Something to think about on this tax day... where will more than a quarter trillion dollars go over the next few years?
Answer: The [Food &] Farm Bill.
The corn kernels you eat, whether on the cob, frozen or canned is sweet corn and is less than 2/10th of 1% of the corn grown.
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Independent Lens will be showing the documentary film, King Corn (lots of really good stuff to explore at that link) which was released last October. About a couple guys who buy an acre to see what it takes to grow corn. This is an important film (and pretty fun) since the [Food &] Farm Bill is currently in Congress being reconciled (not too late to call). |
My first inkling of the food crisis we're in now was in the mid-eighties from a rash of movies about failing farms (that introduced me to Willie Nelson of Farm Aid fame). I was way too young to understand and my sense of the whole thing was Hollywood was scamming off of each other and that was why films so similar came out. I didn't get the reality of the situation. Too bad.
Because even though I always felt uneasy, I fell for big food, hook, line, and sinker. I guess in some ways that's good as I have such a better understanding of how it all works, and why, now.
So, today I'll include some information I've been gathering to help you understand why there even was a movie made, followed by a bit on the movie itself along with the ripples it has had, and then add some more information on our Industrial Food Complex, the [Food &] Farm Bill currently torturing Congress and what we can do along with where we can go to get more information and understanding.
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Michael Pollan of Omnivore's Dilemma and his most recent, In Defense of Food (Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants) as well as those that he started this journey on, The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own, and Second Nature (interview and link to his books), is featured in the film. Pollan has perhaps led the charge to understanding our food system and the Industrial Food Complex that has swallowed us up. His writing seemed to explode upon our consciousness (perhaps with the peaking of Mad Cow) with his article, Power Steer, in the New York Times, which was followed-up with When a Crop Becomes King. But he's written so much else including some related ones, The Way We Live Now: The Great Yellow Hype, A Flood of U.S. Corn Rips at Mexico, Unhappy Meals, You Are What You Grow,
MICHAEL POLLAN FROM WRITING ABOUT CORN FOR THE LAST FARM BILL (Corn Production has nearly doubled since then)
Corn, by making itself tasty and nutritious, got itself noticed by Christopher Columbus, who helped expand its range from the New World to Europe and beyond. Today corn is the world's most widely planted cereal crop. But nowhere have humans done quite as much to advance the interests of this plant as in North America, where zea mays has insinuated itself into our landscape, our food system—and our federal budget.
One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill President Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are really being served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow ever more corn, this despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus the plant already produces. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. But rather than design a program that would encourage farmers to plant less corn—which would have the benefit of lifting the price farmers receive for it—Congress has decided instead to subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that zea mays dominion over its 125,000-square-mile American habitat will go unchallenged.
At first blush this subsidy might look like a handout for farmers, but really it's a form of welfare for the plant itself—and for all those economic interests that profit from its overproduction: the processors, factory farms, and the soft drink and snack makers that rely on cheap corn. For zea mays has triumphed by making itself indispensable not to farmers (whom it is swiftly and surely bankrupting) but to the Archer Daniels Midlands, Tysons and Coca-Colas of the world.
Our entire food supply has undergone a process of "cornification" in recent years, without our even noticing it. That's because, unlike in Mexico, where a corn-based diet has been the norm for centuries, in the United States most of the corn we consume is invisible, having been heavily processed or passed through food animals before it reaches us. Most of the animals we eat (chickens, pigs and cows) today subsist on a diet of corn, regardless of whether it is good for them. In the case of beef cattle, which evolved to eat grass, a corn diet wreaks havoc on their digestive system, making it necessary to feed them antibiotics to stave off illness and infection. Even farm-raised salmon are being bred to tolerate corn—not a food their evolution has prepared them for. Why feed fish corn? Because it's the cheapest thing you can feed any animal, thanks to federal subsidies. But even with more than half of the 10 billion bushels of corn produced annually being fed to animals, there is plenty left over. So companies like A.D.M., Cargill and ConAgra have figured ingenious new ways to dispose of it, turning it into everything from ethanol to Vitamin C and biodegradable plastics.
By far the best strategy for keeping zea mays in business has been the development of high-fructose corn syrup, which has all but pushed sugar aside. Since the 1980's, most soft drink manufacturers have switched from sugar to corn sweeteners, as have most snack makers. Nearly 10 percent of the calories Americans consume now come from corn sweeteners; the figure is 20 percent for many children. Add to that all the corn-based animal protein (corn-fed beef, chicken and pork) and the corn qua corn (chips, muffins, sweet corn) and you have a plant that has become one of nature's greatest success stories, by turning us (along with several other equally unwitting species) into an expanding race of corn eaters.
Here are links to a speech from the New Farm site by Michael Pollan which can't be accessed on his own site (to my knowledge) to check out about corn, ethanol, subsidies, obesity, and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and our obsession with the plant.
A speech by Michael Pollan
Editor’s note: August 15, 2005, The following keynote address--following the food chain: The high cost of cheap food--was given at the 2005 25th anniversary Ecofarm conference in Asilomar, California. An edited transcription is reprinted here—in two parts—with the author’s generous permission.
