A couple of years ago I called Idaho potato magnate J. R. Simplot to ask him about farm subsidies. There was an Associated Press story coming across the wire that listed billionaire-farmer Simplot as one of the largest recipients of government farm subsidies in the country, and since Simplot is a major player in southwest Idaho, my editor wanted his side of the story.
I forget now how much J.R. was raking in for not growing certain crops or for growing certain crops or just for being a magnate: the details are not important right now.
But I recall Simplot’s quick response to my question almost verbatim: “If I got it, I earned it and I’m not giving it back.”
Well last week billionaire farmers got a reauthorization of the Farm Bill through Congress. And today President George W. Bush, who is actually concerned about excessive subsidy payments to wealthy farmers, vetoed the bill. Congress is likely to override the veto.
The subsidy lobby apparently dumps enough of this farm welfare cash back into votes and campaign contributions. In other words: they got it, they think they earned it and they are not giving it back.
Candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton praised the bill, citing increases in conservation programs, food stamps and healthy school lunches that are bundled in with the billions of dollars in subsidies. Candidate John McCain stood up against rampant government farm subsidies and the poor food policy they breed on the global stage.
There was a blip of stories on the Farm Bill passage in Idaho’s media, and there may be more stories if the veto battle comes to fruition.
But something else is going on in agriculture in Idaho and across the nation.
And it is related to the big dirt pile in my front lawn. I have been digging up a section of my lawn to plant corn. It’s hard work and it broke 90 degrees in Boise over the weekend, so I hope my corn grows tall this summer.
At a Green Expo in Boise on Sunday I heard a telling statistic: there are more farmers’ markets in the United States now than Wal-Mart outlets.
Farmers, to whom rows and rows of corn and wheat are mere abstractions, are creating their own food economies. Farm economist Benjamin Gisin, who publishes Touch the Soil Magazine, spoke about dozens of such projects spread across the country: urban orchards, local currencies, barter systems, suburban lawn farms and organic farm franchises.
But Gisin opened his talk with dispatches from Egypt where there are bread riots and the military has turned to baking and Indonesia where rice is scarce and street vendors are urged to skimp on this staple. I failed to see how a blossoming of local food economies in towns like Boise will help solve some of these global food crises.
But I fail to see how the Farm Bill does this either. U.S. agricultural policy has ruined farming in many parts of the world, including in Mexico, where we depressed the price of corn, sending millions of out-of-work farmers here to look for work.
What we should be exporting are these local food culture ideas and practices. Not that developing nations need our help in creating food cultures. Where we Americans are starting from scratch and learning how to eat from the ground up, Mexicans still know how to grow corn and how to prepare it in a myriad of naturally tasty ways.
America’s agricultural power lies in our ability to deemphasize food as a commodity to be traded on the global stage and reemphasize food as food. While provisions in the Farm Bill for food security and the development of local organic farms will help, the system of farm subsidies is stuck in the food-as-commodity days.
When my corn grows tall in a few months and I dry it and pound it into tortillas and give them to my neighbors I will have taken a small chunk of the commodity out of corn.
And I’m not giving it back.
This story was first published on NewWest.net and PoliticsWest as part of their Mad Voter series.
