle.”

• Proactively Defend Agriculture [stop focusing on climate change and renewable energy]
• Reform Farm Subsidies; repeal the sugar program [hard to argue with this one]
• Separate the agricultural provisions of the farm bill from the nutrition provisions [SNAP]; Move the USDA food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services.
• Reform SNAP: reimplement work requirements; reform eligibility; reevaluate the Thrifty Food Plan
• Reform WIC; reevaluate excessive regulation of infant formula
• Reform school meals [translation: reduce participation]; reject universal school meals
• Eliminate checkoff programs [again, hard to argue]
• Remove obstacles to agricultural biotechnology [e.g., GMOs]

FDA

As far as I can tell, the plan only deals with FDA’s oversight of abortion and other drugs.  It says not one word about undermining the FDA’s oversight of foods and food safety [I’m guessing this an oversight].

EPA

Most of the discussion is about getting the EPA to stop fretting about climate change.  But take a look at this one:

• Revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as “hazardous substances”

FTC

The report asks: Should the FTC Enforce Antitrust—or Even Continue to Exist?

On the other hand, it tosses in “The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent.”

Other provisions

Basically, the aim of this document is to give the Republican President a roadmap for replacing one deep state with another that favors conservative business interests and ideology.

John Oliver explains all this better than I can.

The bottom line in a seemingly impossible situation

• You must not vote for Trump.
• You must vote for Biden.
• Sitting this out or voting for a third-party candidate is a de facto vote for Trump. Not a good idea.

Here’s cartoonist Clay Bennett’s take on it..

Science Magazine has this editorial headline: Reverse EU’s growing greenlash**

Farm Action, an organization devoted to stopping corporate agrocultural monopolies and building fair competition in rural America, has issued a short report, Balancing the US Agricuiltural Trade Deficit with Higher Value Food Crops.  

Its point (you have heard this from me repeatedly): the U.S. food system focuses on feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.  It ought to focus on food for people.

The current situation:

• Most American farmland acreage is dedicated to animal feed and fuel production.
• Over the last 5 years, American consumption of chicken and exports of pork continued to climb, increasing demand for soy, a key feed crop for pork and poultry.
• Acreage of many key food crops including potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, tomatoes, apples, and oranges has fallen precipitously 20-90% from peaks in the 20th century.
• Exports fell and imports rose for vegetables, fruits, melons, and key food grains.
• Across produce items, the US was or became a net importer of all 5 of the top vegetables by 2021.

What can be done:

• At 2022 prices, just 3.5-4.4 million acres of higher value fruit, vegetables, and melons would be needed to generate $32.9B in sales, the 2022 size of the US produce trade deficit and more than the projected $27.5B
  overall ag deficit projected for 2024—this amounts to just 0.4% of US farmland.
• This could be accomplished by approximately doubling the amount of land currently harvested for these crops.

Policy (Legislative) recommendations for farmers who grow food for people:

• Improve crop insurance and risk management
• Expand market access

These analyses make these fixes look easy.  Make them happen!

I got sent a mailing from USDA: “FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Delivers on its Promises to Invest in Rural Communities, Nutrition Security, Climate-Smart Agriculture, More and Better Markets and Lower Costs for Families.”

This is a summary of an extraordinarily long list of actions taken by the administration, many of them having to do with food production and consumption.

Food System Transformation: USDA is transforming the food system and improving the resilience and security of the food supply chain through more than 60 programs so that today’s markets work better for family farmers and the families they support. This multi-billion dollar effort …touches all parts of the food supply chain – from food production, food processing, food aggregation and distribution, to consumers.

A great many other sections also deal with food issues.  Here are a few examples of the range.

