Senate farm bill evades reforms
Modesto Bee, October 25, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Central Valley growers generally like the 1,312-page farm bill debated Wednesday by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. Reformers definitely do not.

In a long and wordy markup, the committee sustained proposals to spend a record $2 billion on specialty crops over the next five years. Half of this money would pay for fruit and vegetable purchases to provide healthy snacks for an estimated 4.6 million schoolchildren nationwide.

The Senate proposal, like the House's $286 billion farm bill approved in late July, largely keeps intact the traditional crop subsidies paid to cotton, rice, wheat and corn growers. Both bills also offer cosmetic changes. The Senate bill, for instance, gives the food stamp program a less culturally loaded name, as the "food and nutrition" program.

Both bills steer funds to pet congressional projects, such as the Senate's grants for historic barn preservation and boutique "artisanal" cheesemakers. Both protect certain favored crops. The Senate bill, for instance, gives Hass avocado growers centered in California a quick opportunity to form a marketing order that sets grade and quality standards. The avocado growers are anxious about foreign imports.

Both bills tinker with payment rules, offering modest reforms that critics consider inadequate.

"The committee could do much better on behalf of farmers and the American taxpayer," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Wednesday. "With each passing year, these policies seem ever-more misguided."

The Senate bill, for instance, would stop subsidies from going to farmers with adjusted gross incomes greater than $750,000. The House sets a new $1 million income limit, compared with a current limit of $2.5 million.

The Bush administration sought a $200,000 income limit.

Lugar lacked the votes Wednesday to challenge the Senate bill. Instead, he will offer an amendment to boost specialty crop spending to $3 billion and replace crop subsidies with expanded insurance and "revenue protection" plans.

Limit on payments proposed

Another amendment to be offered in the Senate, where farm-state influence is weaker than in the agriculture committee, would cap subsidy payments at $250,000 per farmer. Currently, the payments are limited to $360,000 per farmer.

Senators considered other amendments Wednesday, after spending more than two hours making introductory remarks and thanking each other for their hard work. None fundamentally changed the bill, and most committee members in- sisted the legislation goes as far as feasible.

The Senate bill, for instance, joins the House bill in eliminating a provision that allows farmers to collect subsidies from three different business entities.

In California, as in other states, relatively few farms dominate the subsidies. One percent of California farm subsidy recipients collected nearly one- quarter of such payments in the past decade, according to the Environmental Working Group.