While providing a pittance to some layers of working farmers, the overall aim of the measure is to subsidize capitalist farmers and corporations and reinforce the ability of a handful of agricultural monopolies to export food and fiber on the world market by undercutting competitors around the world.

As a result, the bill has sharpened trade disputes between Washington and its imperialist rivals in Europe, Canada, and Australia, who have voiced opposition to the farm bill. Semi-colonial countries such as Brazil are especially hard hit by these predatory imperialist trade policies. After the House gave the go-ahead to the farm bill, the government in Rio de Janeiro reiterated its threat to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), challenging its subsidy program.

If signed into law, the legislation would allocate $180 billion in government funds over the next 10 years, largely to agribusiness and other corporate entities. This would be a reversal of the declared aims of the bipartisan 1996 Freedom to Farm Law, which the New York Times noted was supposedly going to "eliminate subsidies and let the market dictate prices and production levels." Instead, a series of "emergency payments" to wealthy farmers and capitalist enterprises over the last half decade increased by a record $20 billion last year.

The amount of farm subsidies granted is proportional to the amount of sales, so the farmers with the largest sales benefit the most. For example, of the 2.5 million farmers in the United States, 1,290 of the wealthiest ones each received more than $1 million in subsidy payments between 1996 and 2000, while working farmers, who make up the bottom 80 percent of farm sales, were paid an average of $5,830.  
 
‘A big pot of money’
Tyler Farms, an Arkansas-based firm that controls 40,000 acres--an area as large as the nation’s capital--received nearly $24 million in subsidies over the past five years. "It’s not like a welfare check," claimed executive Phillip Ring, with a modicum of truth, since no working person on welfare ever received such a payout. "It goes into this big pot of money that determines whether Tyler Farms is profitable," he added, trying to defend this government largess.

Fortune 500 companies such as Dupont ($188,732), Caterpillar ($171,698), Chevron ($250,223), John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance ($125,975), and many others have also received crop subsidies. Other "farmers" who have lined up at the feeding trough for payments include billionaires Ted Turner, who owns the largest number of acres of any individual in the United States, and Chase Manhattan’s David Rockefeller, who hasn’t been seen near a field in years. Batting 100 percent in figuring out how to milk every possible cash cow in the country, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay received $12,000 from the farm subsidy program.

Commenting on the House measure, Rudell Lee, who grows herbs on 40 acres in Oklahoma and has been involved in numerous struggles of working farmers to defend their land and livelihood, said the funds "will never come to small farmers like me. All that money is only for the big boys, the large corporations."

Lee said at one point he once tried three times to buy land through a government program, but "I was blocked by USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] officials at the local office. I used to raise hogs and cattle but there was one price for farmers who are Black and another price for whites, so I got out of that. Now white farmers are being forced off their land like Blacks have been."  
 
Provisions in farm bill
The main provisions hashed out by House and Senate negotiators include payments of $40 billion to large cotton and grain farmers, a new $4 billion federal subsidy for peanuts, and a new $1.3 billion program for the dairy industry. Liberal forces pressed for the bill to include $17 billion for a so-called land "conservation" program, in which farmers are paid not to grow crops and let the land return to its "natural" state. This latter measure is touted as a way for small farmers to receive some government subsidies.

The bill includes funding for food stamps and restores the right of "legal" immigrants to receive these benefits, which were cut off by legislation approved by U.S. president William Clinton in 1996.

As with earlier farm bills, the subsidies and other aspects of the program will be used to deepen class differentiation in the countryside and reinforce the domination of capitalist farmers and food monopolies in agriculture.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, an estimated 328,000 farm and ranch families will lose their land over the next decade. A recent report from the USDA stated that farm income will drop by 20 percent next year. The agency released a report noting that in 1999 farmers owning an average of 110 acres had a net income of minus $3,384 in 1999. In contrast, large commercial farms, owning an average of 767 acres, made a profit of $100,380 on average.

The government programs to "save family farms" have not alleviated worsening conditions of toilers in the countryside. One-fifth of children living in rural areas--more than 3 million--live in poverty. Meanwhile, the number of farm jobs fell 27 percent between 1975 and 1995 and is expected to drop by another 13 percent by 2008.

One crop subsidy doled out under the federal Commodity Certificate Exchange Program provides a lucrative loophole in federal rules limiting farm payments for the largest cotton and rice producers. Under this little-known scheme, which has existed for barely two years, farmers can take out a loan with their crop as collateral, and if world market prices fall below the loan rate the USDA allows them to buy a certificate that is valued at the world market price.

