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In the News

PRESS CLIPS – Payment Limit Final Rule – January 2010

USDA Sets Modest Farm Subsidy Reform
Law Ban Subsidies to the Wealthy, Draws Criticism

Charles Abbott, Reuters
Wednesday, January 6, 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Agriculture Department unveiled tighter eligibility rules for farm subsidies on Wednesday but a small-farm group said they do not live up to President Barack Obama’s call for reform.
The rules, to take effect on Thursday, bar subsidies to the wealthiest Americans, as required by the 2008 farm law. There is no limit on how much money a producer can collect.
After nearly a year of review, USDA settled on a modestly stricter definition of who is a farmer. Producers must be able to document a regular, separate and identifiable contribution of labor, management or both to qualify for subsidies if they do not provide capital, land or equipment.
Until now, there was no requirement to prove individual contribution of labor or management.
Reformers want USDA to set a minimum number of hours of labor or management. Otherwise, they say, money goes to people, such as passive investors, with few ties to the land.
On its Web site, the White House says “farm programs should target family farmers” and there should be a cap on crop subsidies. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition says that while a candidate, Obama said in 2008 payments should go only to active farmers and landlords who rent to them.
“The best chance for reform in a generation has been punted away,” said Ferd Hoefner of the coalition. He said USDA could write a strong definition if it wanted. Instead, he said, “the big loopholes have been left intact.”
USDA said its changes were sufficient. “However, we are currently exploring whether the current definition could be amended in a manner that would be fair, equitable and enhance program integrity,” it said.
The new eligibility rules were proposed on Dec. 29, 2008, in the final days of the Bush administration. They were re-opened by the incoming Obama administration.
The 2008 farm law is the first to ban subsidies to the wealthy. It denies payments to people with more than $500,000 adjusted gross income (AGI) from off the farm. Those with more than $750,000 AGI from agricultural sources are ineligible for the direct-payment subsidy but get price supports and counter-cyclical payments. There is a $1 million AGI limit to participate in land stewardship programs.
Obama was rebuffed last year when he proposed a $250,000 limit on farm subsidies and a phase-out of the direct-payment subsidy to large farms.
Farmers can receive up to $40,000 in direct payments and $65,000 a year in counter-cyclical payments. There is no limit on money from price supports.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/index?

C-Span’s not the only promise Obama reneging on

Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle
January 6, 2010

Farm reform groups are in an uproar today over the administration’s plans to violate an overt campaign pledge President Obama made to limit federal payments to giant farms.
The first lady may be morphing into a foodie locavore, but her husband apparently remains wedded to Big Ag. Tomorrow the USDA plans to publish final regulations that reform groups say will preserve a giant loophole that allows big commodity farms — subdivided into paper entities, often headed by family members — to remain eligible for cotton, corn, wheat, rice and other subsidies.
These payments and were the subject of a year-long battle over the 2008 farm bill; big federal payments to big farms have been a major factor in agriculture’s dramatic consolidation.
Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, called the move a “complete reversal” of candidate Obama’s number one pledge for agriculture.
Obama’s campaign platform vows to “close the loopholes that allow mega farms to get around (payment limits) by subdividing their operations into multiple paper corporations. Obama will take immediate action to close the loophole by proposing regulations to limit payments to active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers.”
On the campaign trail, Obama sought to shame “every president since Ronald Reagan” for failing to close the loophole by executive action.
“The best chance for real reform in a generation has been punted away,” Hoefner said. “Like other administrations before, when push comes to shove, something is always more important to the White House politically than the fate of family farming, and they trade away subsidy reform in a heart beat.”
President George W. Bush came to regret his early decision to sign a subsidy-bloated 2002 farm bill, but by the time he tried to stop a second one late in his second term, it was too late. One of his top advisers confessed that he didn’t even bother to tell Bush the first farm bill was bad legislation, assuming Bush would want to sign it because it was good election-year politics. Bush was angry when he found out.
We’ll see if Obama has any regrets.
Posted By: Carolyn Lochhead (Email) | Jan 06 at 01:24 PM

http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2010/01/06/obama-accused-of-reneging-on-farm-pledge/

Obama accused of reneging on farm pledge

Posted By Philip Brasher, Des Moines Register
January 6, 2010
Advocates for small-scale farmers are accusing President Barack Obama of reneging on a pledge to tighten restrictions on who gets federal farm subsidies.
At issue is what it means to be “actively engaged” in farming, a requirement for receiving crop subsidies. In revising rules for subsidies, the U.S. Agriculture Department has failed to add the kind of measurable standards that critics of the rules wanted.
The USDA largely left intact rules proposed in December 2008 in the final days of the Bush administration.
“Like other administrations before, when push comes to shove, something is always more important to the White House politically than the fate of family farming, and they trade away subsidy reform in a heart beat,” said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Once again, principle and sound public policy have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.”
Obama’s 2008 campaign had promised to propose restricting subsidies to “active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers.”
The USDA is publishing minor revisions in the rules in Thursday’s Federal Register along with responses to the more than 5,000 comments that the department received. Three-fourths of the comments wanted the rules tightened, the department acknowledged.
The USDA said it is still “exploring” the definition of what it means to be an active farmer to see if the rules could be changed in a way that would be “fair, equitable and enhance program integrity.”
Critics of the rules say they are so lax people can qualify for subsidies by doing little more than participating in an occasional conference call with farm managers.