King Corn (Part 1)
The Paul Revere of industrial agriculture sounds the alarm, but this time the invading enemy is not the Redcoats, it’s that tassel-waving, husk-cloaked “monstrous mutant grass Zea mays.”
"Corn is really getting the better of us at this point. We hand over land to it, we pamper it, we push out all other species from our farms, crushing biodiversity to help the corn, we overfeed it with fertilizer, we nuke its enemies, we stuff ourselves with it, all to advance the reign of corn over us."
Supersize me organically(Part 2)
Esteemed writer Michael Pollan tells how overproduction of commodity crops has led to overconsumption and obesity, and he challenges the wisdom of “organic high-fructose corn syrup” and the machinations that would create such products.
I think Wendell Berry said it, what did he say, “cheap at any price.” And that’s what we have.
Farmers are in a bind really on one side, with consumers on the other, and industry and politics getting bigger, pushing out and putting pressure on us both.
Sure, corn prices are up but so are the inputs which are not only industry (seed; petro-chemicals of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides -- 28% of the energy in growing comes from these, and more; equipment) but often outside the "farm belt" so a drain of the monetary inputs that are brought in by growing the stuff.
Bread Basket Case
What if the Midwest stopped trying to feed the world and started focusing on itself?
BY TOM PHILPOTT
01 Nov 2006
Another, potentially more sustainable, solution would be to rethink what a farm is for. Currently, a typical farm in the Midwest produces inputs for industrial production. What if, instead, farms focused on growing fresh food for their neighbors?
The Hand That Feeds You
At first glance, the idea is absurd. The rural Midwest doesn't seem to have the population density to support a robust local-food economy. It's one thing for specialty farms in New York state's Hudson Valley, a short drive from the nation's largest city, to "go local"; but it would never work in Iowa, where so many small towns have been all but abandoned and farms average 350 acres.
That's the conventional thinking, anyway.
But independent Minnesota farm researcher Ken Meter challenges that wisdom. In the seminal 2001 paper "Finding Food in Farm Country" [PDF], written with John Rosales of the University of Minnesota, Meter argues persuasively that the dismal economics of farm-state agriculture could be improved by developing local markets.
Meter's work shows that commodity farming, rather than building wealth, extracts money from rural communities. In a seven-county region of southeastern Minnesota in 1997, farmers brought in an impressive $866 million selling their wares. However, amazingly, they incurred $947 million in costs to do so -- a loss of a cool $80 million. Federal subsidies covered just half of that loss; the rest had to be made up by non-farming activities.
Moreover, nearly half of the $947 million in incurred expenses left the area, as payments to distant suppliers of seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides, or to banks in the form of interest.
Meanwhile, though, the seven-county region's 120,000 households were busily buying food and eating it. Meter reckons that southeastern Minnesotans were spending $500 million on food annually -- and only $2 million of it on fare grown within the region. Yet if they could manage to buy just 20 percent of their food from nearby growers, that would amount to $100 million in additional sales for the region's farms, more than wiping out their $80 million loss in 1997.
In case study after case study -- not only in the Midwest, but also in farming-intensive areas in California, Arizona, and the Southeast -- Meter teases out similar scenarios. Farming for distant commodity markets sucks resources out of communities, and residents of those communities spend heavily on food from outside. He doesn't suggest that such regions turn insular and stop supplying or buying from outside markets; just that they consume a much higher portion of their food output locally.
More Corn = More Chemical In-Puts
Monsanto counts its cash
Seed-and-chemical giant sees its profit triple
Posted by Tom Philpott at 10:47 AM on 04 Jan 2008
In a gold rush, the firms that supply the gold diggers with tools -- not the gold diggers themselves -- make the highest and steadiest profits. That's a platitude, but it's also usually true. And it's now playing out in the boom in corn-based ethanol.
Don't waste much time envying corn farmers. Sure, they've seen the price of their product double over the past year and a half or so. But they've also seen their costs inch up. Fertilizer, land rents (much of the farmland in the midwest is rented), pesticides, and seeds -- all have risen since the corn rally. Before long, much-heralded "record farm income" in the corn belt will likely evaporate under those pressures.
As for ethanol producers -- the ones buying up all that corn and spinning it into auto fuel -- even they've seen their profits drop, despite heavy government support. They flooded the market with so much ethanol, so fast, that they overwhelmed it, leading to a glut. Helpfully, though, the federal government solved that problem, for a few years at least, with the 2007 Energy Act and its lofty ethanol mandate.
Corn farmers and even ethanol producers are pikers compared to the input suppliers -- the firms that peddle the special seeds and chemicals required for industrial-scale agriculture. And the granddaddy of all those firms, the genetically modified seed and herbicide giant Monsanto, just delivered what's known on Wall Street as a "blowout" quarterly profit report.
