Bush's farm bill "reform" proposal falls woefully short

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original-grist

Reform School
Bush's farm bill "reform" proposal falls woefully short

By Tom Philpott
06 Feb 2007
Note: This is the third of a three-column series on the 2007 farm bill. The first two columns are here and here. The author promises not to return to the topic for at least a few weeks -- but will likely backslide from this pledge in his Gristmill blog posts.

Can Bush point the way for America's farmers?
Photo: whitehouse.gov/Eric Draper

In this series, I promised to lay out new models for federal food and farm policy. But after two long columns, I still haven't catalogued the full depth of the failures of current policy. Doing so is a necessary exercise, because the official terms of debate surrounding the 2007 farm bill will be dominated by the failed policies of the past.

I learned that lesson last week, when the Bush administration released its agenda for the bill. The Bush plan seeks to carefully balance its own need to cut the federal budget and further its free-trade agenda with its desire to appease an important farm-state political constituency. What the proposal doesn't do is address the massive environmental and social problems haunting U.S. food production.

Of course, the Bush team's move is a first parry. The congressional agriculture committees have only begun to debate the farm bill, and so far the farm-state legislators who dominate those committees haven't revealed much about their own specific plans. But initial public reaction to the Bush plan doesn't offer much hope for real reform.

Oxfam America, which has been a tireless critic of U.S. farm policy from a social-justice perspective, declared the Bush plan "encouraging," evidence that the administration is "willing to move American agriculture in a new direction." To see why the Bush plan is actually another push down the same old road, let's dig yet again into the parched soil of recent U.S. agriculture history.
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complete article including links to parts 1 &2 here