I haven't been in touch for a while, and some of you have written
asking for an an update on the 2008 Farm Bill. After many, many
months of wrangling, the bill was just passed by Congress, overriding a
veto by the President. In my view, it is not a very good bill-- it
preserves more or less intact the whole structure of subsidies
responsible for so much that is wrong in the American food system. On
the other hand, it does contain some significant new provisions that,
with luck, will advance the growing movement toward a more just,
sustainable, and healthy food system.
You might rightly ask why there was so little movement on commodity
subsidies, in a year when crop prices are at record highs and public
scrutiny of the subsidy system has been intense. Indeed, the people on
the Hill I talk to tell me they have not seen so much political
activism around the farm bill in a generation. All the calls, cards,
and emails sent by ordinary eaters clearly made a difference. So why so
little change on the key issue? Why didn't we get a food bill, rather
than another farm bill?
Here's what I think happened. Critics of farm-policy-as usual-- and I
count myself among them-- did a much better job of demonizing subsidies
than they did proposing alternative forms of farm support that would
have won over some percentage of the farmers now receiving subsidies.
The whole discourse depicting subsidies as a form of welfare --
payments to celebrities, rich people in cities, mega-farms etc--
convinced many farmers that the ultimate goal of the farm bill's
critics was to abolish subsidies, rather than to develop a new set of
incentives that would encourage farmers to grow real food and take good
care of their land. Had the reformers crafted proposals that were easy
to explain and attractive to even just a segment of commodity-crop
farmers, we could have made much more progress. Instead, faced with
what appeared like a threat to their livelihood, the old guard hunkered
down and defended the status quo, refusing even to negotiate on the
central issues. Better alternatives could have split this block, and it
was our failing not to devise and promote them. What the Old Guard did
instead of negotiating a new system of farm support was what it has
always done: pick off the opposition, faction by faction, by offering
money for pet programs. The history of the farm bill has long been
about such trade offs: Urban legislators support subsidies in exchange
for rural support for food stamps. That Grand Bargain has now been
extended to supporters of organic agriculture, local food systems,
school lunch advocates, etc. The reason that, in the end, most of the
activist groups wound up urging Congress to override the veto is that,
by the end, they all had been given something they liked in the bill.
You could put it more baldly, and suggest they'd all been bought off--
that the $300-plus billion bill represents the exact price of buying
off all the critics of the farm bill, plus the cost of maintaining the
status quo. But this is how the game is played, and the fact is, some
good will come of these programs, modest as they are-- they will sow
seeds of change and legitimize alternative food chains, or so we can
hope.
The challenge for the next farm bill is clear: it's not enough to
engage the public, important as that is; we also have to get much
smarter about both policy and politics, and craft some attractive
proposals that will divide the farm block as well as move us to a
healthier and more sustainable food system-- economically sustainable
for farmers and farm workers and environmentally sustainable. This
is the project for the next few years. We've got our work cut out for
us.
Below is a very good article summarizing what in the bill, for better
and worse. It's by Debra Eschmeyer, a farmer and activist who has been
an important player in the reform movement. I pass it on with her
permission.
Best, MichaelMichael Pollan
