Will glimmers of hope brighten or be snuffed out by unintended consequences and entrenched interests?
Over the last several farm bill cycles, there was no grand plan to coax farmers to wander out of the rock and the hard place they find themselves in today. Passage of each farm bill required a balancing of policy reforms, fiscal realities, and initiatives that seemed responsive to the issues of the day and could also muster enough votes to hold together and win final passage.
The commodity program–food stamp coalition is credited with greasing the skids to get farm bills through the process. But there were other political dynamics at play that need to be unmasked and confronted for there to be any chance that policy reforms will become part of the solution to what ails U.S. agriculture and our food system.
Since the 1980s, farm commodity groups and agribusiness input industries have rallied around policies that encourage farmers to adopt new tech and seek higher yields. Commodity programs and crop insurance became bigger and steadier sources of cash from taxpayers that insulated farmers from periodic losses when the weather undercut yields, as it does in several years every decade, and when ample global supplies push international market prices below U.S. costs of production, as is the case today.
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