In the three-month period that ended Nov. 30, Monsanto reeled in profit of $256 million. That's nearly three times the amount it made in the same period of a year earlier, and well more than Wall Street analysts had expected. Monsanto shares, which more than doubled in value over the course of 2007, leapt more than 9 percent in Thursday afternoon trading on the news.
How did Monsanto pull off this neat trick? By selling boatloads of herbicide and genetically modified corn, Reuters reports:
Sales of corn seed and traits during the quarter jumped to $467 million from $360 million a year ago, while sales of its Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides climbed to $1.0 billion from $649 million.
The company told Wall Street to expect more of the same in 2008, boosting earnings expectations significantly.
But corn needs more than just nitrogen and protection. It needs phosphate. LOTS. And it's very destructive to... Florida.
Miracle grow
Cargill's well-connected fertilizer unit wows Wall Street, dumps on Florida
Posted by Tom Philpott at 9:41 AM on 11 Jan 2008
According to the above-linked Investors Business Daily article, Mosaic saw the average selling price of a ton of its phosphate jump about 70 percent in the past year -- a price increase of $174 per ton.
And that represents a massive windfall for Mosaic. IBD reports that Mosaic is "the world's largest phosphate producer, producing roughly 11 million tons annually." For those keeping score, 11 million tons times $174 equals $1.9 billion. Naturally, the bonanza is inspiring the company to expand and intensify its phosphate mining operations, which are concentrated in Florida.
But while Mosaic's shareholders celebrate, citizens down in Florida have other concerns. Get this, from Tampa Bay-based Bay Soundings:
For every ton of raw fertilizer produced, the industry generates five tons of phosphogypsum, a radioactive material the U.S. Environmental Agency considers hazardous waste. With limited options available, the phosphate industry is storing more than a billion tons of phosphogypsum in stacks that tower up to 200 feet high -- a problem that grows by 30 million tons every year.
Again, those massive mounds of phosphogypsum are slightly, well ... radioactive. According to a report for the director of the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research -- an industry-funded group -- reprinted by the Sierra Club:
The impurities in phosphogypsum which cause the primary concern are radioactive materials. Uranium occurs naturally along with phosphate rock in Florida. Radioactive decay transforms uranium into other elements such as radium, polonium and lead. As a result, all of these radioactive materials are found in phosphogypsum.
Which is hugely profitable to:
Mosaic, the No. 1 U.S. fertilizer maker, put that performance to shame. Mosaic is a spinoff of agribusiness powerhouse Cargill, which still owns a two-thirds stake in the company. Bolstered by the biggest corn crop in U.S. history, Mosaic saw its quarterly earnings rise nearly six-fold, Investors Business Daily reports -- a 493 percent jump. And get this:
It was the third straight quarter of triple-digit growth, with analysts predicting at least two more.
Mosaic CEO (and former Cargill exec) Jim Prokopanko declared this period of profit growth "extraordinary."
Wall Street, for its part, has been gobbling up Mosaic stock. A year ago, Mosaic shares fetched about $20. Today, they sell for around $90 -- a phenomenal gain in tough year for the stock market.
And all those inputs wash off the fields and into our water:
Attack of the killer corn
Why the heavily subsidized corn harvest amounts to an annual environmental calamity
Posted by Tom Philpott at 11:40 AM on 22 Feb 2006
Every year, the USDA reports, corn farmers dump more than 10 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer onto their fields -- a heavier dose than for any other crop by a factor of nearly three. (Source: Download table 2 from this USDA/Economic Research page.)
This annual cascade of "artificial fertility" (as the farmer and activist Jason McKenney calls it) parches soil of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. It crushes biodiversity and makes soils reliant on more fertilizer. According to McKenney, less than a fifth of that nitrogen makes it into corn plants.
The rest leeches into groundwater, feeding algae blooms that smother water-borne life from the northern reaches of the Mississippi River clear down to the Gulf of Mexico, where a dead zone about the size of New Jersey emerges each year, blotting out what was once a robust source of food and jobs, to say nothing of an important marine habitat. As Richard Manning puts it in the winter 2004 American Scholar (unavailable online):
Already, the Dead Zone has seriously damaged what was once a productive fishery, meaning that a high-quality source of low-cost protein is being sacrificed so that a source of low-quality, high-input subsidized protein can blanket the Upper Midwest.
In a sense, by ending up in the Gulf, that fertilizer is coming home: nitrogen-based fertilizer derives from natural gas.
There are now more than 146 Hypoxic Dead Zones around the world linked to industrial agriculture. The one in the Gulf being fed by the Mid-West has been the size of New Jersey but has increased this last cycle with the increase in inputs.
What is killing fish and other living systems in these coastal areas? A complex chain of events is to blame, but it often starts with farmers trying to grow more food for the world’s growing population. Fertilizers provide nutrients for crops to grow, but when they are flushed into rivers and seas they fertilize microscopic plant life as well. In the presence of excessive concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, phytoplankton and algae can proliferate into massive blooms. When the phytoplankton die, they fall to the seafloor and are digested by microorganisms. This process removes oxygen from the bottom water and creates low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones.
