Editorial: Stop federal payments to big farms
An employee stands inside a grain bin at Kahle Supply and Feed Mill Inc.'s facility in Kalida, Ohio. Corn production in the U.S., the world's largest grower and exporter, will drop 13 percent to a six-year low after the hottest July since 1936 damaged Midwest fields, the government said. (Aug. 9, 2012) Credit: Bloomberg
With drought and scorching sun withering corn crops and making consumers nervous about food prices, Congress should cast a hard eye on subsidies that have gone from Depression-era help for family farmers to a costly sop for agribusiness.
Those supports should be pared, if not eliminated, when the five-year farm bill that expires Sept. 30 is reauthorized. For instance, with farm earnings strong and prices spiking due to pinched supply, there is no good reason for taxpayers to continue paying farmers $5 billion a year whether they grow or don't grow corn and other grains. The federal ethanol mandate that diverts almost 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop from food to fuel should be scrapped too.
Unfortunately, the House of Representatives seems to have no stomach for the job.
A five-year, $500 billion farm bill that the Senate passed in June would eliminate the direct payments to farmers and use the savings to bolster the crop insurance that protects growers in the event of disaster. So would the bill the House Agriculture Committee approved last month. Neither goes far enough in wringing out subsidies that have outlived their usefulness, but they're a start.
Still, Republican leaders in the House refused to bring the bill to the floor. Instead, the House rejected a bid to extend the current farm bill for one year, restored some disaster aid for livestock producers and beat it out of town Aug. 2. That stopgap is dead on arrival in the Senate, as it should be.
The House should confront this issue head on when it returns to work Sept. 10. It won't be easy. Even ending supports for tobacco, a notorious killer, is occurring in slow motion. In 2004 Congress enacted the Tobacco Transition Payment Program, also known as the tobacco buyout. The idea was to ease the transition to a free market by weaning farmers off a quota system that parceled out valuable federal authorization to grow tobacco. Annual transition payments, funded by assessments on tobacco product manufacturers, won't end until 2014.
Burdened with deficits and debt, Congress should seize the moment to cut and modernize all the aid it lavishes on big farmers.
