Ron Kind, a soft-spoken Democratic congressman from western Wisconsin, doesn't come across as a threat to civilization.
But to listen to members of the House Agriculture Committee, that's what he is.
Kind has proposed a radical overhaul of farm programs that could be the chief rival in the House to the farm bill that's expected to emerge from the committee.
"It's a threat to rural America. It's a threat to every consumer - a threat to the nutrition of the whole, entire world," said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.
In case anyone missed his point, he later said, "It is a threat to everyone, a real physical threat."
How so? Another committee member suggested Kind's bill could triple the price of breakfast cereal. Another lawmaker predicted the legislation would lead to a "vastly consolidated world of agriculture production."
Kind's legislation would end price-based crop subsidies and reduce the $5.2 billion in fixed annual payments that go to grain and cotton farmers.
IRA-TYPE ACCOUNTS
Farmers would be allowed to set up IRA-type savings accounts that they could tap in lean years, an idea borrowed from Canada but never popular with U.S. farm groups. The savings from the subsidy cuts - $20 billion over five years - would be put into conservation programs, food stamps and reducing the federal budget deficit.
If there was ever a time to do something this far-reaching, it's now, Kind says. Demand for biofuels has driven the prices of corn, soybeans and other commodities to the highest levels in a decade, making it harder to justify subsidy programs, in his view.
Meanwhile, the legality of the farm programs under international trade rules is being challenged, he says.
"This is really an opportunity for us to shift away from these market- and trade-distorting direct subsidy payments and move to a different system of support," Kind said in an interview.
Farm groups learned to pay attention to Kind in 2002, when an amendment he co-sponsored to shift nearly $2 billion a year from farm subsidies to conservation programs nearly passed the House, then controlled by Republicans. Two of every three Democrats supported Kind's proposal in 2002, and Democrats now control the House.
To make a statement about Kind's latest idea, a subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee brought up his legislation last week, aired the dire warnings of Lucas and others, and then voted the bill down 18-0.
DEFENDING THE STATUS QUO
The subcommittee subsequently voted 18-0 to extend for five years the subsidy programs enacted in 2002, an emphatic statement that commodity groups and their allies in the House are going to defend the status quo.
But the real debate won't take place until the committee sends its farm bill to the House floor in July or this fall.
The key there, agrees Kind, lies in whether the House leadership comes up with the money to increase spending for conservation, nutrition and biofuel programs by $13 billion over five years without cutting farm subsidies. So far, House leaders haven't said how they will pay for any of the increases other than the biofuel programs.
If the extra money for conservation and nutrition spending doesn't materialize, organizations that support those programs "are going to be looking for Plan B," Kind said.
On the other hand, if the additional money is found, the support for an alternative farm bill "may wane," he acknowledged.
The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said Kind's legislation would "destroy production agriculture" and predicted the House would go along with whatever bill the panel produces.
source:www.clarionledger.com
Monday, June 25, 2007
Crop subsidy reform proposal called threat to world's nutrition
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