And so it began:

I'm Dan Owens, a Rural Policy Program Organizer at the Center for Rural Affairs.  I'd like take a moment to welcome you to the new home of the Blog for Rural America, within the Center for Rural Affairs website.

That was April of 2007. Now Dan has departed the Center for Rural Affairs for graduate school in Ohio. He went out in style with 1,500 words and something to say. We expected no less. Now before you go fretting about the future of this great little corner of the blogosphere, I assure you we have some things in the works to make up for Dan's departure. But first I want to look back at the last 18 months. 

Dan's rise to moderate fame in the farm and rural blogosphere was rapid, and less than two months after posting the blog post tepidly introducing himself to this page, he was posting about farm bill politics on the nationally-read political blog MyDD.com. In a series there (one, two and three) he made an attempt at demystifying the single most controversial flash point of this farm bill debate - farm program payment limits. Here's a bit from Part 1:

The current system of unlimited subsidy checks for large farms increases land prices, puts family size farms at a disadvantage, and ultimately undercuts rural communities. Politicians from rural areas have been slow to recognize this, however. Instead, rural politicians wax eloquent about saving family farms while repeatedly passing farm programs that subsidize their demise. The hypocrisy has been bipartisan.

I wish I could say this farm bill had turned out different, but the tide in Washington D.C. wasted little time in turning against the popular support for reform that started right smack in the heartland and extended to both coasts. Likely because they were facing a larger coalition for reform than ever before, farm bill power-brokers felt the need to make their stand early and clearly. The first draft of the bill in the U.S. House put a phony reform gimmick into place that dogged our efforts for the rest of the long fight. To add insult and injury to that, the same draft bill actually increased the limit on direct payments that farmers receive no matter the price of commodities and removed the previous limit on marketing loan payments. Dan had this to say:

It is a sham. It is not real reform. It will not end the unlimited commodity payments that mega-farms use today to drive their smaller neighbors out of business. Maybe most importantly, it does not stand up and say, once and for all, that the farm bill exists to help small and mid-sized family farms and rural communities. [...]

This, my friends, is a sorry state of affairs. 

As the debate in the House came to a close, Dan took a moment to reflect on why we do this work, why the Center for Rural Affairs fights this fight decade after decade (literally) and what it means when politicians pay lip-service to their rural constituents, but ignore their plight when they arrive in Washington. Dan: 

During the floor debate so far, several lawmakers have said this farm bill is about supporting rural America. Maybe they really believe it. And several have said that this farm bill is a "first step" towards some sort of nebulous reform, so everyone should vote for it. It seems we've taken that "first step" many times. When is the last step taken? Farm bill only come around once every five years. How many farm bills do we have to go through to get real payment limits and a serious investment in rural economic development? When will we stop investing in mega-farms and start investing in the future of Lyons, Nebraska?

The Center for Rural Affairs has been fighting for legislation that could help revitalize rural America for decades. We have been fighting to say, once and for all, that the farm bill is about helping small and mid-sized farms and rural communities. Period. You can't do that while you're sending million dollar subsidy checks out the door to mega-farms that drive their neighbors out of business. This farm bill in the House will keep those checks flowing. So don't tell me about "necessary" compromises. Of all groups interested in the farm bill, rural America and family farmers have received the least benefit from it for decades, and the current House farm bill won't change that.

This is why we get angry.

And so it went. We took our fight from the House to the Senate. In the Senate we at least got a vote on the key reform bill, the Dorgan-Grassley Payment Limits Amendment, but the powers that be still managed to manipulate the rules so that our 56-vote majority came up on the losing side (ah, the U.S. Senate). Dozens of blog posts and action alerts later, the game was finally up, and there was only one thing that could possibly be said: 

This Farm Bill Needs a Veto

Two years ago, when I started working at the Center for Rural Affairs, there was an uncertain aura around the Farm Bill. Nobody really knew what all could be accomplished, but we definitely knew that there was going to be intense public interest in the bill, more than ever before. The Michael Pollan effect was multiplying rapidly. There was a general consensus that good things could be done, but questions about how much we could actually succeed at.

And then there was a real earthquake - the 2006 elections. Democrats took the House and the Senate, and it seemed that a new day had dawned. Hopes soared. We sat around and looked at each other - two Midwestern Democrats, chairing the Ag Committees? Those payment limits-hating Southerners are in the minority? Are you kidding me? We're going to kick some ass, take some names and generally turn the farm policy world upside down.

This was the chance, this was it - the stars had aligned for real reform. [...] But, as we all know, that did not happen. [...] 

This bill, as currently written, is not worthy of passing Congress. There are wins, but the magnitude of those wins is not anywhere close to the magnitude of the opportunity squandered by those who claim to represent family farms, sustainable agriculture and rural America. When this bill hits the President's desk, he should veto it. And then Congress should sustain that veto, pass a one year extension, and start over again. Because this farm bill ain't worth it.

