Farm Bill

The 2007 farm bill, as approved by the House on the eve of the August recess, is as shambolic a piece of legislation as will ever be OK'd by a chamber that frequently endorses the incomprehensible and the indefensible. But what is truly frustrating about the House's version of the five-year, $286 billion blueprint for everything from agriculture and food policy to trade and energy development is that this complicated mess of a measure cannot be easily hailed or condemned. On the plus side, it makes significant new commitments to encourage sustainable farming practices, fund the conversion to organic farming, strengthen food-safety protections and expand nutrition initiatives that are the essential food-policy components of this omnibus legislation. On the negative side, the House bill proposes to open gaping loopholes that would allow environmentally destructive factory farms to qualify for funding intended to help family farmers conserve the land; maintains corrupt practices that stifle competition in the livestock industry; and fails to endorse basic health-and-safety moves like banning the practice of blasting spoiled beef with carbon monoxide to make it appear wholesome.

Hovering above all the good bits and nasty pieces of the measure is that it would do little to change our corrupt system of paying subsidies to some of the wealthiest nonfarmers in the world. Nor does the House address the fact that the bulk of the money intended to maintain diverse and competitive family farms would go to a handful of Southern states that overproduce crops like rice and cotton.

The best that can be hoped for now is intervention by the Senate, where Agriculture Committee chair Tom Harkin says, "We can't afford to settle for an extension of the status quo--not in terms of budget, and not in terms of policy." But for that to happen, we need to broaden the public discussion at a time when, as Representative Rosa DeLauro says, "too many Americans know too little about the farm bill and its impact on our lives."

--John Nichols