Small farms, consumers benefit from farm programs
IFB, U or I research counters 'vilification'
Martin Ross
Published: Jan 26, 2011
It’s come to be nearly a perennial event -- the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) listing of federal farm payment recipients and its indictment of direct payments.
EWG President Ken Cook argues the 2008 farm bill reinforced “an interlocking maze of subsidies that, taken together, force taxpayers to spend billions of dollars no matter what the condition of the farm economy.”
But analysts with Illinois Farm Bureau and the University of Illinois challenge the EWG’s premise that ag supports -- according to EWG, the “continued bailout of corporate agriculture” -- bolster large producers and agribusiness with little benefit to society at large.
A new discussion document developed by IFB argues “good farm policy provides for a stable food supply, soil and water conservation benefits, and nutrition assistance for the nation’s children, senior citizens, and poor.”
As a result of farm programs, U.S. consumers on average spend only about 6.9 percent of their total budget on food -- half the percentage spent by most Western Europeans and a fifth the percentage Chinese consumers spend on food relative to income.
“Part of that program puts a safety net under producers that allows them to manage through a volatile marketplace and affords the consumer relatively cheap food,” IFB President Philip Nelson said. “That’s an economic boon for everyone, including every man, woman, and child who’s a consumer.”
Further, U of I ag economist Barrett Kirwan, who has reviewed the USDA data published by the EWG, argues that in terms of relative gain, small farms are major beneficiaries of commodity payments.
The farm bill provides “progressive support,” generally offering smaller producers more significant subsidies per dollar of assets, Kirwan said.
And those subsidies provide a crucial safety net allowing many of those producers to continue farming. Farm tenants cannot offer lenders the collateral held by a landowner, and the security of program payments “allow relatively small farms better access to credit,” said Kirwan.
If, as some proponents of small-scale “local agriculture” suggest, small farms provide enhanced environmental benefits, payments also may encourage more widespread stewardship by helping keep land in diverse hands, Kirwan said. That’s in addition to conservation measures undertaken by program recipients as a whole, Nelson said.
“I’m just not sure the vilification of farm programs causing massive farm consolidation and driving industrial agriculture is entirely accurate,” Kirwan told FarmWeek. “There really are people who are lifted out of poverty because of the subsidies.”
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