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Can Anyone Make Sense of the Farm Bill?

According to the New York Times, "Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin and a former quarterback of the Harvard football team, wants to overhaul farm subsidy policy and pump more money into conservation, renewable energy projects, and rural development." Kind's bill would significantly cut the large agribusiness subsidies that, according to critics, "encourage overproduction and consequently artificially lower prices and benefit only a small percentage of farmers, primarily large growers of corn, cotton, soybeans, rice and wheat." What's interesting is that Kind represents a district rich with big dairy farmers who traditionally have done quite well in the government subsidy department. Kind says that "his farmers realized that change was inevitable and would welcome more money and programs for beginning...

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3 Comments | Posted by Ed Levine, June 25, 2007 at 8:30 AM
Tagged: government

Make the Farm Bill a Food Bill

In an atypically short piece (at least for him) in the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan says the current farm bill being formulated in Congress "essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce." What's the answer? "The guiding principle behind an eater's farm bill could not be more straightforward: It's one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity."...

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1 Comment | Posted by Ed Levine, April 23, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Tagged: government, politics