http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=policy&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc25987ff1012608e833960525

Debate Continues on Actively Engaged Management

Chris Clayton, DTN
January 7, 2009

Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, lashed out Wednesday at USDA’s final rules and technical corrections for farm-program payment eligibility, which was posted Thursday morning in the Federal Register.
The posting itself is interesting reading, essentially 73 pages of USDA responding and explaining the technical changes and issues raised in creating the final rule.
USDA wrote in the Federal Register: “In response to the interim rule, CCC received 5,060 comments, including comments from producers, commodity groups, cooperatives, producer associations, lenders, crop consultants, certified public accountants, attorneys, members of Congress (both House and Senate), State agricultural officials, crop insurance agents, dairy farmers, cotton processors, organic and sustainable crop producers, commodity brokers, the USDA Office of the Inspector General, USDA agencies and employees, teachers, animal scientists, farm implement dealers, taxpayers, and a restaurant chef.
The majority of comments raised questions or concerns about specific parts of the rule. The rest of the comments either supported parts of the rule or raised general policy issues about farm programs. Seventy-three percent of the comments stated that the payment eligibility rules need to be made more restrictive, particularly in the area of the requirements of active personal management; two percent asked for an exception for smaller farming operations.
Hoefner stated in a news release that “In a complete reversal of his number one agriculture campaign platform pledge, President Obama has issued his verdict on farm subsidy loopholes – the loopholes for mega farms win and family farmers and federal taxpayers are the big losers.”
Speaking of farm subsidy payment limits, candidate Obama said this in the very first issue addressed in his campaign platform: “Most importantly, Obama will close the loopholes that allow mega farms to get around the limits by subdividing their operations into multiple paper corporations. Obama will take immediate action to close the loophole by proposing regulations to limit payments to active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers.”
Hoefner stated that “In direct contradiction of the campaign pledge as well as the recommendations of the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the USDA Payment Limitation Commission, the new regulation keeps the current gaping “active management” loophole in place, ensuring a continuation of annual taxpayer checks of hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to single farming operations.”
In the Federal Register posting, USDA responds to issues regarding actively engaged: “As indicated previously, the definition of what constitutes a significant contribution is provided by regulation, not by statute and, therefore, could be changed. We recognize the difficulty in determining the significance of a management contribution under the current definition and the appeal of a measurable, quantifiable standard. However, unlike labor, the significance of a management contribution is not appropriately measured by the amount of time a person spends doing the claimed contribution. The current regulatory definition of a significant contribution of active personal management has been in effect for over 20 years; Congress has not mandated a more restrictive definition during that time, including in the 2008 Farm Bill. However, we are currently exploring whether the current definition could be amended in a manner that would be fair, equitable, and enhance program integrity. Therefore, no changes were made at this time as the result of this comment and other related comments.”
“The best chance for real reform in a generation has been punted away,” according to Ferd Hoefner, “Like other Administrations before, when push comes to shove, something is always more important to the White House politically than the fate of family farming, and they trade away subsidy reform in a heart beat. Once again, principle and sound public policy have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.”
Hoefner continued: “In his farm and rural campaign platform, candidate Obama noted that ‘Every president since Ronald Reagan has had the authority to close this loophole without additional action by Congress, but has failed to act.’ Sadly, we can now add one more President’s name to that wall of shame.”
Separately, any changes to farm-payment eligibility likely face greater challenges with the announcement by Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota that he will not seek reelection. The Democrat often has partnered with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to attempt to cap farm payments and tighten eligibility. While often thwarted in their efforts, Dorgan and Grassley nonetheless have been a bipartisan team attempting to change the status quo on farm programs.

Obama reneges on ag campaign pledge

Aglines by Robert Pore, Grand Island Independent
January 7, 2010

Lyons – Advocates for reforming federal farm program payment limits criticized the Obama Administration today over their decision to retain a massive loophole in farm payment limit rules that will continue to allow annual taxpayer funded checks of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars to inure to single farming operations.

”The Administration’s ruling abandons the President’s campaign pledge to close the payment limitation loophole that enables mega-farms to receive several times the limit by claiming uninvolved investors as active farmers,” said Chuck Hassebrook, Executive Director of the Center for Rural Affairs.

USDA will publish the final regulation to implement farm payment limits and the “actively engaged in farming” rules that determine who is eligible for subsidies in tomorrow’s Federal Register.  The rule is available on the Federal Register’s Public Inspection List today.

“This proposed rule is particularly troubling because targeting farm programs payments to family size farms was the centerpiece of the rural policy statement that then candidate Obama released in Iowa in the run-up to the state’s Presidential Caucuses,” Hassebrook added.

