This article by Dennis Keeney appeared in The Des Moines Register / April 8, 2001, Sunday
United States agricultural policy is failing and needs an overhaul. It is time to make good choices that will bring agriculture to the road of sustainability. With the 2002 farm bill coming up, now is as good a chance as we're going to get. Current farm policy that rewards grain production has left us with persistently low corn and soybean prices (in many, if not most, cases below the cost of production). The number of family farmers on the land continues to decline. Rural communities continue to lose population and vibrancy. Our lakes, rivers and streams are polluted with sediment, fertilizers and pesticides. The industrialized farming systems that are the cause of these trends continue to proliferate.
What kind of agriculture should the farm bill promote? * One where small niche market and family farms dot the countryside. * One where farmers are involved in "local food systems," supplying Iowans with much more of their daily sustenance rather than focusing almost exclusively on grains for meat and export. * One where significant amounts of land are used for biomass farming for energy, trees and grasses for fiber, and grazing for milk and beef. * One where fragile lands, waterways and wetlands are protected with soil-conserving grasses and trees. * One where research and demonstration programs in sustainable agriculture are thriving. What we need to do to achieve this vision is clear: We must shift our agricultural policy from grain payments to green payments.
Under current policy, the more corn and soybeans that the farmers produce, the higher the government payments they receive. We have a system that favors the production of certain grains, whether there is a market for those grains or not. In addition, loan-deficiency payments are given to farmers to help make up the difference between what it costs them to grow the grain, and what they get for it on the market. Together these commodity and loan-deficiency payments, along with other government payments, make up close to half the income of the farming sector in the United States. This system leaves us, as taxpayers, pumping massive amounts of money to further encourage a grain glut and the destruction of our environment that intensive row cropping causes. Our need to push our agricultural production to the point of environmental and social destruction is not necessary to "feed the world," because the increase in grain production elsewhere, especially in South America, provides the world with far more of a buffer than most futurists have been predicting.
We have the opportunity - and the obligation - to explore more sustainable, farmer-friendly farm policies now, rather than to continue producing even more grain when it is not needed. What would happen if we completely pulled the grain-subsidy programs? It will happen, sooner or later, as the taxpayers become tired of paying for the ever-lengthening ball and chain. Some of the large grain farms would become larger, no doubt. Without subsidies, production costs will decline, because the agri-giants of the world will lower prices to meet the fallen market for genetics, fertilizer and seed. With lower production costs, farmers will capture niche markets such as organic fruits and vegetables and specialty meats and grains.
Under Harkin's proposal, agricultural money must be freed for green payments. The approach Senator Tom Harkin has proposed in his Conservation Security Act is one good illustration of how green payments would work. With the money provided through Conservation Security Act programs, farmers would choose which conservation-management practices would best address the concerns of their own farms. Options include improving pasture and rangeland management, pest management, and nutrient and manure management. And we, as taxpayers, would provide farmers with "green payments" for their efforts, because we would get direct benefits: cleaner water and air, healthier soils, more diverse communities of plants and animals. In short, we get a more livable Iowa.
Harkin's approach has a number of advantages over our current system: *Participation would not be limited to program crops such as corn and soybeans, as it has been. All farms would have the opportunity to participate. *Current conservation practices and newly implemented practices are rewarded. In the past, farmers who have always done the right thing haven't been financially rewarded. *Off-farm water pollution, such as the nutrients reaching the Gulf of Mexico, would lessen, greatly lowering the pressure on Upper Midwest agriculture to meet the lowered pollutant loads that soon will be required. *Organic matter would be added to soils, greatly increasing their rate of intake of rainwater and lowering soil erosion markedly. This would have the side benefit of storing some carbon and helping alleviate global climate change.
Harkin's bill is a good one. And yet, it still does not address the basic problem of U.S. agriculture: overproduction and loss of farms. This requires major structural changes in agriculture. It may be too late to achieve structural changes of the magnitude that are needed just by tweaking the system. Hence my call for a change in the way we subsidize grain. We have given the livestock industry over to the giants. And they will grow animals wherever the situation provides a profit, despite the environmental consequences. We have given the bulk grain-food industry to the marketer/processors, who also treat farmers as low-cost suppliers. It is time to debate alternatives to the 2002 farm bill that would put U.S. agriculture back on the track of sustainability. Change will be painful. It always is. However, the longer changes are put off, the worse the demons we will have to wrestle in the future.
Dennis Keeney is emeritus professor of agronomy at Iowa State University in Ames and a senior fellow at the Institute for Ag and Trade Policy, Minneapolis, Minn. Copyright 2001, The Des Moines Register.
