The Farm Bill Should be Better

By ANTHONY PAHNKE

This past Dec. 20, as most Americans were fixed on the hoopla surrounding the border wall dispute, Trump signed the farm bill into law. That the farm bill received such little popular consideration is quite unfortunate, especially because the issues within the legislation, from conservation and food assistance, to pricing for crops, affect both rural and urban Americans. What is just as lamentable is how our politicians have failed to deliver on the legislation’s potential. The months of debates leading up to this last farm bill show how both parties in Washington fail to appreciate agriculture.

There’s been two moments when the farm bill did not disappoint – the first, when the legislation was created in 1933, and the second, when food assistance was included within it in 1964.

The first farm bill was ambitious. Written as the Dust Bowl drove millions from rural America, it was President Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, who saw the environmental and economic roots to this catastrophe. Farmers were producing too much, which not only drove prices down, but forced them to expand in the false hope of earning more money. Wallace, through legislation, incentivized farmers to take land out of production, established a base price for commodities, and created a government-financed reserve system of food stuffs in case of emergency. What was the original farm bill’s objective? Keep farmers on the land by conserving the environment and regulating markets.

In 1964, there’s another change. Now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at the time, the initiative was called the food stamp program. The program was also in the original farm bill, but it was discontinued in 1943. In the 1960s, as part of the set of policies that were part of President Johnson’s Great Society, the reintroduction of food assistance as a permanent measure sought to connect the urban poor with rural producers. Or rather, the idea was to subsidize a way for people in the cities to purchase food from farmers. The idea is that everyone should have access to food, regardless of their income or employment status.

These moments in the farm bill’s history show innovative, creative efforts in policy making. President Johnson’s Great Society initiative was bold in its attempt to end – not just fight or cut — poverty, with food stamps playing an integral part. Henry Wallace in the first farm bill fought to keep people in the countryside. Wallace’s legislation was visionary for regulating production and challenging corporate interests in the attempt to promote environmentally-friendly stewardship practices.

These central elements of the farm bill — environment stewardship, food assistance, and pricing policy — remain within the legislation, but are denigrated and ridiculed. Instead of working with them to start bold, new initiatives to benefit rural and urban people, our politicians threaten to make the poor work for food. Critics, without knowing the legislation’s intent, call price supports wasteful, unfair, and corrupt. The farm bill is not about generating dependency, nor about corporate subsidies. Instead, the legislation is about recognizing that food is a right and that farming is an honorable profession.

Our current moment parallels what Wallace encountered back in the 1930s. Nearly half of Americans do not have $400 in their savings for an emergency and farmers have seen their incomes fall by half since 2013. Meanwhile, climate change threatens environmental disaster. Even though this last version of the farm bill sees additional support for some farmers, this comes more as a response to the negative effects caused from Trump’s trade war than a sincere concern for farmers’ livelihoods or the environment.

Agriculture deserves better. The original farm bill serves as a model, particularly for incoming representatives who speak of a Green New Deal. Hopefully, they can take lessons from the farm bill’s past to forge new, daring proposals that promote environmental stewardship and economic justice.

Anthony Pahnke is vice president of Family Farm Defenders and an assistant professor of international relations at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California. Contact him at anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu and anthonypahnke.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2019

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