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An ag policy that saves land and livelihoods
What do George W. Bush, the Sierra Club, and the World Trade
Organization have in common? All three want the United States to
phase out its costly federal crop subsidies, replacing them with
more enlightened assistance to farmers.
Currently subsidies are doled out based on volume of production
rather than need, and in only a few instances with environmental
concerns in mind. The result is that more than 80 percent of federal
cash payments go to a quarter of the country's 2 million farms,
mostly large grain and cotton growers in the South and Midwest.
According to the USDA, these payments induce farmers to grow 25
million acres more corn and soybeans than the country needs, driving
prices down and small farms out of business.
Every five years or so, Congress passes a farm bill that maps out
how and where it will support agriculture and what it expects in
return. The current law, passed in 1996, expires this fall. It was
ostensibly written to finally wean agriculture from Depression-era
price supports, but those same subsidies reemerged virtually
untouched each year as emergency appropriations.
In a new twist, the White House has defied long-standing
Republican tradition and called for an overhaul of the farm payment
system. The Bush administration wants more bang for its billions,
with increased emphasis on egalitarian incentive programs that
benefit any farm that takes steps to prevent erosion or runoff.
The administration is more concerned about protecting
international trade than streamside habitats, but few
environmentalists are complaining. This is the first year that
lawmakers must abide by a 1997 World Trade Organization agreement
committing member nations to reducing direct price supports deemed
by the WTO to hamper trade; the United States is capped at $19.1
billion per year. While a bloated-as-usual farm subsidy program
could easily violate WTO guidelines, most money spent on
conservation incentives is acceptable under the treaty.
Environmental groups want to expand a handful of successful
efforts that please farmers and free-traders alike. Among them are
the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to leave highly
erodible and other sensitive lands fallow, and the Wetlands Reserve
Program, which helps farmers restore wetlands and fines those who
destroy them.
Other worthwhile conservation programs include the Farmland
Protection Program, which helps purchase development rights to halt
sprawl, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, which assists
farmers in their efforts to protect threatened and endangered
species. In fact, conservation payments are already so popular with
farmers that they rank third among federal incentives, behind cash
payments for corn and wheat. Farmers know a good thing when they see
it, and so do environmentalists and the president. Now it's up to
Congress to sow the seed. --Reed McManus
In October, the House of Representatives chose
lobbyists over conservation, passing a $171 billion farm bill that
would increase commodity payments by $49 billion and provide huge
subsidies to animal feedlots and factories, a major Sierra Club
concern. This made the Senate the focus of farm-policy reform, where
the Club supports a proposal by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and
Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that would help farmers safeguard clean water,
protect wetlands and wildlife habitat, and prevent suburban sprawl.
For more information, go to www.sierraclub.org/cleanwater.
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