Obama’s Rural Policy Statement reads as follows:

Obama will ensure farm programs are strong and targeted to support family farmers. The lack of effective payment limitations has resulted in federal farm programs financing farm consolidation and the elimination of many mid-size family farms.   Obama agrees with Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley that we should implement a $250,000 payment limitation.  And Obama will ensure those payments go to farmers who need them – not millionaire farmers who rely on American taxpayers to protect their multimillion dollar profits.

Obama will take immediate action to close loopholes by proposing regulations to limit payments to active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers.  Both the Government Accountability Office and the Payment Limitation Commission have called for closing this loophole.  Every president since Ronald Reagan has had the authority to close this loophole without additional action by Congress, but has failed to act.

According to Hassebrook, the new regulation is a direct contradiction of Obama’s campaign pledge as well as the recommendation of the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the USDA Payment Limitation Commission.  Moreover, USDA notes that seventy-three percent of the 5,060 comments filed after publication of the proposed regulation stated that the payment eligibility rules need to be made more restrictive, particularly in the area of the requirement of “active personal management.”  However, the rule does virtually nothing to heed those comments.

“Like other Administrations before, when push comes to shove, something is always more important to the White House politically than the fate of family farming, and they trade away subsidy reform in a heartbeat.  Once again, principle and sound public policy have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency,” said Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“In his farm and rural campaign platform, candidate Obama noted that ‘Every president since Ronald Reagan has had the authority to close this loophole without additional action by Congress, but has failed to act.’ Sadly, we can now add one more President’s name to that wall of shame,” Hoefner continued.

According to Hassbrook, the USDA regulation does fix one small, but important, problem resulting from the previously proposed farm payment limitation rules.

“To give credit where due, USDA made one important change to prevent payment limitation rules from hurting small farmers who receive payment much smaller than the limit,” added Hassebrook.  A rule adopted in 2008 had cut payments to small family farm corporations with family stockholders who did not farm.  “Under the new rule, small family farm corporations will no longer lose payments as long as half the stock is held by active farmers and the combined payments to all stockholders is under the limit,” Hassebrook explained.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1263006442935.xml#continue

Obama administration drops effort to end subsidies to large farms

Dan Looker, Successful Farming Magazine Business Editor
January 8, 2010

‘Huge Disappointment’
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to end subsidies to big farms by supporting a cap of $250,000 that has no loopholes.
A prominent part of his rural policy said: “Obama will take immediate action to close loopholes by proposing regulations to limit payments to active farmers who work the land, plus landlords who rent to active farmers. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Payment Limitation Commission have called for closing this loophole. Every president since Ronald Reagan has had the authority to close this loophole without additional action by Congress, but has failed to act.”
This week, according to activists who want tougher limits, Barack Obama joined that long list of presidents who have failed to act.

“It’s a huge disappointment,” said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska. “This was the centerpiece of candidate Barack Obama’s policy.”
On Thursday the USDA published rules on what it means to be “actively engaged in farming,” which is one of the requirements to receive farm program payments. According to the critics, they remain weak.
In the past, they’ve been so vague that an absentee shareholder in a farm could join in a couple of conference calls a year and be considered part of a farm’s management, said Ferd Hoefner, who lobbies in Washington for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
The 2008 farm bill does limit payments to nonfarmers with more than $500,000 in adjusted gross income. That might eliminate some of the payments going to “farmers” in New York City, as former Secretary of Agriculture (and now Nebraska Senator) Mike Johanns pointed out when he advocated new rules for the Bush administration.
But Hoefner says that affects relatively few farms. He estimates that just having a tougher requirement for being involved in farm management would eliminate 80% of the payments that go to very large farms. Some large farms get employees and distant relatives to sign up for payments through a chain of legal farm entities known as “Mississippi Christmas trees.”
“The big story is what people who are running megafarms are doing to avoid the law,” Hoefner told Agriculture.com Friday.
A few U.S. Senators have tried, unsuccessfully, to amend farm legislation to require stricter rules.
Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), in 2005 for example, introduced an amendment that required payments to go only to farmers whose management is “personally provided on a regular, substantial, and continuous basis through direct supervision and direction of farming activities and labor and on-site services.” To qualify for payments, a farmer’s combined labor and management had to total 500 hours a year, or half of a farm’s required management and labor.
In a statement to Agriculture.com Friday, Grassley expressed disappointment with the new rule.
“I don’t want to see actively engaged rules weakened, and I will have some serious problems with the rule if it allows people to be eligible for farm program payments with a simple phone call. That’s not the direction I want to head,” Grassley said.
Hoefner’s group credits the USDA with keeping some “micro-reforms” in a rule first published in the waning days of the Bush Administration.

The requirements of reform
In a statement, the Coalition said, the modest reforms require that contributions to “active management” be “regular and substantial” and “documented.” But they don’t include an objective, quantifiable standard against which to measure those terms, and are of little practical usefulness, or as Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) noted at the time are “much about nothing.”
The final rule also fixes one significant problem with the Bush interim rule. Under the interim rule, all members of a corporation must be actively engaged in farming even if it is a small farm family corporation in which one generation is turning over control to the succeeding generation and the total payments are just a fraction of the payment limitation in any event.