Most sea life cannot survive in low-oxygen conditions. Fish and other creatures that can swim away abandon dead zones. But they are still not entirely safe—by relocating they may become vulnerable to predators and face other stresses. Other aquatic life, like shellfish, that cannot migrate in time suffocate in low-oxygen waters.
Reversal of dead zones
Dead zones are reversible. The Black Sea dead zone, previously the largest dead zone in the world, largely disappeared between 1991 and 2001 after fertilizers became too costly to use following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of centrally planned economies in Eastern and Central Europe. Fishing has again become a major economic activity in the region.
While the Black Sea "cleanup" was largely unintentional and involved a drop in hard-to-control fertilizer usage, the U.N. has advocated other cleanups by reducing large industrial emissions.[6] From 1985-2000, the North Sea dead zone had nitrogen reduced by 37% when policy efforts by countries on the Rhine River reduced sewage and industrial emissions of nitrogen into the water.
ABOUT THE KING CORN MOVIE
The following are some trailers, news clips and follow-ups to the release of the movie that supplement the movie but are not the movie itself. These might be even more interesting after watching the movie so please come back to revisit when it's over.
Independent Lens trailer (2:12)
King Corn on CBS News Sunday Morning has Ellis and Chef Ann Cooper (Renegrade Lunch Lady who is revolutionizing School Lunch (5:12 Nice Piece):
Then from the King Corn Filmmakers themselves comes:
KING CORN IOWA TOUR JOURNAL #1 (5:30) Is the film-makers' account of going back to Iowa where the film was made to document the reaction to its release there (and I found it fascinating though I do have a food interest -- so much so I've composed and posted this diary -- and have seen the film already):
Then not embedded are the other parts (which you should be able to catch at the end of this clip:
IOWA TOUR JOURNAL #2 (4:48 -- There is one farmer in this segment who is saying that the distiller's grains which are the leftovers from ethanol production are better than whole corn for feeding ruminants which it's turning out is untrue)
IOWA TOUR JOURNAL #3 (9:40) has the boys returning to the town the corn was grown in to get the reactions of the people there. Very interesting.
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FOOD NEWS: A Conversation with "King Corn" Filmmaker from Cooking Up A Story
Part one includes much of the Trailer for the film and from the film, is the making of HFCS (6:01)
Part 1: A conversation with filmmaker Curt Ellis about his new documentary "King Corn", the film that may open eyes across America. Surprisingly, corn is present in some form or another, in almost everything on the American plate. And, none more so, than through the food ingredient "high fructose corn syrup" (HFCS). Is it a good idea to have "HFCS" present in so many of our foods without prior public debate, or adequate science to measure its impact on the long-term health of adults, and especially our children? Should our standard meals be unnaturally skewed toward a corn based diet, in the first place? This interview, along with video clips from the documentary, may not provide the answers here, but it's a good beginning for further thought and reflection. What do you think?
Part Two talks about taking the King Corn Challenge which is their attempt to eliminate corn and products derived from corn in the diet for the month of November (which happened to be when they were premiering the film and doing much of their traveling) (6:20):
Continuing the conversation, Curt Ellis shares his story about the pervasiveness of corn in our daily foods. We learn that for the first time in human history, the problem of obesity is associated with poverty, not affluence. The processed foods that saturate the market with cheap food products is the chief culprit. Do you feel it's time for a change?
Part Three talks about Ellis' family farm history and what it was like o grow corn now (which is not just food anymore because no matter how many people we stuff it with, we can only eat so much and get so fat... so other uses have to be found and so far that's over 800 ad counting including tires, polymers, glues, detergents, waxes, and so much more)(5:45):
Farming today is not what we may imagine it to be. It's become largely an industrial process, and corn epitomizes this shift in production methods. In Part 3, 'King Corn' filmmaker Curt Ellis shares his experience growing an acre of corn in Iowa, and what it was like for him and his partner. Surprisingly, the growing of 10,000 pounds of corn in one season was the easiest part of the whole farming experience. The other parts were more mundane, and more disappointing.
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The film also includes the last we'll see of Earl Butz who was Nixon's Agriculture Secretary and the cause of all this. He died just this last February.
The Butz Stops Here
A reflection on the lasting legacy of 1970s USDA Secretary Earl Butz
BY TOM PHILPOTT
07 Feb 2008
Industrial agriculture lost one of its greatest champions last week: Earl "Rusty" Butz, secretary of the USDA under Nixon.
Blustering, boisterous, and often vulgar, Butz lorded over the U.S. farm scene at a key period. He plunged a pitchfork into New Deal agricultural policies that sought to protect farmers from the big agribusiness companies whose interests he openly pushed.
He envisioned a hyper-efficient, centralized food system, one that could profitably and cheaply "feed the world" by manipulating (or "adding value to") mountains of Midwestern corn and soy. Patron saint of the Fast Food Nation, Butz lived to see his dream realized. He died in his sleep, a quiet end for a man whose career shook the earth, causing untold acres to succumb to the plow. Yet his legacy still thrives, and will not likely die as gently as the man.
