Copyright 2002 The Omaha World-Herald Company Omaha
World Herald (Nebraska)
December 11, 2002, Wednesday SUNRISE
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 8b;
LENGTH: 431 words
HEADLINE:
Fallout from farm bill News media attention to the price of
subsidies might have a silver lining.
BYLINE:
8
BODY: What if America were to
eliminate agriculture? University of California ag economist Steven Blank
proposes in his writings that our country could buy food more cheaply from
foreign countries and use farmland for "high-value uses" such as recreation and
urban expansion.
That disquieting proposal, which runs
counter to the lifestyle and economic interest of many Midlanders, was attacked
by a speaker at this weekend's Nebraska Farmers Union's annual meeting. William
Heffernan, a professor in the department of rural sociology at the University of
Missouri, claims instead that continued concentration of the food industry and
globalization threaten America's food security.
Faced
with oil crises and global terror concerns, we believe it's legitimate to
develop an agricultural policy to protect a domestic food supply. However, as
we've said here before, the current farm-bill system has done
a woefully poor job in its attempts to do that and to prop up rural America.
While we disagree with Blank's theory that America will
"outgrow" agriculture, he's probably on target with his 2001 observation that
"an increasingly urban America has tired of subsidizing our farmers and
ranchers. Agriculture is losing its appeal as an investment for our nation."
Congressman Tom Osborne says the beating President Bush
took in The Wall Street Journal and New York Times over his support for the farm bill is part of the reason that hopes for drought aid seem
increasingly dim. The Times hasn't forgotten the issue, either. In an article
published last weekend, the paper's magazine looked at rising poverty and crime
and drug use in rural America.
We believe the coverage,
focused heavily on Nebraska, is an overly gloomy assessment. Still, it made some
interesting comparisons between the problems of inner cities in the 1960s
and'70s and those of present-day rural America. The Times says the rural
collapse has been largely silent, unlike the cities' troubles, which generated a
national debate about causes and solutions.
Rural
America's dwindling population presents a problem in getting attention for rural
issues (which the Times rightly notes are increasingly divorced from
agriculture). Even in Nebraska, residents of the Omaha and Lincoln metro areas
outnumber those in the rest of the state.
The
increasing media spotlight can be a chance for rural leaders to forge
substantive alliances to deal with rural America's problems. We hope rural
leaders can turn the scrutiny into more productive agricultural policy.
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