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Lots of things on the farm cause headaches. Right up near
the top of the list is headaches caused by too much stress from biblical things
like drought, flood, pestilence and disease. But nothing is more biblical than
money.
Luke manages to sum it up pretty well in Verse 12:16-21 in
the Bible.
Of course, modern farmers have more reasons for monetary
migraines than ancient tillers of the soil do, because not only do we have
modern futures markets, but we also have the farm bill.
I have survived more farm bills than Noah survived floods,
because while Noah only had to make it through THE BIG ONE, I've had to wade
through at least three Freedom-to-Farm farm bills. Each one seemed bigger than
the one before.
It's sort of like biblical triple jeopardy.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the hard work
Congress does on these things. It's not easy building a coalition of cooperation
from among a cartel of special interests. Livestock growers want abundant grain
supplies, grain growers want abundant prices, grain dealers want abundant
markets and taxpayers want abundant food at low cost.
Hence we have a farm bill and abundant headaches.
Farm Bill Headache #1:
Most farm bills have dealt with the same problem found in
Luke 12 by tearing down big barns to build bigger ones so that we could store
the surplus. But the most recent law finally dealt with the surplus by selling
it off. That's why we have commodity payments. Growing a lot and selling it all
no matter what does not always net a good price. The farm bill tries to make up
for losses when prices are below costs of production. Most farmers didn't want
to lose money, so the bigger farms got, the bigger farm payments had to be.
Government-subsidized competition makes it hard for small farms to compete for
land they need to earn a living. For all its cost, most of the money spent in
the farm bill goes to food aid and nutrition. Only 15 percent of the total $95
billion for 2009 is dedicated to commodity programs. That's a very small
percentage of the total. When you consider that large payouts to large farms
come from a small pool of funds equaling 15 percent of the total, it makes it
even more imperative that small farms be treated equitably. What the farm bill
should do for America is to strike a bargain between cheap production and
plentiful production by encouraging farmers to invest and produce. A recent
study done by the Center for Rural Affairs points out what Luke was talking
about by proving that payment-limit reforms touted by Congress actually increase
payments for many large farms, large farms that will "tear down barns and build
bigger ones". They could do a better job with this by treating small and
midsized farms more fairly.
Farm Bill Headache #2:
Of course when a flood of grain hits the market, some
livestock producers get bigger too. They figure that the cheaper grain gets, the
cheaper they can produce chicken, hogs and cattle. As livestock farms got
bigger, the bigger were pollution problems from industrial manure. One of the
ways big livestock overcame the problem was through contract grower
arrangements. They built bigger barns via contract growers who lease to own
through a corporation that owns the livestock and supplies the feed. When legal
trouble looms with contracts, most contract growers have to adhere to contracts
requiring binding arbitration, and growers are hamstrung by the debt they
assumed to build the facilities. None of this is good for small farms that grow
livestock for big corporations or that may want to compete with big corporations
by growing their own. There are provisions in the farm bill to deal with this,
IF they are approved by both the House and Senate.
Farm Bill Headache #3:
When big meat packers get really big, they tend to gain a
certain power in the marketplace. For one thing, they have something called
captive supplies. Captive supplies may be livestock they've contracted for well
in advance, or they may be livestock that the packers themselves feed out.
Sometimes captive supplies can be accessed from across the national border,
which makes them even more secretive. The problem for small livestock producers
is that when the market is secretive, it's really hard to know when you're
getting a good price. In fact, it's really hard to even arrive at a price.
Markets need to be free so that buyers have to bid against each other for
available supplies. When big processors face little in the way of enforcement as
is the case now with the Packers and Stockyards Act, then small producers are
not paid a fair price, consumers are not charged a fair price and processors
pile up the money. Luke warned us about that.
Farm Bill Headache #4:
Country-of-Origin Labeling would let producers tell U.S.
consumers if the food they are eating is homegrown or imported. We have COOL for
Chevrolets. We have COOL for fish. We have COOL for just about everything except
most of the food grown in the United States. One really good reason for COOL is
that food grown in some parts of the world may have unsafe pesticides or other
chemicals applied to it or fed to it that are illegal in America. With food
borne illness and bioterrorism a growing concern, telling the consumer that the
coast is clear on that five-pound roast seems like a good thing.
All these things have come close to being fixed in
previous farm bills. But just as headache #1 points out, the devil is always in
the details. While Congress may have good intentions, many times the stated goal
and the final product are at opposite ends of the field.
In Luke 12, Jesus is
quoted as saying "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or
hidden that will not be made known."
He must have been reading the farm bill.
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