Earl believed in, Get Big or Get Out and Plant Fence-Row to Fence-Row. He caged it as creating cheap food in part so Americans could spend money elsewhere rather than on food and, in that Earl was very successful. We now spend on healthcare what we save on food since there's been a near diametrical shift in the percentages. Also, we get cheap food, in every sense of the word but to do that industry gets big (or gets out remember) and by doing that gets powerful. Farm Bill lobbyists spent $80 million dollars last year and yet that's cheap because it returns for them more than $8 billion per year or 100 to 1 return which is better than most long-shots at Belmont. But here's the deal. That money, both the Billions, and the several millions spent to get it is ours. Tax payers provide the Billions and essentially out of that 1% is set aside to squeeze more out of us so we can have cheap crappy food that we pay for in many ways which include failing independent farms, rural degradation and exodus, starving obesity, plummeting health, rising premiums, externalized environmental nightmares, higher taxes, and even immigration and jobs manipulation.
Selling corn for $2 a bushel as we've done for many years was less than the cost to produce it. So we essentially subsidized fast food (Burger King, McDonalds, Taco Bell, KFC) and Big Ag (ADM, Cargill, Bunge, Smithfield, Tyson, ConAgra, Nestle, Dean Foods, even Coca-Cola and Pepsi to mention a few), and we undermined peasant growers in countries in Central and South America, Asia and Africa who didn't get subsidies and couldn't compete. So they lose their land, go to the urban areas, can't find work and end up coming to the United States to be able to survive. They often end up in meat packing (corn fed animals) being terribly abused and destroyed, or helping grow and harvest our food, all for horrendously low pay so we can have cheap food.
Now, the push to curb immigration has led to big ag explosions in other countries including China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and many in Africa (though I don't know a bunch about those areas other than coffee and chocolate but Africa is not unlike Europe's South America is to us). But see, it's not Mexican farmers but Americans who own the land across the border yet grow there because the labor is cheap and easy to find thanks to all the manipulation (Wal-Marting).
The first panel started at the beginning: the business model developed by Wal-Mart's founding father, the late Sam Walton. Young Sam built his first stores in what he considered the "magic circle" centered in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, according to University of California at Santa Barbara professor Nelson Lichtenstein. Walton exploited the pools of "surplus labor" that resulted from corporate agricultural consolidation and the ravages of the Thirties dustbowl. Desperate to keep their land, surviving small farmers - and their wives - turned to wage labor.
"An early employee remembers Walton could praise employees," Lichtenstein recounted, "but always reminded them that they could be replaced." From the establishment of Walton's first store in 1945, employment insecurity was central to his business philosophy.
Yeah, you just knew I could get Wal-Mart in this picture... well, there's more. See, the farm state politicians have traditionally held Food Stamps hostage to passing the commodity crop titles in the [Food &] Farm Bill. As much as I hate the idea of hunger being stereotyped as urban (especially now when most income for independent farms comes from off-farm jobs and those who can't make it end up in the city), Food Stamps are in many ways another form of subsidies for these low-value crops and the industries that profit from them including the corporate grocery stores. Build it, and eventually there is no other choice.
And certainly that is the case. If some farmers are subsidized it makes it hard for those which aren't to compete. Most organic is not (I don't know of any that is). That's a big reason for the price differential. Not to mention that organic crops have to pay a premium for crop insurance even though any payout is based on the lower industrial crop price and just recently the USDA gives a price break to those using Monsanto corn.
This phenomena was recently highlighted in an article about Poland joining the European Union which subsidizes farmers but they have to follow certain rules that homogenize food limiting our choices and cause the really good stuff to either shoot up in price (in part from the loss of local infrastructure) or just not exist anymore.
There have been successes such as Farmer John Peterson who rose like a phoenix out of the loss of his family corn/soy farm from the first round of Butz foreclosures, became an organic vegetable farmer and one of the first CSA programs in the United States. This along with his mom's archives of family films and a friend from his college days who took over documenting where mom left off resulted in the amazing film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John (movie trailer, 2:02).
But it's not easy.
Turns out there's a Food Clause; I've been calling it Pelosi's Capitulation.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
By JACK HEDIN
Published: March 1, 2008
Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.
All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.
The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.
I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)
In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.
In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.
Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.
Side note: Jack Hedin's cousin is a kossok and wrote about this when it first came out.
Farm Flex introduced by Congressional member Tammy Baldwin is certainly full of problems as well from what I've seen but it is towards what needs to happen. Locking people into certain crops, especially those we have too much of, is insanity.
But the way we force farming now is going to lead to Dust Bowl II (lather, rinse, repeat). From Gourmet of all places comes this excellent article on farming and the Farm Bill:
Like his neighbors, Matthew did just fine last year, but he did it without growing a single ear of corn, and that’s where his family’s story begins to diverge from that of the other farmers. “I’ve got a philosophical problem with growing corn. Most corn goes to livestock. I prefer to feed grain to people, and I prefer for cattle to eat grass.” He also has practical reasons. “I hate to cultivate. We’ve got rolling land. We’re always dealing with erosion problems. In Iowa, they have four feet of top soil. We have four inches. Besides, I can’t use pesticides.”
