The Des Moines Register
by Philip Brasher
The grain and cotton growers that dominate U.S. farm subsidies came out unscathed in the first proposal from some of the most conservative House Republicans to cut spending. Instead, the Republican Study Committee targeted spending for organic farmers, sugar growers and an export promotion program that is popular with fruit and vegetable growers.
The panel made no proposal to cut the biggest single source of farm subsidies – the $5 billion in fixed annual payments that primarily go to growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton. About 10 percent payments go to Iowa alone.
Instead, the committee proposed to eliminate a program that subsidizes the cost of getting certified as an organic farm, packer and processor. The proposal is listed as saving more than $56 million. But a group that backs the program, the Organic Farming Research Foundation, says there isn’t that much there. The 2008 farm bill allocated $22 million for the program over five years and most of that has already been spent, and it may run out of money entirely in the fiscal year that starts this fall, said Ariane Lotti, the group’s policy director.
“It absolutely raises concerns that programs such as these that support farmers who seek to go into organic farming are targeted where the real costs of the bill are really elsewhere,” said Lotti.
Given the committee’s goal of cutting spending by $2.5 trillion over 10 years, “it is remarkable they would try to cut a program with less than $5 million remaining while proposing to let a $5 billion a year program like direct payments go unscathed, espeically at a time of high prices” for commodities, said Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
The committee’s members include Rep. Steve King, whose western Iowa district is the ninth largest recipient of farm subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group, which tracks the data. North Dakota Rep. Rick Berg, whose district ranks No. 1, also is on the panel.
The committee’s proposals are a long way from being adopted even in the House. But farm interests may not be off the hook with House conservatives, according to another member of the committee, Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake. He told Politico that farm subsidies are the “low-hanging fruit” for future budget cuts and that it’s wrong to read too much into absence such proposals now.