The new final rule corrects for this overreach by allowing the family stockholders with majority interest to provide the labor and management provided that the total payments received by all stockholders in the family corporation equal less than one payment limitation worth of payments. (In the arcane world of payment limit law, one payment limitation worth of payments is one-half of the otherwise allowable total limit).
“I do give them credit,” Hoefner told Agriculture.com. “I think that was a good faith effort to fix something that was problematic under the Bush rules.”
The USDA announced that reform in a press release issued on New Year’s Eve in 2009. The release also describes an agreement reached with the IRS to enforce payment limits for high-income individuals.
But the family farm advocates remain disappointed about the bigger loophole.
As Hassebrook puts it, “People qualify as active farmers even though they may live 1,000 miles away and never set foot on a farm.”
Although the advocates see this week’s rule as a lost opportunity, USDA may not

The Department’s press secretary, Caleb Weaver, told Agriculture.com Friday in an email message, “USDA is committed to targeting farm program payments to those who work the land and take the significant risks associated with agricultural production. The recently announced rules and agreement with the IRS represent significant steps in enforcement of the payment limitation provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill, and build on our other efforts to support small and mid-sized farms. USDA is continuing to explore additional opportunities through legislation and/or regulation to fulfill the President’s commitment to better target program payments to those who work the land and take the significant risks associated with agricultural production.”

http://www.wlj.net/article-5018-usda-releases-new-subsidy-rules.html

USDA releases new subsidy rules

John Robinson, Western Livestock Journal
January 11, 2010

—New restrictions on payments finalized after more than a year.

USDA released new regulations governing crop subsidies last week after more than a year of wrangling over the 2008 Farm Bill which called for more restrictions on payments to corporate and large family operations. The rules, which were originally written by the administration of George Bush, went into effect last Thursday and will block payments to individuals with an adjusted gross income (AGI) over $500,000 from off-farm sources.

Those with an AGI of more than $750,000 from agricultural operations will be ineligible for direct-payment subsidies but could be eligible for price supports and counter-cyclical payments. Conservation and land stewardship payments to producers are limited to producers with an AGI of $1 million.

Under the new regulations, farmers can receive up to $40,000 in direct payments and $65,000 a year in counter-cyclical payments. There is no limit on money from price supports, which has been a sticking point in World Trade Organization negotiations as developing countries point to farm subsidies in the U.S. and Europe as a key reason their producers cannot compete in the market.

President Barack Obama had made campaign promises to close farm subsidy loopholes and cap payments at much lower levels, however, he was challenged by members of Congress from farm states and backed down. Obama’s proposed limits would have capped farm subsidy payments for producers at $250,000 and phased out direct payments to large operations.

Despite the caps, there was some criticism from organizations promoting small-scale production. Groups such as The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) have said Obama broke his promise to small producers and family farmers by allowing the new rule to move forward. NSAC contends that farm payments should only be made to small scale and family farmers. One of the reforms that NSAC and other reform organizations pushed for was

Subsidies included for the first time in the regulations. USDA has refined the description of a farmer, saying that producers must be able to document a regular, separate and identifiable contribution of labor, management or both to qualify for subsidies if they do not provide capital, land or equipment.

Until now, there was no requirement to prove individual contribution of labor or management.

That shift was a step toward limiting subsidy payments to large operations, however, it wasn’t enough to satisfy reform groups which had been pushing for a minimum number of hours of direct management or labor on the operation to eliminate payments to investors or corporate farms.

Ferd Hoefner, NSAC spokesman, said the administration’s campaign promise had been broken by the new rule and the best chance for reform in a generation had been “punted away.”

“In direct contradiction of the campaign pledge, as well as the recommendations of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the USDA Payment Limitation Commission, the new regulation keeps the current gaping “active management” loophole in place, ensuring a continuation of annual taxpayer checks of hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to single farming operations,” said Hoefner.

He noted that a vast majority of the comments received by USDA during the comment period on the regulation specifically recommended that the active personal management loophole be closed, in keeping with the Obama campaign pledge.

The final rule also fixes one significant problem with the Bush interim rule. Under the interim rule, all members of a corporation must be actively engaged in farming even if it is a small farm family corporation in which one generation is turning over control to the succeeding generation and the total payments are just a fraction of the payment limitation in any event.

“The new final rule corrects for this overreach by allowing the family stockholders with majority interest to provide the labor and management provided that the total payments received by all stockholders in the family corporation equal less than one payment limitation worth of payments,” Hoefner pointed out. “Fixing the unintended consequence of the interim rule with respect to family corporations operating relatively small farms is important, and the one good thing that can be said about the final rule.”

