Agricultural policy is not sexy. You probably don’t know the intricacies of “loan deficiency payments” or “base acreage,” and you probably don’t care. This was once an agrarian nation, but now there’s a less than 1% chance that you’re a farmer, and if you are, you’re probably part time; the average farm family gets 82% of its income from nonfarm sources. We’re not a people of the soil anymore, and for most of us, our eyes glaze over when we see farm statistics like the ones in that last sentence. But farms still cover most of our land, consume most of our water and produce most of our food. If you eat, drink or pay taxes–or care about the economy, the environment or our global reputation–U.S. agricultural policy is a big deal. It’s also a horrible deal. It redistributes our taxes to millionaire farmers as well as to millionaire “farmers” like David Letterman, David Rockefeller and the owners of the Utah Jazz. It contributes to our obesity and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, eliminate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast-food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the nonagricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy. Ever since the 1980s, when a wave of foreclosures inspired those iconic Farm Aid concerts, the media’s sporadic reports from farm country have tended to focus on floods, droughts and other disasters. But the farm crisis is as over as Barbara Mandrell. Farm incomes are at an all-time high. The median farmer enjoys five times the net worth of the median nonfarmer household. Crop prices have soared–thanks largely to the Federal Government’s promotion of corn ethanol over more efficient renewable energies–and yet subsidies have as well. Nevertheless, Congress is finalizing a $286 billion farm bill that will continue our basic farm policies, which means it will keep funneling money to farmers and pseudo farmers through a bewildering array of loans, price supports, subsidized insurance, disaster aid and money-for-nothing handouts that arrive when times are tough–or not tough. “What a joke,” grumbles Congressman Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat who led a failed bipartisan reform effort in the House. “You’re eligible as long as you’re breathing.” Actually, that’s not quite true. Since the vast majority of the cash goes to five row crops–corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice–more than 60% of our farmers receive no subsidies. And a recent Government Accountability Office report identified $1.1 billion of subsidies whose recipients were no longer breathing. Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration started farm aid in response to the Dust Bowl and the Depression, calling it “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” But in Washington, the emergency has never ended. The government still gives farmers your money–more than ever over the past decade–along with research projects to expand their yields, restoration projects to clean up their messes, flood-control and irrigation projects to protect and enhance their land, visa programs to supply them with cheap labor, ethanol mandates and tariffs to boost their prices, and tax breaks by the bushel. The bipartisan farm bills that Congress passes every five to seven years reflect the power and savvy of the farm lobby, which parlays cue-the-violins stereotypes of struggling yeomen into giveaways to the planter class of the South and Great Plains. In reality, the top 10% of subsidized farmers collect nearly three-quarters of the subsidies, for an average of almost $35,000 per year. The bottom 80% average just $700. That’s worth repeating: most farmers, especially the small farmers whose steadfast family values and precarious family finances are invoked to justify the programs, get little or nothing. This summer an unprecedented coalition, running the gamut of the advocacy world from rural development to health to business to the environment, emerged to help Kind and Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona try to shake up the system. Editorials thundered for reform, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco–the city of organic kale and “meat is murder”–vowed to deliver it. The moment seemed ripe for Democrats to challenge the status quo. Agribusiness was steering two-thirds of its campaign donations to Republicans, and just 19 of the 435 congressional districts were vacuuming up half of all subsidies. Still, House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota had a warning for Kind. “I told him, ‘Ron, you’re a good guy, but you’re way out of your league here,'” Peterson told TIME. “I knew we were going to kick his butt.” He was right. Pelosi sided with the American Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union and the Big Five commodity lobbies, spearheading a bill she called “a first step toward reform,” an oblique way of saying it isn’t reform at all. The Big Five would still hog the subsidies, while the influential sugar industry would retain its lucrative price supports. The one major “reform” was that farm families earning at least $2 million a year would supposedly be ineligible for subsidies, assuming none of them knew decent accountants. The story of this butt-kicking is a quin-tessential Washington tale, illustrating how a single special interest with a single-minded devotion to a cause can trump a broad coalition and the national interest. The Senate is considering a similar bill, and a reform effort led by Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana seems likely to meet a similar fate. The Bush Administration has made noises about a veto; Kind says the President, famously reluctant to admit mistakes, confided in a private chat that he regrets signing the lavish 2002 bill. But it’s never wise to bet against the farm lobby, which spent $135 million on lobbying and donations last year and brilliantly portrays opponents as enemies of the heartland of America. “The game is always the same,” says Oxfam America’s Jim Lyons, a former U.S. Agriculture Under Secretary. “The big commodity groups have a stranglehold on policy. And there’s not a lot of stomach for new ideas.” ‘Look What’s Happened.’