We will have the opportunity to fight again, and despite my occasional reputation as an irredeemable cynic, I have real hope that we can do better, that we can win more, that we can get a farm bill that is better than the one about to pass Congress. And we can try again in 2009. But if the bill becomes law, we will have to wait until 2013. I'm not willing to wait that long, and many of our small towns can't wait that long. So get out the veto pen, Mr. President, and do the right thing. Kill this farm bill.

The farm bill posts are too numerous to do justice in one post looking back. I seem to recall a couple of good runs of live-blogging the debate in the House and the Senate, but when I scroll back through the posts it really looks like just one straight live-blogging session that stretched for months on end with occasional hopes for real reform frequently punctuated by the reality of D.C. politics woven throughout the narrative. Come to think of it, that's pretty much how I remember my work from those months too.

Despite its dominance on this blog, some of Dan's best blog posts were not about the unfolding debate over farm program payment limits.

There was Asking Price: $50,000,000 that Ken Cook over at the Environmental Working Group Blog, MULCH, praised, saying this is "why God created blogs." It was a pretty damn good post: 

Well, we’ve written several times about the money cotton and rice growers receive from the feds. And given those dollar figures, we’ve been thinking it would sure be nice to get our hands on good-sized cotton and rice farm, sit on the porch, drink some iced tea, and cash checks. Finally, we’ve discovered a suitable chunk of land, and if we could just get a little help with the down payment we should be good to go.

Our future home is a mere 27,787 acres (plus or minus, but who’s counting?). Located in Gilbert, Louisiana- Franklin and Tensas Parish. There wasn’t much in the way of pictures on the realtor's website, and we don’t really have time to visit, but when we read that the property included “manager’s homes, shops, and tenant houses” we figured we’d be able to find at least one house on the property we liked. Or maybe we could move to a different house every month, keep things interesting.

You really have to go read that one to get the full effect.

And when a "blog brouhaha" erupted at Ethicurean about the interstate shipment of state inspected meat, Dan jumped in with his Size Matters post. 

The food safety advocates might kill me for this, but I’m going to say it: Small meatpackers should face less onerous rules and regulations than the giant Smithfield/Tyson/Hormel/Whatever plants that kill hundreds of thousands of animals per week. The more small packing plants we have, the better off consumers, farmers, and society in general will be. When it comes to interstate shipment of state-inspected meat, the problem with the House farm bill provision isn’t that it provides inadequate protection for consumers. It’s that it provides too much.

Then there was You Grown Veggies, We'll Grow Corn. Forever. Promoted by a NY Times Op-Ed, the post became a three part series (one, two and three):

We've said it before: If we ever want a substantial percentage of our food to be grown in healthy, sustainable ways, we must find ways to recreate America's food processing infrastructure. And we need good, wholesome, local and regional food to supply those processors. Getting rid of the planting prohibition is a necessary first step. 

I'm going from memory here, but I think the series ultimately became one of the most linked-to set of posts on this blog.

More recently was a set of two posts annihilating the argument by some congressional supporters of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that it had anything at all to do with the safety of the meat in your kid's school lunch. From part two:

NAIS stops at the packing plant door - there is no requirement to trace the meat during production.  Given that most contamination resulting in food recalls (and people getting sick) is a result of improper production practices you can start to see how this isn’t about public health.  If a person is sickened eating tainted meat, NAIS cannot help in identifying which animal actually caused the disease (if, in fact, there is a particular animal at fault) because during production meat from hundreds of animals is mixed together - and NAIS does nothing to address this problem.

And I have to give one final nod to a post that was written practically on his way out the door drawing an analogy between the "too big to fail" mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the ever-similar corporate agribusiness sector. 

Too big to fail.  Those might just be the scariest four words in the English language today.  Because the reason companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are too big to fail is simply the first two words of that phrase - they're too big, and we let them get that way.  In fact, what should be said is they're too big to continue in their current form. 

Why, you may ask, is this relevant for agriculture?  Because we're approaching the point the "too big to fail" conundrum will apply to large parts of the agriculture sector.  Meatpacking is the most obvious industry.  Almost certainly, three companies will soon control over 70% of the beef processing capacity in the U.S.  Smithfield is an enormous hog producer that owns 1.1 million sows or so.  Smithfield buys somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the hogs produced in North Carolina.  What do you think would happen if Smithfield were to threaten bankruptcy and liquidation?

Whew. I set out to highlight just a few posts from the last year, and I fear I have done much more. It's only fitting to say goodbye to the master of too-long blog posts with one of my own though. 

We'll miss having Dan at the Center, and perhaps me more so than others. We fought a just and righteous fight for farm bill reform, stayed at the office too late countless times, spent too many weekends together in our small town where people under 30 are hard to come by, drank plenty of bourbon, and hashed through a hundred different policy arguments a dozen times each. 

Thanks, Dan.