Still Waiting for Farm Reform
The New York Times, July 28, 2007

Doling out last-minute benefits as only a speaker can, Nancy Pelosi managed to kill a progressive farm bill on the floor of the House. The House then passed a bill that further enshrined an outdated and excessively costly system of guaranteed subsidies. It is now up to the Senate, which will address the issue in September, to devise a new and improved bill that eliminates the old subsidies and uses the savings for food stamps, conservation and other causes worthier than making big farmers even richer.

The sweeteners that Ms. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders used to squelch the reform effort, mostly improved the final product. More money was added for conservation programs, for school lunches and for international nutrition.

Even so, the bill perpetuates a lopsided system of price supports and direct payments for producers of major row crops like corn and soybeans, even though crop prices, fueled by the ethanol boom, are at an all-time high. These same generous handouts also complicate international trade negotiations, and — especially in the case of cotton — discriminate against poor overseas farmers who cannot compete with America’s subsidized producers.

The good news is that there is a core group of influential farm state senators ready to break with the past and with the lobbyists for big agriculture. They include Tom Harkin, the agriculture committee chairman from Iowa, Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Richard Lugar, a moderate Republican from Indiana.

All have expressed interest in a redesigned farm program that would replace guaranteed subsidies that simply encourage overproduction with programs that would protect farmers against price swings and natural disasters — helping, that is, at moments when farmers truly need help.

Billions of dollars would be redirected — at far higher levels than the House envisions — to conservation, renewable fuels, food stamps and growers of specialty crops who are now largely frozen out of the system. President Bush, who is threatening to veto the House bill, favors many of these ideas. With his help, the forces of reform may yet prevail.