Both GAO and the USDA Commission on the Application of Payment Limitations for Agriculture named the “actively engaged in farming” rules and, more specifically, the “active management” loophole as a key feature of current policy that leads to frequent abuse and weakens the integrity of the programs. In addition, GAO identified and illustrated associated schemes and devices used by unscrupulous subsidy beneficiaries to channel government payments through non-farming entities back to themselves. All of this is left intact by the new final rule. — John Robinson, WLJ Editor

Mother Jones, March/April 2009

Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008
-By Paul Roberts

New York Times

March 22, 2009

Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?

By ANDREW MARTIN

ANAHEIM, Calif.

AS tens of thousands of people recently strolled among booths of the nation’s largest organic and natural foods show here, munching on fair-trade chocolate and sipping organic wine, a few dozen pioneers of the industry sneaked off to an out-of-the-way conference room.

Although unit sales of organic food have leveled off and even declined lately, versus a year earlier, the mood among those crowded into the conference room was upbeat as they awaited a private screening of a documentary called “Food Inc.” — a withering critique of agribusiness and industrially produced food.

They also gathered to relish their changing political fortunes, courtesy of the Obama administration.

“This has never been just about business,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive of Stonyfield Farm, the maker of organic yogurt. “We are here to change the world. We dreamt for decades of having this moment.”

After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.

The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden. More surprising, perhaps, are the pronouncements out of the Department of Agriculture, an agency with long and close ties to agribusiness.

In mid-February, Tom Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture, took a jackhammer to a patch of pavement outside his headquarters to create his own organic “people’s garden.” Two weeks later, the Obama administration named Kathleen Merrigan, an assistant professor at Tufts University and a longtime champion of sustainable agriculture and healthy food, as Mr. Vilsack’s top deputy.

Mr. Hirshberg and other sustainable-food activists are hoping that such actions are precursors to major changes in the way the federal government oversees the nation’s food supply and farms, changes that could significantly bolster demand for fresh, local and organic products. Already, they have offered plenty of ambitious ideas.

For instance, the celebrity chef Alice Waters recommends that the federal government triple its budget for school lunches to provide youngsters with healthier food. And the author Michael Pollan has called on President Obama to pursue a “reform of the entire food system” by focusing on a Pollan priority: diversified, regional food networks.

Still, some activists worry that their dreams of a less-processed American diet may soon collide with the realities of Washington and the financial gloom over much of the country. Even the Bush administration, reviled by many food activists, came to Washington intent on reforming farm subsidies, only to be slapped down by Congress.

Mr. Pollan, who contributes to The New York Times Magazine, likens sustainable-food activists to the environmental movement in the 1970s. Though encouraged by the Obama administration’s positions, he worries that food activists may lack political savvy.

“The movement is not ready for prime time,” he says. “It’s not like we have an infrastructure with legislation ready to go.”

Even so, many activists say they are packing their bags and heading to Washington. They are bringing along a copy of “Food Inc.,” which includes attacks on the corn lobby and Monsanto, and intend to provide a private screening for Mr. Vilsack and Ms. Merrigan.

“We are so used to being outside the door,” says Walter Robb, co-president and chief operating officer of Whole Foods Market, the grocery chain that played a crucial role in making organic and natural food more mainstream. “We are in the door now.”

AT the heart of the sustainable-food movement is a belief that America has become efficient at producing cheap, abundant food that profits corporations and agribusiness, but is unhealthy and bad for the environment.

The federal government is culpable, the activists say, because it pays farmers billions in subsidies each year for growing grains and soybeans. A result is an abundance of corn and soybeans that provide cheap feed for livestock and inexpensive food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup.

They argue that farm policy — and federal dollars — should instead encourage farmers to grow more diverse crops, reward conservation practices and promote local food networks that rely less on fossil fuels for such things as fertilizer and transportation.

Last year, mandatory spending on farm subsidies was $7.5 billion, compared with $15 million for programs for organic and local foods, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

But advocates of conventional agriculture argue that organic farming simply can’t provide enough food because the yields tend to be lower than those for crops grown with chemical fertilizer.

“We think there’s a place for organic, but don’t think we can feed ourselves and the world with organic,” says Rick Tolman, chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association. “It’s not as productive, more labor-intensive and tends to be more expensive.”

The ideas are hardly new. The farmland philosopher and author Wendell Berry has been making many of the same points for decades. What is new is that the sustainable-food movement has gained both commercial heft, with the rapid success of organic and natural foods in the last decade, and celebrity cachet, with a growing cast of chefs, authors and even celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow who champion the cause.

It has also been aided by more awareness of the obesity epidemic, particularly among children, and by concerns about food safety amid seemingly continual outbreaks of tainted supplies.

While their arguments haven’t gained much traction in Washington, sustainable-food activists and entrepreneurs have convinced more Americans to watch what they eat.

They have encouraged the growth of farmers’ markets and created such a demand for organic, natural and local products that they are now sold at many major grocers, including Wal-Mart.

“Increasingly, companies are looking to reduce the amount of additives,” says Ted Smyth, who retired earlier this year as senior vice president at H. J. Heinz, the food giant. “Consumers are looking for more authentic foods. This trend absolutely has percolated through into mainstream foods.”