In this bastion of industrial agriculture, where people are quick to tell you that heavy machinery, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified seeds, and the federal safety net make farming possible, Matthew’s family has gone back to an old-fashioned, diversified, organic family farm. While Congress, President Bush, and lobbyists are trapped in a vitriolic debate about capping subsidy payments to the nation’s richest farmers, the Stiegelmeiers are asking a totally different question: How do we use the land?
Grandpa Milton gave land to his son and his new bride, and they tried industrial agriculture. But Jim hated the farm program, thought it made farmers dependent on the government. “Grandpa Mil ton thinks Roosevelt walked on wa ter,” Matthew offers. “Daddy thought he was a Communist.” Most of all, Jim hated pesticides. Several times in the late ’60s and early ’70s he got sick from them.
“One night at dinner, my sister-in-law told him, ‘I don’t see how you can be a Christian and put poison on food.’ That was the clincher,” Emily remembers. It was the early ’80s. Jim and Emily converted the farm to organic. They home-schooled the children and put them to work. “I’d rather sit on a tractor than in front of a computer,” Ben insists.
Jim and Emily turned the logic of the farm program upside down. Instead of planting one or two commodity crops and accepting whatever price the elevator offered, they went looking for organic processors who, ideally, would lock in a premium before they planted. Matthew shrugs. “Why put a crop in the ground that no one wants to pay for?”
Most mainstream economists and farm-state politicians look at the Stiegelmeier experiment as a quirky, barely viable enterprise in an ocean of commodity grain. But agricultural economist Tom Dobbs sees something else. A professor emeritus at South Dakota State University and a Food and Society Policy Fellow, Dobbs is convinced that the Stiegelmeier farm is a model for the future—not because it is idealistic or good for the land, which it is, but because it works on the most remote, improbable farmland in the nation. “We think of the Great Plains as a buffer. In good times, grain production should expand, in bad times contract. But with farm subsidies, instead of buffering, we have created permanent overproduction, and disaster payments just encourage production on marginal lands. What the Stiegelmeiers are doing is an entirely different approach, and they are not alone.”
Dobbs’s recognition of the unique character of farming on the Plains is much like the vision offered by John Wesley Powell in his explorations of the region after the Civil War. Powell argued that small family farms could never work on the Plains. The terrain was too harsh. Disasters weren’t freak incidents, they were constant. Rather than trying to force the western lands to accommodate farming practices developed in the deep soils of the Ohio River Valley, Powell advocated organizing lands on the edge of the 100th meridian into cattle farms, supported by diverse crops where the land was suitable, surrounded by large pastures—which is exactly what the Stieg elmeiers have done. “The farms and ranches along the 100th meridian can be productive,” Dobbs says. “But federal policy should not promote cropping systems that don’t suit the ecosystem.”
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FARM BILL SUGAR (& CORN) DEAL
To switch gears a little, here is how corn affects sugar in the United States:
Under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), on January 1, 2008, Mexican sugar can be imported into the U.S. without tariffs or quotas. That makes for an unwelcome New Year for the domestic sugar industry and the corn industry. Ironically, both of these industries are protected by government programs. The domestic sugar industry is supported by complicated combination of loans, quotas, and import restrictions. Although the industry likes to point out that the program operates without any federal funding, we all pay for it through higher sugar prices. The sugar lobby is one of the most generous legal bribers campaign contributors in Washington among food growers, giving $2.7 million to House and Senate incumbent candidates in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Corn production, of course, is supported by billions of dollars federal subsidies each year, allowing the producers of HFCS to buy their raw material at a price below the cost of production....
...But NAFTA also means that Big Corn will be able to export government-subsidized HFCS to Mexico, which might displace the use of sugar in Mexico (and wipe out Coca-Cola made from real sugar?), thus leading to more exports to the U.S. That’s good for the corn industry, probably bad for the domestic sugar industry.
The Food and Farm Bill to the rescue?
Congress is ready to step into this mess with modifications to the already messy sugar support program through the Food and Farm Bill. And, wouldn’t you know, the solution involves ethanol. To paraphrase Homer Simpson in Marge vs. the Monorail: "Ethanol. Is there anything it can’t do?"
A provision in the Food and Farm Bill would require the federal government to buy surplus American sugar and sell it to ethanol manufacturers at a discount . (Who pays the difference? Us taxpayers, of course.) The ethanol plant operators aren’t happy about the sugar plan because it will require expensive new equipment to add the sugar (refined sugar, not sugar cane) to their fermentation tanks. And the USDA is not very happy either, saying that they want flexibility to sell the surplus sugar for other uses like animal feed or industrial use. They are also concerned that the program has no upper limit — the USDA could be on the hook for immense sugar purchases.
