Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Subsidies' Harvest of Misery, by Jimmy Carter
Published on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 by the Washington Post
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/12/5778/


Congress can still act decisively this year to right a wrong that is
hurting both small American farmers and the poorest people on the planet. A
long-overdue debate is taking place on reform of the 1933 farm bill, passed
during the Great Depression to alleviate the suffering of America's family
farmers. I was a farm boy then, and the primary cash crops on my father's
farm were peanuts and cotton. My first paying job was working for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, measuring farmers' fields to ensure that they
limited their acreage and total production in order to qualify for the
life-sustaining farm subsidy prices.

Tragically, in its current form this legislation does not fulfill its
original purposes but instead encourages excess production while channeling
enormous government payments to the biggest producers. This product of
powerful lobbyists now punishes small-scale farmers in the United States
and is devastating to families in many of the world's least affluent
countries.

It is embarrassing to note that, from 1995 to 2005, the richest 10 percent
of cotton growers received more than 80 percent of total subsidies. The
wealthiest 1 percent of American cotton farmers continues to receive over
25 percent of payouts for cotton, while more than half of America's cotton
farmers receive no subsidies at all. American farmers are not dependent on
the global market because they are guaranteed a minimum selling price by
the federal government. American producers of cotton received more than $18
billion in subsidies between 1999 and 2005, while market value of the
cotton was $23 billion. That's a subsidy of 86 percent!

The Carter Center works primarily among the world's poorest people,
including those in West Africa whose scant livelihood depends on cotton
production. For instance, in 2002 Burkina Faso received 57 percent of its
total export revenue from cotton, while Benin depended on cotton exports
for more than 75 percent of its national export revenue. Overproduction in
the United States leads to the dumping of U.S. cotton on global markets,
which drives prices down. In recent years, cotton exported from the United
States has been sold 61 percent below its cost of production.

Fragile African economies that depend on agricultural exports, especially
cotton, are sometimes devastated by these practices. A 2002 report by Oxfam
International estimates that in 2001 sub-Saharan Africa lost $302 million
as a direct result of U.S. cotton subsidies, with two-thirds of the loss
sustained in eight countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory
Coast, Central African Republic, Chad and Togo. Compared with American
humanitarian assistance, the subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers amount to
more than the U.S. Agency for International Development's total annual
budget for all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Two amendments being proposed in the Senate represent the best hopes for
fixing what's wrong with the system of crop subsidies. Sens. Richard G.
Lugar (R-Ind.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have proposed the Farm, Ranch,
Equity, Stewardship and Health Act of 2007 as an amendment to the farm
bill; it would replace the subsidies with an insurance program protecting
farmers from excessive losses and catastrophes such as flooding or drought.
This approach would correct many of the flaws I've noted in the current
farm bill. An amendment being circulated by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and
Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) would place a $250,000 cap on annual subsidy
payments to a farmer. Various schemes under the present law allow these
limits to be grossly exceeded, with some big farmers receiving several
million dollars annually. Both amendments would go a long way toward making
the farm bill fair for farmers at home and abroad.

I am still a cotton farmer, and I have been in the fields in Mali, where
all the work is done by families with small land holdings. Cotton
production costs 73 cents per pound in the United States and only 21 cents
per pound in West Africa, so American farmers do need protection in the
international marketplace. But Congress has a moral obligation to protect
American agriculture with legislation that will serve our national
interests, that will feed hungry people and that does not suppress the
ability of the poor to work their way out of poverty.

Former president Jimmy Carter founded the not-for-profit Carter Center, an
international nongovernmental organization based in Atlanta.

© 2007 The Washington Post