Food System Transformation: USDA is transforming the food system and improving the resilience and security of the food supply chain through more than 60 programs so that today’s markets work better for family farmers and the families they support. This multi-billion dollar effort is funded largely by ARP with some additional investments from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). It touches all parts of the food supply chain – from food production, food processing, food aggregation and distribution, to consumers. Select programs include:

• The Farm and Food Workers Relief Grant Program will make beneficiary payments to reach at least 1 million farmworkers, meatpacking workers, and front-line grocery workers who incurred pandemic-related health and safety costs.
• Organic Transition Initiative: USDA launched a $300 million Organic Transition Initiative including establishing the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) in six regions across the U.S. as part of USDA’s Organic Transition Initiative to help transitioning and recently transitioned producers who face technical, cultural, and market shifts during the transition period and the first few years of organic certification.
• A new online tool called FarmerFairness.gov allows farmers and ranchers to report potentially unfair and anticompetitive practices in the livestock and poultry sectors.
• Assistance for Distressed Producers: USDA provided nearly $800 million in financial assistance to more than 13,000 distressed farmers and plans to provide assistance to thousands more in 2023. This work accompanies an ongoing effort to transform USDA’s farm lending programs with a focus on proactive loan service and support to keep farmers farming, rather than requiring farmers to become distressed before assistance is provided.
• In August, USDA announced up to $550 million in funding to support projects that enable underserved producers to access land, capital, and markets, and train the next, diverse generation of agricultural professionals.
• More than 41 million Americans participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and 2022 marked the first full calendar year that participants received a 21% average increase in monthly SNAP benefits due to USDA’s reevaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan – the first permanent increase to the purchasing power of SNAP benefits since the Thrifty Food Plan was introduced 45 years ago.
• USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) launched a new initiative to reduce Salmonella illness linked to poultry through a strong, comprehensive framework to address Salmonella in poultry that is responsive to evolving food safety hazards and embraces the latest science and technology.
• USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service is advancing tribal self-determination and awarded $5.7 million to eight tribes for demonstration projects that gave them more options to directly select and purchase foods for their Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). This is an important step to increasing tribal food sovereignty in the program and support tribal economies, vendors, and producers.

As seems always the case with USDA, there are so many small programs (“trees”) under discussion that the big picture (“forest”) gets lost.

The forest is the need to support food system transformation to focus agricultural policy on the health of humans and the planet.  Will trees get us there one by one?

Only if there are enough of them.

*******

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

Everyfive years or so, Congress gets to work on a new Farm Bill.  This is a big job.

I’ve written about the Farm Bill previously.  See, for example, my opinion piece in Politico: “The Farm Bill drove me insane.”

Here are two recent publications to get you started.

The Congressional Research Service has a handy guide with summaries of its full collection of primers for the a 2018 bill.

There are 23 primers summarized in this report and organized under descriptive headings rather than by farm bill titles to facilitate accessibility for those who are not familiar with the 2018 farm bill. The concept behind these primers is to provide relevant information on key programs and policy initiatives authorized by the 2018 farm bill in a concise format that serves as a quick-reference resource for Members of Congress and congressional staff. To this end, the primers describe many of the leading programs and policies within the 2018 farm bill. They also identify some of the higher-profile policy issues that may arise as Congress engages in the process of writing a new farm bill and highlight some policy options that Congress could consider as it undertakes this task. The titles of the primers are hyperlinked for easy access.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has a statement of principles for congressional reform of the bill.

US food and agriculture policies are in need of reform. Some of the country’s largest agricultural operations receive unlimited subsidies while beginning farmers struggle to afford land. Crop prices recently rose to record highs, but challenging input costs – for everything from fuel to fertilizer – are eating away at profits. Food supply and inflation challenges continue to make headlines. Meanwhile, children go to bed hungry while one-third of food is wasted.

Comment: Here’s one reason why:

Reforming the Farm Bill is badly needed but won’t be easy for reasons of history and politics.  Getting it passed is expected to be exceptionally difficult for the same reasons.  80% or so of its spending is for SNAP—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  The rest goes largely to producers of feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.  How’s that for vested interests!

***********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

When it comes to analyses of agricultural policies, some of the most critical come from conservatives.

