1. Isn't the farm bill just for farmers?
The farm bill touches us all. It shapes the nature of U.S. agriculture, provides support for rural communities, and encourages stewardship of the land and other natural resources. It helps reduce hunger in the United States and around the world through the Food Stamp Program and emergency humanitarian food assistance. It also encourages the development of alternative energy sources.
2. Aren't the existing farm support payment programs working just fine?
Not for most farmers. The current payment system is supposed to protect U.S. farmers against low prices. But most of the payments go to the largest farms and cover just five crops: corn, wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton. Under the current farm bill, the top 2 percent of producers have received 32 percent of all payments. Over the last 11 years, the average payment for this group was just over $900,000. Many small and mid-sized farmers are able to stay in business because of the small payments they do receive through the commodity programs, but just barely.
3. Don't commodity payments help keep food prices low?
In their raw, unprocessed form, commodities make up only a small portion of the value of finished food products. For example, the cost of the corn accounts for only 4 percent of the price of an 18 oz. box of corn flakes. Most of the cost of the food in grocery stores comes from processing, packaging and marketing. Under the current commodity payment system, fruits, vegetables and other specialty crops receive no payments.
4. Don't commodity payments ensure that the United States does not become dependent on imported food?
U.S. agricultural productivity is increasing twice as fast as the U.S. population. Even so, the United States imports almost as much food as it exports. The rise of imports in recent years—products like tropical fruits and vegetables, nuts, coffee, cocoa, cheeses and wines—reflects the changing demands of U.S. consumers.
5. Aren't commodity payments the best way to alleviate rural poverty?
By and large, people in rural communities are not poor because they are farmers. Today, only 11 percent of the rural workforce is employed in agriculture or agriculture-related enterprises, which includes industries such as textiles and leather footwear. Rural poor people are much more likely to work in manufacturing or service jobs—not in farming.
When the first system of farm support programs was instituted during the Great Depression, 25 percent of Americans lived on farms. The programs then served doubly as a strategy to address rural poverty. Now, commodity payments do not combat rural poverty as they were originally intended nor as effectively as other programs could.
6. Aren't farm policy and rural policy basically the same thing? Don't commodity payments strengthen rural communities?
In general, commodity payments have not been associated with thriving rural communities. In fact, the U.S. counties receiving the most farm supports are stagnating and have a declining population. The farm bill should invest in entrepreneurial development strategies that build assets and wealth for rural people, address poverty, and help create a future for rural communities. Promoting entrepreneurship will better serve rural people and rural places. For example, in the farm and ranch communities of the Great Plains, nearly 60 percent of job growth in the 1990s came from people creating their own jobs by starting small, non-farm businesses.
7. Don't commodity payments help our national nutrition programs provide food to hungry people?
Commodity payments do not ensure the availability of foods for our national nutrition programs. The largest and most important of these, the Food Stamp Program, is authorized and funded through a separate section of the farm bill. Food stamps provide individuals with a benefit that can be used to purchase the foods of their choice and have nothing to do with commodity payments.
Some nutrition programs, including the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), do receive food directly from USDA. However, these are processed foods and again not related to the commodity payments that farmers receive for growing crops like rice, corn and wheat. The foods made available by USDA vary from year to year depending on surplus production. Examples of foods available for 2007 include green beans, applesauce, canned tuna, tomato juice and light kidney beans, none of which is covered by the commodity programs.
8. Doesn't the Food Stamp Program suffer from widespread fraud and abuse?
The Food Stamp Program achieved a historic 94 percent overall payment accuracy rate in 2005, the best performance since the inception of the program and a more than 34 percent improvement in just five years. The payment error rate has fallen each year since 1999. This improvement in payment accuracy is a result of strong partnerships with states administering the program as well as improvements that were made in the 2002 farm bill.
Relatively few of these errors represent dishonesty or fraud on the part of recipients (such as recipients intentionally lying to eligibility workers to get more food stamps), as is the common perception. The overwhelming majority of food stamp errors result from honest mistakes by eligibility workers, data entry clerks, com-puter programmers or recipients.
As Christians, we are invited into a world where all are fed, no matter how hungry. Yet we know that such a world does not yet exist for far too many of the world's people. That is one of the reasons The Episcopal Church is so committed to the Millennium Development Goals, with Goal One being the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. Matthew's challenge to us that "nothing is impossible" demands our wholehearted response—a response that recognizes that as long as some are hungry, none can enjoy true and perfect holiness. I pray that we will all use the 2007 Offering of Letters as part of a joyful response to the challenge of eradicating hunger.
– Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
photo by Con Tanasluk |
