Monday, August 6, 2007
News / Food & Life / Food media Farm bill follow-up
Posted by Adina Fleming on Mon, Aug 6, 2007 at 4:52 PM
A week ago, the House of Representatives voted on the 2007 farm bill. If you missed what resulted, here is a brief update.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a victory as House Democrats succeeded in voting to approve what she saw as a historic bill that looks slightly different from past farm bills. Although some noteworthy changes were made by the House, many reforms don't go far enough.
• The bill ends subsidy payments to farmers earning more than $1 million a year, down from the present cap of $2.5 million. Many critics, including the Bush administration, are calling this change still a ridiculously high number for farmers' income ceilings.
• It creates support for fruit and vegetable growers.
• It increases money for nutrition programs, land conservation, and programs to research alternative fuels like ethanol.
• $840 million for international food aid programs pleased anti-hunger activists.
• $100 million was included to settle claims of racial discrimination from black farmers.
• It includes a $4 billion increase in food stamps.
Despite these progressive aspects, the bill continues to perpetuate a system of subsidies and direct payments to farmers that disproportionately rewards big business and growers of major commodity crops at a time of record high prices. Under the House bill, corn growers will receive $2 billion in direct payments for each of the next five years, despite the record boom in corn production and prices due to increases in ethanol production.
In other words, under the House bill, not much will change in how farm programs operate in the next five years in terms of subsidies. Cotton, corn, wheat, rice and soybeans will continue to receive most of the federal farm payments. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the $1 million income cap will only affect 3,100 farmers ... that is, if they don't use creative accounting to lower their taxable income.
Angry Republicans spoke out against the tax provision inserted into the bill by Dems to pay for the $4 billion expansion in food stamps. And the White House has threatened to veto the bill, in part because of proposed tax hikes on foreign-owned companies with U.S. subsidiaries to help pay for government nutrition programs. The farm bill is slated to cost $286 billion over a span of five years.
Stay tuned, as this vote is just the beginning. Next, the bill will be debated and negotiated in the Senate this fall. Read my previous entry about the farm bill here .
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