Let's plow under farm subsidies

Congress has begun marking up the 2007 Farm Bill, and you can bet your last bushel of beans that the one question that should be asked, won't be asked: Does American agriculture really need taxpayer help to the tune of $25 billion a year?

By any objective measure, the answer is no.

For starters, the average farmer is significantly better off than the taxpayer whose pocket is being picked. Average annual farm household income is $81,420, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or 29 percent above the national average. The average farm household net worth is $838,875, or eight times the national family average. Farm debt, a national crisis in the 1980s, is at a record low. Earlier this year Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns reported that the debt-to-asset ratio for the average farm is down to a mere 11 percent.

As good as things are, they're probably going to get even better. University of Maryland professor (and former N.C. State agriculture economist) Bruce L. Gardner says numerous private and government ag agencies are predicting strong commodity prices and a healthy outlook for the next 10 years

THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME to kick growers off the federal dole and expect them to stand on their own two feet. Yet farm interests will drag out the same tired reasons -- market stability, rural poverty, food security, international competitiveness, income support -- to explain why their subsidy addiction is vital to the national interest.

Those arguments have run out of steam. The Heritage Foundation's Brian M. Riedl is among a growing number of economists who have looked hard at farm programs and concluded they "serve no legitimate public purpose."

The vast majority of crop subsidies go to wheat, corn, soybean, rice and cotton growers. Bruce A. Babcock, who lives smack dab in the middle of corn country as director of Iowa State's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, characterizes these payments as "money for nothing."

Some ag proponents have argued that the money involved -- $25 billion -- isn't worth getting worked up over. True, farm subsidies total less than 1 percent of the federal budget, but money isn't the biggest concern.

U.S. agriculture policy is ethically bankrupt. It's well-known that commodity programs have been skewed to benefit large agribusinesses to the detriment of traditional family farms. Barrett Kirwan, who teaches at the University of Maryland, found that 20 percent of eligible growers receive 80 percent of commodity subsidy money. More than half of that goes to just 8 percent of the farms.

But at least these growers are producing. Last year The Washington Post found more than 2,000 individuals who've been paid $1.3 billion since the year 2000 for growing nothing at all.

MANIPULATING CROP INSURANCE AND DISASTER AID are the newest trends in this ethical breakdown. For more than 20 years Congress has used taxpayer dollars to entice farmers to buy subsidized crop insurance. The good news is, more farmers than ever have it. The bad news is, there's an alarmingly high number of "moral hazard" incidents in which farmers have sabotaged their crops to collect the insurance payout.

Then there's the clever way in which some growers transform weather calamities into potential financial bonanzas. Agriculture interests have become adept at getting Congress to pass disaster aid bills just about every time the weather isn't ideal. When a drought, flood, hailstorm or other weather-related disaster damages a crop, it's not unusual for farmers to collect twice -- once through a crop insurance claim and a second time through an aid payment. This double-dipping is legal, but hardly ethical.

There's little hope for reform this summer. Cutting off the unneeded and ineffective aid is politically impossible. But once the 2007 Farm Bill passes, today's farmers should atone for the nonsensical farm policies they've indulged in. They can do that by endorsing a buyout program similar to the one that went into effect a couple of years ago for tobacco growers.

No, a subsidy buyout doesn't make economic sense, but it's a political opportunity for farmers to become more than corporate welfare recipients and to recapture the moral high ground they once proudly held in American society.