On Thursday, farm groups decried a recently published Heritage Foundation report that called for the abolition of common subsidies while nonprofits Environmental Working and the Union of Concerned Scientists have praised parts of the report, if not all.
The report proposed that all commodity programs in Title I of the farm bill should be eliminated save for two: the Permanent Disaster Assistance Programs and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program. It also heavily suggested that farmers can handle most of the risk themselves or use private risk-management systems that they have purchased.
“This means getting rid of programs such as the Agricultural Risk Coverage Program (a shallow loss program), the Price Loss Coverage program, the sugar program, and the dairy program,” the report posited.
The report questions maintaining the federal crop insurance program as it is, but highlighted that it can serve as a general taxpayer-funded safety net by dropping the subsidies—as long as the program is focused towards protecting against deep yield losses and disasters instead of revenue-based policies.
“We see every farm bill cycle, groups with little connection to actual agriculture, like the Heritage Foundation, coming off the sidelines to attack farm programs that provide critically needed assistance for family farmers and ranchers,” argued Roger Johnson, president of the National
Farmers Union. “Many producers rely on those programs to continue farming through these tough economic times.”
“Despite the report’s assertions, facts show that producers are not doing so well financially. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farm income has declined more than 40 percent since 2013, and farm jobs decreased by nearly 15 percent from 2001 to 2013,” Johnson told
Agweek.
“The Heritage Foundation has once again proposed leaving farmers and ranchers without a viable safety net,” commented American Farm Bureau Federation executive director of public policy Dale Moore.
“The latest report from the Heritage Foundation is out of touch with the realities of the current farm economy, the intent of Congress, and the views of the American public,” explained National Crop Insurance Services president Tom Zacharias. “Our farmers and ranchers are facing a 56% drop in net farm income that no one predicted along with managing volatile swings in weather patterns and unfair practices and rising subsidies from foreign governments.
Environmental Working Group and the Union of Concerned Scientists have offered praise for the report, reasoning that the opinions of the right (which call for the reduction of government spending) and the views of the left (which maintain that the farm bill’s spending should focus less on commodity and crop insurance programs and more on things like conservation, organic agriculture, aid to small farmers and farmers’ markets, etc.) can meet on the same page with the report’s findings.
“Today’s report confirms how our so-called far safety net has strayed from its original purpose — to help farmers weather the ups and agriculture, not to guarantee a level income that is well above the income of the average American household,” said Environmental Working Group vice president Scott Faber.
“We absolutely must continue to support farmers, particularly when they need it most, but that support shouldn’t come at the cost of incentivizing certain crops and practices over others, exacerbating land access issues, or disproportionately supporting the largest and wealthiest farm businesses,” shared Union of Concerned Scientists representative Mike Lavender.
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