Congress Misses Opportunity for Farm Bill Reform

Posted: 1 July 2008

Instead of fixing a broken system, legislators agreed to perpetuate it, ensuring that agriculture subsidies will continue to hurt family farmers in the US and abroad.

You might have heard that the US Congress just missed a huge opportunity to help poor people around the world. For the first time in five years, they had the chance to rewrite the Farm Bill so that it reduced farm subsidies, the same subsidies that go to mostly large farms here in the US and fuel a cycle of overproduction that hurts family farmers here and abroad.

But instead of fixing a broken system, they agreed to perpetuate it. By a sizable margin, Congress voted to override a presidential veto, passing a Farm Bill that makes some incremental gains but overall is even worse than its predecessor.

During a time of record profits for big agriculture and high food prices for struggling taxpayers, this Farm Bill:

actually increases existing subsidies for commodities like soybeans and wheat;
establishes new subsidies for crops like dry peas, lentils, and chickpeas;
removes payment caps for the most trade-distorting subsidies, such as loan-deficiency payments;
and misses an important opportunity to adequately reform food aid in order to meet the needs of the current crisis.

Oxfam is disappointed by this outcome. We have spent nearly two years working to change the terms of the debate around the legislation, influencing lawmakers to talk about the impacts of subsidies on poor farmers. Thousands of our supporters have sent emails, letters, and made phone calls to their members of Congress. And more than 300 media stories carried our messages supporting farm policy reform. But not even that groundswell of support was enough to overcome the commodity lobby. At the end of the day, their influence was just too powerful.

At the same time, the call for reform was too loud to ignore outright, and Congress was forced to make some incremental improvements to subsidies and food aid. This Farm Bill:

Reduces the incomes of producers who qualify to receive subsidies, from $2.5 million to $750,000.
Requires that individual recipients, not paper “entities,” collect subsidies.
Establishes a pilot program that creates a safety net for farmers based on their revenue and not their production.
Creates a pilot program that allows for the local purchase of some food aid, saving the time and money often wasted on transporting commodities from the US.

In addition, our partners and allies are celebrating new investments for minority and socially-disadvantaged farmers, and more funding for nutrition, conservation, and other important programs. This Farm Bill:

Includes more than $10 billion in increases to nutrition programs that will increase food stamp benefits and make fresh and local food more accessible for low-income Americans.
Includes more than $4 billion in increases to support conservation programs that encourage farmers to adopt or improve their environmental practices.
Includes $100 million for the settlement of USDA racial discrimination lawsuits.
Includes $60 million in mandatory spending for programs that provides outreach and education for socially disadvantaged farmers.
Includes an extension of US trade preference programs, such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative, which provide opportunities for developing countries to use trade as a means of achieving sustained economic growth and poverty reduction.
Decreases by 6 cents per gallon subsidies for the use of corn for ethanol.

We will build on the progress made and continue to support family farmers around the globe, by advocating for better trade policies, increased market access, and innovative agriculture techniques.

Please know that thanks to people like you, farm subsidies were at the center of the Farm Bill debate. With your help, we'll keep building up the pressure to change US farm policy.

More about what we accomplished

Oxfam America used a range of tools—lobbying and organizing; supporting US partners and allies; media, research, publications, and online communications—to highlight the many ways that the Farm Bill undercuts farmers and rural economies at home and abroad. Each helped change the terms of debate:

A few years ago, people outside of the Washington, DC beltway and agriculture circles didn’t know much about agriculture reform and the Farm Bill’s effects on poor farmers in other countries. But thanks to the joint movement around Farm Bill reform, more than 500 editorials calling for change were published by newspapers from The New York Times to The Chattanooga Times Free Press. Oxfam America’s efforts were featured in more than 300 news stories in outlets from National Public Radio to The St. Cloud Times. In addition, we explored new frontiers for our communications work through TV and print ads, which garnered press from places like Salon.com. A multimedia audio slide show, posted on YouTube and distributed to constituents, was viewed about 4,700 times.
We joined a diverse and broad coalition of more than 40 organizations—from the Center for Rural Affairs to the Land Stewardship Project, from Bread for the World to the William C. Velasquez Institute—to highlight the need for Farm Bill reform. These invaluable relationships will continue to extend our reach as we take on new advocacy efforts.
We honed new tools in our organizing box of tricks, creating and building up the volunteer group, the Oxfam Action Corps, and the online activist group, the Farm Bill Action Team. By the end of Oxfam’s Farm Bill campaign, more than 24,700 people had joined Oxfam’s efforts to end poverty.
Through financial and technical assistance, and by publishing Shut Out: How US Farm Programs Fail Minority Farmers, Oxfam supported the efforts of the Diversity Initiative—a coalition of American Indian, Latino, Asian Pacific, and African American farmers and ranchers working toward gaining equity across a range of US farm programs.
Oxfam burnished our reputation as a thought-leader through new research and publications on the effect of US farm subsidies on poor farmers in Africa. These pieces got the attention of experts and journalists from outlets such as The Wall Street Journal. We also created innovative materials, from House Party Guides to Organizing Toolkits to publications like Farm Bill 101, which made a complicated piece of legislation easier to understand and motivated people to take action.