Rural America Preservation Act Helps Farmers Here and Abroad
15 February 2005
New legislation could limit subsidy payments to industrial farms and corporations and help family farmers make a living.
Washington, DC (February 15, 2005)—Oxfam America and a diverse alliance of farming, poverty, environmental and taxpayer advocacy groups applauded the introduction of the Rural America Preservation Act Tuesday, a bill that would put a cap on agriculture subsidies.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is sponsoring the legislation that would lower the payment caps on agricultural subsidies by about 30 per cent, from the current $360,000 to $250,000 for individual recipients, and close loopholes allowing multiple payments. Senators Byron Dorgan (ND), Tim Johnson (D-SD), and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) have signed on to co-sponsor the Rural America Preservation Act.
"Farm payments that were originally designed to benefit small and medium-sized farmers have contributed to their demise," said Grassley at a press conference announcing the Rural America Preservation Act. "Unlimited farm payments have placed upward pressures on land prices and have contributed to overproduction and lower commodity prices, driving many farmers off the farm."
The senators join a growing movement to limit subsidy payments that now fund overproduction and dumping of surplus overseas.
Earlier this month, the president included subsidy cuts in his budget proposal to help save money and balance the federal budget. And non-governmental organizations Citizens Against Government Waste, Bread for the World, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Izaak Walton League of America, Taxpayers for Common Sense, National Taxpayers Union, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and Environmental Defense showed their support for the subsidy cap when they joined the senators and Oxfam America at Rural America Preservation Act press conference.
Oxfam joined the fight to help alleviate poverty for family farmers here and abroad.
"Agriculture has the potential to grow economies and lift so many out of poverty, but the current agricultural subsidy system is broken," said Barbara Fiorito, Chair of the Board of Directors of Oxfam America. "Oxfam supports the Rural America Preservation Act as a step toward long-overdue reform of the agricultural subsidy program."
Though federal farm payments were introduced during the Great Depression as a safety net for family farmers, these days, they are doing more to hurt than help.
"The current lack of real payment limitations within the farm program has been a significant agent of the economic decline of rural America for many years," said Mark W. Leonard, a farmer who came from Holstein, IA for the introduction of the bill.
In 2003, the government spent more than $16 billion on agriculture subsidies, according to the Farm Subsidy Database of the Environmental Working Group.
But a large majority of farms—67 per cent—are ineligible for government support because they do not grow a select group of subsidized commodities. Of the 33 per cent of farms that do get subsidies, the top 10 per cent receive 52 per cent of all government payments, according to Oxfam's Finding the Moral Fiber report.
Not only are subsidies harmful to family farmers in the US, they are devastating to farmers in poor countries abroad.
The US was found in violation of World Trade Organization rules for dumping surplus cotton overseas, undermining the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world.
In crop year 2002, the US government provided $3.4 billion in total subsidies to the cotton sector. That's nearly twice the total US foreign aid given to sub-Saharan Africa. It is also more than the GDP of Benin, Burkina Faso, or Chad, the main cotton-producing countries in the region, according to the Moral Fiber report.
"It is time to stop forcing the taxpaying public to pay for farm consolidation and the loss of economic opportunities in farming," said Ferd Hoefner, from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. "The current lack of effective payment limits hurts family farmers and the rural communities they help support, harms the environment, and compounds our compliance problems with world trade rules."
