The Farm Bill

The Senate and the House are expected to soon finish haggling on final details of the five-year, $286 billion farm bill, with the measure possibly reaching President Bush's desk by the end of this week. I urge a swift veto for these reasons;

• Most of the subsidies go to corporations and wealthy socialites, not actual farmers.

As the Environmental Working Group’s priceless Farm Subsidy Database reveals, philanthropist Mark Rockefeller received $228,350 in conservation subsidies between 2001 and 2005 for his Idaho farm. His brother, banking legend David Rockefeller, scored $29,615, thanks to his Hudson Valley farm. Edgar Bronfman Sr., former CEO of the now-swallowed Seagram spirits company, distilled $17,455 in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies between 2003 and 2005.The country's 4th largest recipient, The Arkansas’s Department of Corrections locked up $1,966,597 in government greenbacks between 2003 and 2005.

The Rockefellers and Bronfman are just three of the 562 New Yorkers EWG identified as urban farmers who Washington supported between 2003 and 2005. These New Yorkers included: Nevitt Nugent Jenkins: $1,647 Brock Seawell: $2,939 Leonard “Lipstick Mogul” Lauder: $3,015 Grant Thornbrough: $29,523 Norman Champ III: $127,114.

• Its fiscally irresponsible to force taxpayers to pay these estates to grow ( or in some cases, not to grow) crops.

Heritage Foundation fiscal affairs analyst Brian Riedl calculates that these boondoggles cost a typical American family $322 in taxes annually. Farm programs often hike crop prices, artificially boosting grocery bills.

• The Farm Bill produces a gross violation of basic free-market principles.

The USDA began subsidizing farmers during the Great Depression. It was a move to save half the country's livelihood and entire food source. Nowadays, farmers, which make up a substantially smaller portion of our economy, choose what to grow based on what is subsidized, not what will fetch the highest price at market. The 2007 version, like its predecessors, retains a complex system through which corn, wheat, soybean, rice and cotton growers concentrated in a handful of Southern and Midwestern states receive billions through price guarantees and direct subsidies. Pelosi says that because subsidies will now be extended to some new fruits and vegetables, this is an improvement. No sale. Government subsidies have no place in an industry that racks up billions in profits.

I imagine the proliferation of subsidies has a lot to do with politics. The Iowa primary can make or break a Presidential candidate. The support of Iowans is largely tied to a candidate's support for corn subsidies. Nobody would make it out of Iowa alive if they attempted to discontinue corn subsidies to farmers. The political solution is thus more complicated than the policy solution. Last I heard, the ethanol business was doing pretty good and it shouldn't take a government subsidy to grow and sell it for profit. (See ethanol fuel in Brazil) If a producer can't make a profit then the farmer will choose to grow another product or find efficient and innovative ways to cut production costs and thus make a profit off his time/work/creativity. If an agricultural product can't make it on its own without subsidies then it should not be grown.