Citizens' Daily Lobby

The Enviromental Working Group has kept a searchable database of information about crop subsidies in the US since 2002.   According to updated data for 2009, the situation for small farmers and growers of produce has not improved.  In 2009,  fruit and vegetable farmers received just 5.3% of total subidies ($825 million out of $15.4 billion).  The vast majority of the remainder went to growers of just 5 commodity crops: corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat.

Contrary to what many, including Senator Lincoln, would have you believe, small farmers are not receiving much help from these subsidies.  The EWG reports that

“from 1995 to 2009, the largest and wealthiest top 10 percent of farm program subsidy recipients collected 74 percent of all farm subsidies, with an average total payment over 15 years of $445,127 per recipient — hardly a safety net for small struggling farmers. According to the USDA, 62 percent of farmers don’t even receive subsidies.”

The farm subsidy program is one of the major reasons that it is cheaper for working families to buy soft drinks and corn chips than apples and oranges.  As the nation turns its attention, at long last, to the problems of inadequate school nutrition and epidemic obesity, it is time for legislators to revamp the subsidy program.  Small farmers and farmers of high-nutritional value (overall nutrition, not just protein or carbohydrate calories, thank you) should be rewarded.  Incentives for local production and distribution of produce should  be introduced. 

Senator Lincoln has had ample opportunity, as a member and now Chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee, to move the subsidy program in a new direction.  She has chosen to side with Big Agriculture instead.    The school lunch bill she touts in campaign speeches will provide $450 million per year over 10 years to lunches.   That’s less than half what President Obama requested, and in the end schools that comply with the nutrition standards will only receive about 6 cents extra.   Thanks to the 15.4 billion dollars in farm subsidies for commodities, that 6 cents is likely not even enough to buy a single carrot. (Full story here.)