[thanks again jillian]
And how the big companies always manage to win; in this case Archer Daniels-Midland:
ADM, high-fructose corn syrup, and ethanol
A speculation about why ADM's HFCS business is booming
Posted by Tom Philpott at 4:07 PM on 10 May 2006
In the first quarter of 2006, as I reported yesterday, Archer Daniels Midland somehow managed to boost the price of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) despite mounting concern over the sweetener's health effects.
The company booked a cool $113 million profit from HFCS over the quarter, more than three times more than it netted in the same period a year before ($33 million). This, despite a slowing domestic market for sweet soft drinks, as consumers increasingly switch to juice and bottled water. The company's official explanation -- "increased sweetener and starch selling prices" -- doesn't explain how it managed to make price hikes stick.
I think I've figured it out. And the explanation has everything to do with Brazil, sugarcane, and ethanol.
The fate of HFCS in the marketplace has always been entangled with that of sugar.
...
A LITTLE ABOUT CORN SWEETENER
About the amount of sugars we eat:
Many individual foods provide large fractions of the USDA's recommended sugar limits. For instance, a typical cup of fruit yogurt provides 70 percent of a day's worth of added sugar; a cup of regular ice cream provides 60 percent, a 12-ounce Pepsi provides 103 percent, a Hostess Lemon Fruit Pie provides 115 percent, a serving of Kellogg's Marshmallow Blasted Froot Loops provides 40 percent, and a quarter-cup of pancake syrup provides 103 percent.
While restaurant foods are not required to provide nutrition labeling, CSPI found that a Cinnabon provides 123 percent of USDA's recommended target, a large McDonald's Shake 120 percent, a large Mr. Misty Slush at Dairy Queen 280 percent, and Burger King's Cini-minis with icing 95 percent. One of the biggest problems with high-sugar foods is that they replace more healthful foods. According to USDA data, people who eat diets high in sugar get less calcium, fiber, folate, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc, magnesium, iron, and other nutrients. They also consume fewer fruits and vegetables.
From an old Reader's Digest (ha)
We consumed 147.1 pounds of added sugars per capita in 2001, or more than the weight of the average American Woman.
How that breaks down:
Annual averages (Pounds per capita, dry weight)
1950–59 60–69 70–79 80–89 90–99 2000
Total 109.6 114.4 123.7 126.5 145.9 152.4
Cane 96.7 98.0 96.0 68.4 64.7 65.6
HFCS .0 .0 5.5 37.3 56.8 63.8
Totals include edible syrups (sugarcane, sorghum, maple, and refiner’s), edible molasses, and honey.
HFCS = high fructose corn syrup. Source: USDA’s Economic Research Service. 2002 USDA
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Few things are more political than food. It covers water, immigration, environment, even oil (28% of the energy in industrial crops is from the petro-chemicals applied) yet despite consuming it several times a day and not being able to survive without it, we hardly give it much thought so it's ripe for greedy abuses.
FARM BILL ACTIONS
The huge omnibus bill that covers everything from international and domestic food policy (currently corporate centered), to nutrition (school lunches and food stamps), health, supply, subsidies, watersheds, and so much more.
There's a lot we can do but we have to do it now. This bill covers a minimum of the next five years which means if we end up with a one-term Dem in the high office then it's the Republicans who get to shape the policy again.
We need to take a short course on the issues and then call, write, email and fax about these in specific:
No NAIS (National Animal ID System which is big ag way to destroy smaller farmers -- imagine needing to report every move your cat or dog made)
Yes to COOL (Country of Origin Labeling -- which passed last [Food &] Farm Bill but has been held up by BushCo)
Yes to a Packer Ban (Competition Title) -- This one is critical to support as the big corps are going to be having fits.
No CAFO manure lagoon funding via EQIP
Yes to more funding for organic research & development
Further Information on the [Food &] Farm Bill and how we ended up here:
Here's some more great reading on the [Food &] Farm Bill from Ag Observatory and Tom Philpott at Grist.
Food Fight: A citizen's primer on the Farm Bill by Dan Imhoff (Cooking Up A Story did a 5 part video-short series conversation with him regarding the [Food &] Farm Bill which is quite helpful to get a start on understanding).
Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis (looks at the origins of food and how we drifted away thanks to industry and Madison Ave -- Cooking Up A Story also did a 3 part video-short series conversation with her which will help understand what Michael Pollan meant when he said, "Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food).
Agribusiness Observatory has lots of great reading on the [Food &] Farm Bill broken down into several nicely laid-out PDFs which can help with gaining an understanding.
Really Short Summary
10 Titles, with mandatory funding such as subsidies and food stamps and unfunded mandates such as watersheds... some of the goofy loopholes is funding up to $425,000 for manure lagoons on huge industrial hog "farms" which really are only about enriching huge conglomerates and making modern day serfs out of our rural land-owners.
