Look to alternative
Orlando Sentinel, November 9, 2007

It's planting time for federal farm policy in the U.S. Senate. Members can plow their way to five more seasons of unfair, wasteful, misdirected and trade-disrupting subsidies, or sow the seeds for real reform.

Under current policy, large farming operations raising five crops -- corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat -- reap the bulk of subsidies, even when they are prospering. It's more of a fringe benefit for Big Agriculture than a safety net for family farmers.

Farm subsidies spur overproduction, wasting limited resources and dumping more pesticides and fertilizers into the environment. They violate international trade rules, gumming up the gears in U.S. trade talks and inviting retaliation from trade partners.

In July, the House passed a five-year farm bill that would keep the subsidy system largely intact. The Senate is now considering a similar stinker. Blame it on the combined lobbying might of the large farming operations that pocket most of the benefits, their equipment and chemical suppliers, and the multinational food makers that buy their subsidized products. Most members of the agriculture panels in both houses are captive to those interests.

In addition, the House-passed farm bill and the one now pending in the Senate were carefully drafted to buy off other constituencies. Both bills include funding for food stamps as well as other nutrition programs. There's money for environmental programs. There's an even sweeter package of price supports for the politically potent sugar industry.

And this is the first farm bill that wouldn't neglect fruit and vegetable growers, including those in Florida. But the $1.8 billion they would share is a tiny fraction of the bill's $288 billion price tag.

President George W. Bush, who signed a similar farm bill in 2002, has threatened to veto the latest one. Of course, there's no comparison between this farm bill and the water-projects bill that Congress just passed over the president's veto. The farm bill authorizes more than 10 times as much spending, and would steer most of its dollars to farming operations that don't need it instead of to a backlog of infrastructure needs.

Senators still have the chance to choose far better farm policy, including an amendment from Republican Richard Lugar. He would replace subsidies with an insurance plan available to all farmers, who would get paid only when they truly need help. The $20 billion savings from Mr. Lugar's proposal would be plowed into nutrition and conservation programs and deficit reduction.

The Senate farm bill presents a test for Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Mel Martinez of Florida. Will they stand up to special interests for a fairer, more fiscally responsible and rational policy? Or will they back down, and settle for the crumbs the bill would scatter to Florida farmers?