While the idea of sustainable food is creeping into the mainstream, the epicenter of the movement remains the liberal stronghold of Berkeley, Calif.

It was there in 1971 that Ms. Waters started a restaurant, Chez Panisse, that used fresh, organic and locally grown products, a novelty at the time that has been widely copied by other chefs. In the years since, she has become a food celebrity, the “mother of slow food,” as a “60 Minutes” profile called her.

Mr. Pollan teaches journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and is among a group of authors who have tapped into a wide audience for books that encourage local or organic foods while detailing what they view as health and environmental risks of processed foods and large-scale agriculture.

His book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” has remained on best-seller lists since it was published in 2006. Another activist, Eric Schlosser, wrote “Fast Food Nation,” a critical look at industrialized fast food that was published in 2001 and is now required reading at some colleges. And Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, has become a ubiquitous and widely quoted critic of commercial food manufacturers.

Beyond authors, academics and chefs, the sustainable-food movement also owes much of its current success to pioneers in the organic and natural foods industry. Many started their businesses for idealistic reasons and have since turned their start-ups into multimillion-dollar, even billion-dollar, corporations.

Manufacturers improved their organic and natural products, long confined to musty natural-food stores, so they could compete with conventional foods on packaging and taste. Whole Foods Market also lured more mainstream customers by redefining what a grocery store should look like, creating lush displays of produce and fish that have influenced more traditional grocers.

Nancy M. Childs, a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University, said sustainable food activists forced the broader public to focus on the quality and sourcing of food, which in turn has prompted demand for farmers’ markets and local produce. She says that “continual attention in the news” also gave the movement legs.

But Ms. Childs worries that some of the activists’ recommendations for buying fresh, local or organic food cannot be adopted by many Americans because those foods may be too expensive. “By singling out certain lifestyles and foods, it’s diminishing very good quality nutrition sources,” she says. “Frozen goods, canned goods, they are not bad things. What’s important is that people eat well, within their means.”

“We’d all love to live on a farm in Vermont, right?” she adds.

Even Jeffrey Hollender, the president of the green cleaning-products company Seventh Generation, worries that some of his movement’s messages are a tough sell when consumers are stretched thin.

Although some people argue that there are hidden costs to cheap food, from environmental damage caused by factory farms and fertilizer runoff to the health costs associated with eating highly processed, calorie-laden food, the fact remains that commercially produced food is relatively inexpensive.

“The idea of the true cost of food?” Mr. Hollender asks. “That’s the last thing consumers want to hear right now.”

The sustainable-food crowd isn’t alone in its love fest with the Obama administration and Mr. Vilsack. Food-safety activists have praised Mr. Vilsack’s remarks about creating a single food-safety agency, and nutrition advocates are enthused about his comments on school lunches and health care reform.

“There are tremendous opportunities with health care reform,” says Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Cutting sodium consumption in half should save over 100,000 lives a year.”

THERE is little in Tom Vilsack’s résumé to suggest that he would one day be lionized by America’s food glitterati.

A native of Pittsburgh, he became a small-town mayor and lawyer in Iowa, where he represented struggling farmers during the farm crisis in the 1980s. As a state senator and later as governor of Iowa, Mr. Vilsack promoted ethanol production and agricultural biotech, leading one consumer group to label him a “shill” for Monsanto.

When a coalition of food activists and farmers, Food Democracy Now, circulated a petition urging President Obama to pick an agriculture secretary committed to sustainability, Mr. Vilsack was not one of its recommended candidates.

Mr. Vilsack said that he was a chubby child and maintains a deep affection for cookies. But something has changed in Mr. Vilsack, an avid runner, including his eating habits. “I’m much more inclined to eat fresh fruits and vegetables,” he says. “I had organic yogurt for breakfast. Trust me, I would have not have had that two years ago, or four years ago.”

He was motivated to eat healthier because he is expecting his first grandchild and regrets that his parents did not live to meet his own children.

Mr. Vilsack’s brief tenure at the agriculture department has unnerved the food lobby and cheered sustainable-food activists, who are in agreement with many of his stated priorities.

He has said he hopes to devote more resources to child nutrition to improve the quality of school breakfasts and lunches. He also wants to make sure that only healthy choices are available in school vending machines.

Noting that the department’s recently released Census of Agriculture included more than 100,000 new small farmers, he said he wanted his agency to help them develop regional distribution networks. The small farms’ produce could be sold to institutional buyers like schools.

Ultimately, he said, agriculture and food policy should fit into the Obama administration’s planned overhaul of health care, by encouraging nutrition to prevent disease. It should also be part of the effort to combat climate change, by encouraging renewable energy and conservation on farms, he said.

Of course, Mr. Vilsack will need the approval of Congress for any major changes in farm policy, and therein lies his greatest challenge. Congress passed a farm bill last year that details farm policy for the next five years, and farm-state legislators say they are not interested in starting over.

When the Obama administration recently proposed a budget that would cut subsidies to the nation’s largest farmers and bolster child nutrition payments, it was greeted with hostility in Congress, even by some Democrats.

