Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Op-Ed Contributor
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)


By JACK HEDIN
Published: March 1, 2008

Rushford, Minn.

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that  
the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers  
are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and  
vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle  
of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal  
government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food  
movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States  
Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the  
farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes  
into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know  
this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand  
have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity  
farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those  
restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the  
outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in  
mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets  
started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet  
demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the  
alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons,  
tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community- 
supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners  
discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm  
Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs  
the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually  
grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops  
(soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables.  
Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base”  
acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with  
the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden  
fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his  
subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market  
value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be  
permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties  
apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow  
another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season  
alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that  
only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in  
effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers  
faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm  
program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me  
to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California,  
Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like  
myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those  
states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s  
fresh produce markets.

That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a  
significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to  
enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the  
tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill  
that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply  
processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for  
example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up  
his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other  
penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce  
states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm  
bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps  
as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a  
Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on,  
say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would  
face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable  
production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has  
influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest  
price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will  
have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of  
less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is  
crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers  
need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and  
vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the  
federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?em&ex=1204606800&en=dd5832c47ea07bc0&ei=5087%0A