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Bill Moyers' most recent Journal looks at the Washington Post Farm Bill series:
April 11, 2008
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL teams up with the PBS series EXPOSÉ: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS to follow the trail of WASHINGTON POST reporters who uncovered more than $15 billion in "wasteful, unnecessary, or redundant expenditures" farm subsidies that have flowed from Washington.
THE WASHINGTON POST reporters focused for more than a year on tracking the path of farm subsidies — subsidies which between 2001 and 2006 amounted to more than $95 billion. THE WASHINGTON POST reported: "In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare."
Of course many of these subsidies are not, "wasteful, unnecessary, or redundant expenditures." EXPOSÉ on THE JOURNAL focuses on two aspects of THE WASHINGTON POST investigation:
"1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm"
The largest annual subsidy, called direct and countercyclical payments, is given to farmers regardless of what crops they grow — or whether they grow anything at all. The POST found that, since 2001, at least $1.3 billion was paid to landowners who had planted nothing since 2000. Among the beneficiaries were homeowners in new developments whose backyards used to be rice fields.
"No Drought Required For Federal Drought Aid"
A 2002 program aimed at helping those facing a serious drought gave $635 million to ranchers and dairy farmers who had moderate or no drought. Some ranchers got money because they lived in counties declared disaster areas after debris fell to earth from the space shuttle Columbia.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
More to read and check out about these subjects. I hope to do another diary on corn and either include soy or give it treatment of its own.
READING
Tom Philpott at GRIST
Ethicurean (An excellent food current events/politics blog)
Deconstructing Dinner (fabulous radio program which can be accessed via radio stations, the stations online, podcasts, listening from the site, and even just reading the site)
US Food Policy (a blog)
Mulch (another blog)
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition site has a Farm Bill Alert page along with more information about the bill.
FINDING BETTER FOOD NEAR YOU (aka stepping out of the corporate grinder)
To find Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), farmers markets, co-ops, locally owned markets, pastured eggs and meats, cheeses, even seeds and materials to grow your own home gardening even in window boxes, hanging baskets, or pots, and much, much more usually by zip code or town/city check out these links (the last includes UK resources).
PickYourOwn.org
Food Routes
Community Gardens
Sustainable Table
Local Harvest
Eat Wild
Certified Humane
Organic Consumers Buying Guide
Green People
Co-ops
Oceans Alive
Eat Well Guide
Happy Cow Restaurant Locator
Canadian Organic Growers
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral -- Locating Local
MOVIES:
* The Corporation
* An Inconvenient Truth
* Independent America (great blog too)
* Wal-Mart: The high cost of low price
* The Real Dirt on Farmer John
* The Future of Food
* King Corn
Farming isn't what we read about in idealistic children's books but this is perhaps the best I've seen for younger people to start getting a real understanding of their food other than actual hands-on and adult reading:
Food
Eyewitness Books
DK Publishing - $15.99
Discover the inside story of food from genetic modification to healthy eating
The snacks we all know and love: rich chocolate, fresh strawberries, french fries, and . . . deep fried insects? Yes, insects are considered a healthy snack in some cultures, and for a good reason—they are low in fat and high in protein! Eyewitness Food serves up a rich history of the food we eat, from edible plants to manufactured meals and more. Starting with a colorful depiction of the food chain and featuring an in-depth look at every level of the food pyramid, discover the inside scoop on food. This guide offers a list of useful websites about food and nutrition as well as a comprehensive timeline of the world’s food history. With the help of hundreds of full color photographs, see where the food on your dinner plate starts out, find out how different foods are used together to create new flavors, discover exotic delicacies from around the world, and much, much more!
And a film from 2001 on a corn farmer from out of the Dust Bowl:
HYBRID 2001 Documentary Movie Trailer (2:29)
HYBRID is a documentary about Milford Beeghly, a radical farmer in the 1930's who pioneered the process of genetically enhanced crops - considered a madman, this documentary is an astonishing portrait of one man's obsessive vision with plants.
The film balances the science of farming with the sad neglect of Milford's family. The director uses actual 16 mm footage from the 1930's, animated sequences and interview footage with Milford himself (who is larger than life) from his final years.
Winner at the following festivals:
2000 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival
2001 Ann Arbor Film Festival
2001 Atlanta Film Festival
2001 Bermuda International Film Festival
2002 Independent Spirit Awards
2001 International Documentary Association (Honorable Mention)
2001 Newport International Film Festival
2001 San Francisco International Film Festival
2001 Slamdance International Film Festival |
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FIRST ONE HAS TO UNDERSTAND IT TO BE ABLE TO EFFECTIVELY CHANGE IT
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Thanks for reading.
Please go read my other diary put up just before this one:
The Politics & Profits of World Hunger & Food Shortages
by CSI Bentonville
Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 11:43:57 PM EDT
And please also see this recent and first diary by a new kossok and veteran farmer that speaks to these issues from the perspective of experience (and I'd missed earlier putting up mine, heh):
High Tech Agriculture Has Problems
by jgoodman
Mon Apr 14, 2008 at 09:26:23 PM EDT
Good luck with tax day and hope you get a chance to see the film some way or another.