It didn’t help that Mr. Vilsack framed the budget as a choice between helping 90,000 farmers or 30 million children, a statement that he later characterized as inartful.

Representative Frank D. Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma and the ranking minority member of the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that “this proposal is ill-timed, ill-conceived and completely out of touch with the realities of agriculture production.”

FOR all the enthusiasm that sustainable-food activists and celebrities have for the Obama administration, their sudden interest in Washington has already ruffled feathers.

Ms. Waters wrote a letter to the Obamas in January suggesting that she convene a “kitchen cabinet” to pick a suitable chef for the White House, “a person with integrity and devotion to the ideals of environmentalism, health and conservation.” Her letter touched off withering criticism in the blogosphere, with one food pundit blasting what he called Ms. Waters’s “inflexible brand of gastronomical correctness.”

The Obamas stuck with the existing chef, who it turns out was already an ardent — though quiet — proponent of locally grown food.

In addition, some sustainable-farm advocates who have worked on these issues for decades in Washington are chafing at the idea of celebrity activists swooping into town.

Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, says that during the Carter administration he fought to get $5 million in federal money to promote farmers’ markets (about the same as allocated last year).

While he acknowledges that it has been an uphill fight, Mr. Hoefner said the activists had made major strides in recent years, winning more federal dollars for organic research and to help farmers convert to organic methods and add value to their operations by, for example, converting to grass-fed beef. As part of the economic stimulus plan, the Agriculture Department also plans to award $250 million in loan guarantees, spread over the next two years, for local and regional food networks, he said.

Mr. Hoefner said he was impressed by the number of people who rallied for a White House garden. “We just want to make sure that interest in that symbolic action can be channeled into some of the more difficult policy challenges,” he said.

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, welcomes newcomers to the cause but cautions that farm policy “does not have sharp turns.”

Mr. Harkin has spent years trying to increase federal dollars for child nutrition and for conservation programs that reward farmers for protecting the environment, relatively small programs that he says can expand under the Obama administration.

“We bend the track a little bit and get the train going in a little bit different direction,” he says. “We’re hoping we can bend it a little bit more. Consumers are demanding it.”

There are already signs that the sustainable-agriculture track is bending farther than before. The conservative pundit George F. Will wrote a column endorsing many of Mr. Pollan’s ideas, and a prominent food industry lobbyist who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters said he was amazed at how many members of Congress were carrying copies of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

“I’m not sure how much it’s penetrating the mom shopping at Food Lion,” he says. “I’ve had so many members mention Michael’s name to me, it’s staggering.”

Back in Anaheim, Mr. Hirshberg, the head of Stonyfield Farm, said he, too, is optimistic that change is at hand. But he reminded the small crowd that the organic industry remains a “rounding error,” roughly 3 percent, of the overall food and beverage business.

“We’re at the starting line,” he says. “This is our job, our government. We’ve got to take it back.”

Delta Farm Press – by Forrest Laws

Merrigan choice for USDA deputy secretary

Feb 24, 2009 9:29 AM

Kathleen A. Merrigan is President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Obama, speaking of Merrigan and other nominees, said, “I am grateful that these distinguished men and women have chosen to put their unique talents and expertise to work serving our country. Together, I am confident that we will be able to tackle the challenges of our time as we work to right our economy and enact policies that give America’s working families the relief they need.”

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition praised the selection of Merrigan. “The farmers and rural constituents of our grassroots member organizations are excited to have a lifelong supporter of family farmers and sustainable and organic agriculture working with the (Obama) administration to reform U.S. food and agriculture policy,” said the coalition in a statement to the press.

“NSAC will strongly encourage the U.S. Senate to confirm Merrigan as quickly as possible and looks forward to working with her and Secretary Vilsack on the pressing farm, food, fuel and rural issues of the day.”

Merrigan is an assistant professor and director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment graduate school programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

Prior to joining the Friedman School, Merrigan held a variety of policymaking jobs at the state, federal, and international level.

• From 1999 to 2001, she was administrator of Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA.

• From 1994 to 1999, she worked at the Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, and served as an expert consultant at the Food Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

• From 1987 to 1992 she was a staff member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, working for the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy.

• From 1986 to 1987, Merrigan worked in the regulatory division of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

• From 1982 to 1985, she worked for Congressman John Olver during his tenure in the Massachusetts State Senate.

Merrigan holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in environmental planning and policy, a Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and a B.A. in Political Science and English from Williams College.

December 23, 2008

Will the Bush USDA punt on payment reforms?

Dan Looker, Agriculture Online

During the debate of the 2008 Farm Bill, when former Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns would talk about the need for payment reforms, he often used a map of Manhattan in New York City to show the locations of absentee landowners who got payments.

To help stop that, the Bush Administration proposed ending payments to anyone with adjusted gross income of more than $200,000. Southerners on the agriculture committees in Congress balked, but agreed to a $500,000 cap for nonfarmers.

But there’s an even bigger loophole that reformers looked for last Friday when USDA announced that it will soon publish its new rules for payment limits under the new farm bill.