From the American Enterprise Institute: Farm Subsidies and the Poor (2022). The key points:

• Despite claims to the contrary, farm subsidies do little to reduce food prices and almost nothing to alleviate rural poverty.
• Payments of farm subsidies are roughly proportional to farm output; therefore, those who operate small farms receive minimal benefits from such programs.
• Other US Department of Agriculture policies that provide low-income households with subsidies to buy food do increase food security and reduce poverty.

An earlier report from the American Enterprise Institute:  Agricultural subsidies aid the wealthy, not those in rural poverty (2017)

Taken together, these programs cost about $20 billion every year…Who gets all that federal money? About 70 percent of all crop insurance and other farm income safety net payments flow to 10 percent of the largest crop-producing farm businesses. This group comprises less than 100,000 farm operations, each of which on average receives more than $140,000 every year…In contrast, 10 percent of the smallest farms receive a mere pittance, on average no more than about $50 — from the federal crop insurance and safety net programs. And the bottom 80 percent, including midsize farms, receive less than 10 percent of all subsidy payments.

From the Cato Institute: Examining America’s Farm Subsidy Problem (2020)

This year, farmers (on net) will derive almost 40 percent of their income directly from the U.S. government. Forty percent.

Comment: The main effect of agricultural subsidies is to encourage Big Ag to grow commodity crops in places where they should not be grown.  Clearly, ag policies need rethinking.  How about revising them to support production of real food, rather than feed for animals and fuel for cars?  How about redesigning ag policy to refocus it on health and sustainability?  These reports suggest that plenty of bipartisan support is available.  Let’s tap into it for the next farm bill.

I was interested to see this graph in a recent report, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2031.

What this says is that agricultural imports are soon expected to be greater than agricultural exports.

Within the next year or so, the United States will be a net importer of agricultural products.

As the report puts it:

Agricultural exports are expected to grow at an annual rate averaging 0.8 percent per year from 2021 through 2031. The value of U.S. agricultural imports is projected to increase by an average annual rate of 6 percent over that same period as domestic consumer spending is expected to remain strong over the next decade combined with domestic preferences for an array of agricultural goods that continue
to exceed domestic production.

I think we need to ask what this means for long-term food security in this country.

The next Farm Bill is under discussion.  It ought to deal with the question of how US agriculture can produce more food for people rather than feed for animals and fuel to cars.

I keep remembering a meeting I went to in Washington DC years ago, where a USDA official said that he did not think Americans should waste land for growing food when it could be done so much more cheaply elsewhere.   I hope USDA thinks differently now.

I saw this headline in The Guardian.

I went immediately to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report:  A multi-billion-dollar opportunity – Repurposing agricultural support to transform food systems.

The trends emerging from the analysis are a clear call for action at country, regional and global levels to phase out the most distortive, environmentally and socially harmful support, such as price incentives and coupled subsidies, and redirecting it towards investments in public goods and services for agriculture, such as research and development and infrastructure, as well as decoupled fiscal subsidies.

The report detail the harmful effects of current agricultural subsidy practices in promoting crops that are harmful to human health and to the environment.

Most support worldwide, through price incentives, has been given to commodities with high GHG emissions such as beef, milk and rice, which have the largest carbon footprint.

In the US, the distribution of agricultural subsidies looks like this:

The main effect of subsidies is to cause farmers to plant more of whatever gets subsidized.  One result is that corn, a water-intensive crop, is grown in places where water is scarce.

Farm income reached record levels in 2020, but one-third of farm income came from government payments (nearly $46 billion in total), largely because of increases during the pandemic.

FAO’s Recommendations

• Phase out the most distorting and environmentally and socially harmful policies, such as price incentives or coupled subsidies.
• Repurpose support for high-emission or unhealthy products towards support that has environmental and health conditionalities and that promotes more sustainable food systems.
• Repurpose fiscal support to protect consumers and ensure food security and nutrition, especially for the poorest.
• Create fiscal space for agricultural support by tapping into new fiscal resources aimed at addressing climate change or stimulating the economy.

Good ideas, but good luck getting them implemented.  Lobbyists for corn, ethanol, soybeans, and the like prefer to keep those subsidies coming, and they have huge power over Congress.