The farm bill sets U.S. food policy for five years. It is the biggest environmental bill by far that Congress enacts. One quarter of California — 27.6 million acres — is farmland, much of it in the heavily polluted San Joaquin Valley. Agriculture covers 40 percent of the land in the United States. How food is grown on that land has massive consequences for the air, waterways and wildlife. The farm bill also (mis)shapes the American diet.
The Ag committees, populated by Midwest and Southern farm state lawmakers from both parties, want to defend subsidies to the big commodity crops such as corn, wheat, cotton and rice. They know that $5 billion a year in “direct payments” to commodity farmers are vulnerable, so they want to replace these with a new scheme to “insure revenues.” The new scheme — variations of which are being written by the commodity groups — would lock in today’s record crop prices as a new subsidy while claiming to save money.
Let us pray that the other committees in Congress don’t get the same idea. The deficit Super Committee was born last summer as a political manuever to get around Congress’s inability to raise the debt ceiling and make hard choices generally. If the Super committee can pass a deficit reduction plan, it will be presented to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendment. This would allow the Ag committees to get their farm bill enacted into law without so much as a vote. The Super Commitee may be well intended, but its creation has clearly opened a Pandora’s Box by overriding the normal committee process.
“It’s a profoundly undemocratic process,” said Kari Hammerschlag, a senior analyst with Environmental Working Group in Oakland.
California, the nation’s largest farm state, locked out for decades from the commodity subsidy system because it grows mainly fruits, nuts and vegetables, is sure to get short-changed by this process.