Former Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz may have been an embarrassment to the administration he served in the 1970s, but his record pales in comparison to the farm bill passed by the current administration. I’m not saying this is all President Bush’s fault. The policy that subsidizes farmers for limiting production of surplus crops is deeply entrenched in farm culture. The fact that crops usually become surplus because of government action or inaction is rarely mentioned.
Having grown up in Beverly Hills, I was blissfully unaware of such things until we bought ranch property in Kern County in the early ’60s.
Although we were only interested in raising horses, we were amazed to learn that the owner of our ranch was retiring on money the government paid him not to grow sorghum grain. He said that after three years of low prices for his crops, he was delighted to accept the government’s incentive to pack it in. With the subsidy and what he got for selling the ranch, he said he could hang up his overalls and live comfortably in Bakersfield.
Then we met a farmer who was doing well growing cotton. I suppose he was a “family farmer” although his family didn’t live on the farm. They lived in a lovely home in Stockdale (the Bel Air of Bakersfield) and didn’t even own the land he farmed. Then he learned he could make more money for doing less work. Here’s how he explained it. In those days, there was a “cotton allowance,” which limited the amount of acres that could be planted in cotton. Surplus was a magic word even then. The allowance went with the land, whether it was owned or leased by the farmer. But all farmland is not equal in how many bales of cotton it will grow. Secretary Butz didn’t seem to have thought of that. Let’s say you could lease 500 acres with cotton allowance in an area where the yield was only maybe one bale an acre. And you could lease 500 acres of very rich land where the yield could be 10 times that, but that land didn’t come with any cotton allowance. Well, what this enterprising farmer did was lease the poor land and take the 500-acre allowance and plant it on the rich land. Good move. Then he got the government to pay him not to grow 500 acres of cotton on the poor land. Bingo. He also retired early. Along with Butz, who had apparently screwed up a lot of things in agriculture, not the least of which was encouraging Midwestern farmers to grow corn to the exclusion of all else creating, you guessed it, a major surplus. Silos had to be built to store it. It was sold to pig farmers cheap. They had to invent products to use it up. And the government soon had to pay farmers not to grow any more corn.
I have a few suggestions for current Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, which could save taxpayers the cost of all those subsidies and might even get rid of some of the more onerous items in the Energy Bill. Instead of paying farmers not to grow corn, the government could subsidize the production of ethanol and give it to oil refineries so we can phase out the use of MTBE, the additive that makes gasoline burn cleaner but pollutes ground water. As long as we don’t do both.
Next, if we’re going to subsidize farmers, why not subsidize organic farming and save on all the petrochemicals used by agribusiness in herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. Organic farmers can use the surplus corn, digested by livestock, to enrich the soil. This would also reduce chemical pollution of our air and water, which is cleaned up (or not) by taxpayers. It might even reduce carbon dioxide emissions (an unfulfilled Bush campaign pledge) that cause global warming. The reduction of petrochemical use would reduce our dependence on foreign oil (since this administration is never going to risk offending auto makers by tightening mileage standards). Also, according to scientists, it would reduce Medicare (taxpayer) payments for heart disease, lung disease and cancer caused by the pollution. (A 21-year Swiss study of organic and conventional farming and an EPA study of toxic chemicals seem to support this.)
And while we’re at it, since water is increasingly scarce and expensive, the government could subsidize farmers in California and other drought-prone states to grow less thirsty crops (rice and cotton are water hogs). How about hemp? It’s easy to grow, disease resistant, drought tolerant and has many uses. Oops. I guess Attorney General John Ashcroft would never let that happen.