The certificate can be used to repay the loan in full. Because it costs less than the loan, the farmer pockets the difference and sells the crop, raking in a handsome profit. This program would be exempted from the final version of the farm bill negotiated by the House and Senate, which places a ceiling of $360,000 a year that any farmer is supposed to be able to receive.

"Some in Congress assert they are capping payments to the biggest farms. That is false, they know that’s false, and the data we’re posting... prove it," said Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). " What they’re actually doing is providing unlimited payments to the biggest farms, a pittance for the majority and a rip-off for taxpayers."

The web site for the organization (www.ewg.org) shows how Dimmit Agri Industries in Texas collected $2.2 million in 2000 and 2001 under the USDA commodity crop payment program. These payments came on top of the fat checks it received through regular subsidy programs since 1995, which totaled $2.5 million.

The EWG list, which was drawn from figures disclosed by the government, irked capitalist politicians and industry heavyweights because it helped expose the class character of the "farm subsidy" program.

Seeking to avoid more embarrassing disclosures, Rep. Larry Combest, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, has introduced an amendment to the farm legislation that would prohibit the EWG from providing similar public information on who receives the $38.5 billion in conservation subsidies to be passed out over the next 10 years, according to the Wall Street Journal. A Senate version of the same amendment says that the USDA "may" release the names of recipients and their payments.  
 
Peanut program
A debate in March over the $4 billion peanut program provided another view of how farm subsidies serve wealthy farmers and corporate interests. Many working farmers depend on the quota system to keep farming. Others, who have farmed for years, sell their quotas in order to have a little income to tide them over.

Under the new plan the government would provide a 10-year entitlement of direct cash payments of $3 billion to peanut farmers and pay an additional $1.3 billion to buy out many of those same farmers and corporations that hold licenses known as "quotas" to grow peanuts. Under this scheme the government purchases the quotas from the owners, who could then continue growing peanuts under the new subsidy system.

The current peanut subsidy program allows the peanut quotas to be traded or rented. The majority have become part of investment portfolios for corporate investors who have no intention of digging one inch of dirt to grow one peanut. According to the New York Times, the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company of Boston, the largest owner of peanut quotas, could receive up to $2.1 million by selling its licenses that control 3.8 million pounds of peanuts grown in Georgia.

Democratic senator Zell Miller from Georgia, who is the chief sponsor of the peanut subsidy program, complained that it is "unfair to portray quota holders as just large corporations" when some of them are "small landowners, widows, and aging minority farmers in our country’s poorest counties." Many of these farm families say they are coming out the losers in the new setup.

However, the buyout will be a boondoggle for the wealthy because the top 10 percent of peanut growers control 60 percent of the peanuts harvested in the United States.  
 
Trade frictions
The farm bill is also generating trade frictions with Washington’s imperialist rivals in Europe and Canada. An official in the European Union said the EU was considering challenging the farm payments before the WTO. Ottawa’s agriculture minister, Lyle Vanclief, said the increase in subsidies marked a "serious blow to the U.S.’s credibility" to negotiate lower trade barriers. Imported Canadian peanut butter, with lower-priced brands, has penetrated the U.S. market with a 45-fold increase. Without the new price supports, "American peanuts and peanut butter would price themselves out of their own market," the New York Times noted.

Brazilian government officials said U.S. subsidies mean U.S. monopolies can sell soybeans and cotton around the world at well below market prices, blocking off more than $1.5 billion a year in exports from Brazil. Pedro de Carmargo Neto, secretary for trade at the Brazilian ministry of agriculture, said his government would seek at least $1 billion a year in damages caused by U.S. soybean subsidies and more than $500 million a year for cotton subsidies. Brazil’s soybean exports totaled $5.2 billion last year.  
 
Drought devastating farmers
As Democratic and Republican politicians worked out an agreement for farm subsidies, a four-year dry spell similar to the drought of the 1930s has devastated working farmers in the western plains from Montana to Texas. Thousands of wheat farmers in Montana have tossed in the towel rather than trying to nurse another crop from ground that has gotten less rain over the past year than many deserts get over the same time span. In some areas the soil is dry down to two feet deep.

Many businesses have folded and some small towns have lost their municipal water supplies.

"It’s drier here than it has been for a hundred years," said John Stulp, a wheat farmer in Lamar, Colorado. "We’ve chiseled up the ground on land where we usually have wheat coming up, just to bring dirt clods up to hold the soil down."

The governor of Colorado has asked the federal government to declare the state a disaster area, which would make farmers eligible for subsidized loans. This measure is wholly inadequate, however, since few farmers desire to take on more debt.

"We’re in trouble," said Steve Wertz, who farms 3,000 acres of wheat and corn in New Mexico. "I’ve been farming for 25 years and never seen it like this."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home