A Slap In the Face
Well, the House has published their farm bill "framework" (pdf) and word from DC is that it includes a 50% increase in the direct payment limit. This was included in the House-passed farm bill from last summer (and we studied it in a previous report), but it was hard to imagine that such an increase would ever be included in the final farm bill. Let's back up a minute to examine the sheer brazenness of this.
Direct payments are the ones paid no matter what. They average about $28 per acre for corn, and a nice $96 per acre for rice. Given the high prices for every commodity today, they are pretty much the vast majority of payments expected to be made over the life of the next farm bill. Many reasonable people are already questioning whether farmers should be getting these payments at all- $6 corn and $12 soybeans lead to people questioning the need for automatic payments for farmers (though the administration loves them). Rightfully so. Anyway, politicians like Colin Peterson have been running around talking about how there's just no money for anything new in the farm bill. These "pay-go" rules are just so tough, we can't fund everything we would like, yada yada yada. But somehow, they've found the money to increase farm program payments for mega-farms. Wow.
So we can't get a damn dime for rural development, but we can shovel out the money for even bigger checks to mega-farms. This is utter nonsense. I suppose I have to admire the guts of of the House farm bill negotiators to include this junk. After this, there's not much they can come up with that will shock me.
Comments
Rural America must connect with Urban and Suburban America
What we have is a "heart problem" but we aren't will to admit it. Urban and Suburban America need to gain an understanding of the on-going tragedy of what is happening to the "heart" of our country, the family farm.
The average American living outside of farm country has been too far withdrawn from the source of the food they eat each day. Our food is so processed and packaged in plastics that one forgets it ever touched the soil from which it came. In doing so, we also forget those that work the land to produce our food. But people are starting to wake up to the problems of corporate farming and more and more are choosing to buy locally.
The sustainable living movement is growing and rural America needs to be knee-deep in it. As people start recognizing the problems of buying food from hundreds of miles away and start demanding locally and sustainably grown food it can only help the small farms that can best serve that need.
The only way that Congress will ever care about rural development and family farming in general is if rural America builds connections with Urban and Suburban America. We must all gain an understanding that the pain of the rural American is the pain of every American.
If our bread basket is empty, we cannot and we must not just "eat cake" produced from grains grown in Argentina. We must remember and support the families that built our country by the sweat of the brow with their hands on the plow. This is not out of charity but out of the knowledge that locally provided goods are superior in multiple ways to those transported over long distances. Not only is the quality of the product better, but the local commerce is better for the country.
It's time we were ONE America again. This is not a "reach across the waters" campaign...it needs to be a "reach across the freeways" campaign. Remind us city-folk that food doesn't come from boxes...it comes from the hard work of the good people in the heart of our country. When the voices get loud enough congress will listen.
back to the dirt
I think that it is incorrect
Post new comment