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Farmers on the dole: the crying need for ag reform.

Article Excerpt
AMERICA has the most innovative and industrious farm community in the world. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most of it gets by without government support--but a small handful of very large producers are stuck in a cycle of dependency on the federal government. Drenched in subsidies, these producers nevertheless face ever-increasing prices for land, fertilizer, and equipment. Shielded from price signals for almost 80 years, they no longer know what to plant or how much to grow without help from the federal government. Shielded from the consequences of expanding beyond what the domestic market can support, they find themselves dependent on the export market--in a world that is increasingly hostile to rich-country farm subsidies.

The ethanol mandate and the biofuels push have mitigated this dire situation in recent years. Sold to the public as renewable-energy programs, they are actually more like sponges designed to soak up enormous amounts of excess corn, sugar, and soybeans--much like the food-stamps and international-food-aid programs before them. But even with these policies driving crop prices to record levels, the House of Representatives is getting ready to pass a new five-year farm bill that will pump another $45 billion of taxpayer money into programs designed to boost prices, support expansion, and increase exports. If the Senate does not show better judgment--taking advantage of this period of high prices to wean farmers from government aid--the only rational thing for President Bush to do is veto the bill, on the grounds that it spends too much, kneecaps our free-trade agenda, and keeps our farmers trapped in a loathsome welfare system.

The bill the House Agriculture Committee finished writing in late July encompasses all the elements that have made the U.S. farm program such a disaster for so long. Generating opposition to, or even interest in, these measures is incredibly difficult simply because it's incredibly difficult even to understand them. The first step in analyzing farm programs, then, is to translate them from jargon-filled statutes into understandable English.

THE FARM SYSTEM

The first thing to understand about farm programs is that the majority of them are created around specific crops. The bulk of farm subsidies go to cotton, corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans, and there are several ways in which the government subsidizes producers of these crops. The most basic...

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