Farm Bill reform: CFRA's analysis of Farm21

The Strib has published an Associated Press article Farm bill again will be battle over crop subsidies, in which the Kind-Flake Farm 21 proposal is mentioned extensively.  The darling of many lefty bloggers, FARM-21 deserves more scrutiny than we've seen.

Fortunately, our friend Dan Owen at the Center for Rural Affairs down in Nebraska has taken a close look at it in Ron Kind's FARM 21- Friend or Foe?.  Those who think the Kind bill is a godsend for American agriculture should take a close look.  Owens' major points:

• While FARM 21 would change the basic structure of farm programs, it does little in the way of making sure that farm program benefits flow to small and mid-size family farms (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 does not close the loopholes used to avoid farm program payment limits (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 shifts large amounts of money to conservation programs- a laudable goal- but invests most of that money into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which subsidizes enormous manure lagoons and the concentration of livestock production (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 places much-needed resources behind some rural economic development programs, but others receive inadequate amounts (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 does not include any crucial livestock market competition reforms;
• Despite our criticisms, every farm bill proposal should receive equal consideration (jump to more about this).

Go read the whole thing for some thoughtful analysis, much of it based on a look at the bill by the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, though opinions you'll read on CFRA's blog are those of the CFRA (of course). 

Owens attended House Ag Chair Collin Peterson's Farm Bill meeting in Marshall, Minnesota, on Monday. Afterward, we discussed Peterson's statement that he intended to cap EQIP and other conservation payments at $50,000 over the term of a contract, rather than continuing the current level of $450,000.  Capping EQIP at that amount would return the program to pre-2002 Farm Bill levels, and it is a change of course for Peterson since May (see this article in Grist, for example).

Comments

[Thom Petersen]

thanks for the interesting post on Farm-21