Since 1988, people who get commodity program payments are supposed to be “actively engaged in farming.”

But, as Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, pointed out to reporters on Tuesday, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, the USDA hasn’t really enforced that.

Ferd Hoefner, of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in Washington agrees. In theory, to get a payment, someone has to supply either labor or management to the farm.

“The current test is 1,000 hours of labor and no real test at all for management,” Hoefner told Agriculture Online. In the past, just talking about a farm’s plans over the telephone could count as ‘management.’ “

Reformers, including Grassley and Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, want the test to include both measurable labor AND management, not labor OR Management.

So, when USDA put out its press release late last Friday, Hoefner was disappointed to see liberal use of the word, “or.”

According to USDA’s statement Friday, “To be ‘actively engaged in farming,’ the individual or entity must make significant contributions to the farming operation of: (1) capital, equipment, land, or a combination; and (2) personal labor or active personal management, or a combination.”

Today, the USDA’s proposed “interim final regulation” on this was posted online in the Federal Register. It confirmed Hoefner’s belief that the rule is still “extremely weak.”

The final regulation on payment reform won’t be finished before the Bush administration leaves office, Hoefner said.

Grassley said Tuesday that he believes the Obama administration will try to tighten up payment limit loopholes.

“I think you’re going to find the new administration more to my way of thinking on this issue,” Grassley said.

Hoefner also believes that President-elect Obama’s campaign platform suggests tougher enforcement.

“We do hold out great hopes that this will finally be dealt with,” Hoefner said. “It’s been a long time since 1988.”

December 17, 2008

Farm Reform an Early Test for Vilsack at USDA, Charles Abbott, Reuters

WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Tom Vilsack will wade into one of the loudest fights in U.S. farm policy — denying subsidies to rich Americans and nonfarmers — early in his days as agriculture secretary in the Obama administration.

President-elect Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that Vilsack, a popular two-term governor of Iowa, as his choice to run USDA and carry out the administration’s reform efforts.

As a candidate, Obama called for a $250,000-a-year hard cap on farm subsidies and closing “loopholes” that allow mega farms to get around limits.

At present, there is no real limit on payments but analysts say true reforms could save up to $200 million a year.

Critics say it is easy for “paper” farmers to qualify for subsidies because of a lax Agriculture Department definition of who is a farmer.

The 2008 farm law included the first-ever ban on payments to the wealthiest Americans and closed some loopholes.

Reformers hope USDA will write a more stringent definition as part of rules now under review at the White House budget office, one of the last steps before publication.

One of Vilsack’s earliest decisions could be whether the rules need to be rewritten or allowed to take effect. He also could face the question of pursuing legislation for the cap.

“You can’t satisfy everybody,” said Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a small-farm group. “They should really start with tightening up the loopholes, which were administratively created.”

Lawmakers from the U.S. South say payment limits unduly hit rice and cotton growers in their region and would have less effect in the Midwest and Plains, where corn, soybeans and wheat are the major crops. Rice and cotton have the highest support rates but also the highest costs of production.

Analyst Mark McMinimy of Stanford Washington Research said payment reform will be an early challenge and “an abuse ordinary people can relate to.”

“Obama has already identified it as a reform that needs to be pursued,” said McMinimy. “That is going to be a battle with the Southerners” and possibly big growers from California.

Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, agreed subsidy reform will be an early gauge of Obama’s intentions.

“From a policy standpoint, they could really put their stamp on this issue by, in our lights, trying to do it right,” said Cook, meaning stricter rules that would cut off payments to absentee owners with no connection to the land.

Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, has warned the Obama team to go slow on subsidy reform because blunders or over-reaching would hurt the medium-size and large growers who produce the bulk of U.S. grain, cotton and soybeans.

“We grow capital-intensive crops. It takes a lot of money to make those up-front investments,” she said last week.

Lincoln and Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss led the way last year to defeat a Senate proposal for a $250,000 cap.

For years, Congress has moved fitfully on farm subsidy reform in the face of Southern opposition. The impetus for tougher eligibility rules, even when backed by commission reports, seems to stall on the long route of rule making.

A political centrist, Vilsack also comes from the agricultural mainstream. As governor, he tried to bring more high-tech agribusinesses to Iowa. Backers of sustainable farming say Vilsack is too much a supporter of biotechnology and large-scale, mechanized agriculture.

Farm groups said as a farm-state governor, Vilsack understands agriculture. But some would have preferred a farmer for the job.

“We don’t need another governor,” said one farm activist.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, a former North Dakota governor, succeeded Mike Johanns, Nebraska governor.

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley told reporters that enforcement of payment limits would be Vilsack’s biggest challenge. A Republican, Grassley is a long-time supporter of a cap with no exceptions on farm payments.

“Part of what we’re trying to get done, we’ve had in law going back to 1987, whether or not you are involved in the business of agriculture,” said Grassley.

Under current rules, people are deemed to be farmers if they furnish land, capital, equipment, labor or management. Grassley and other reformers would require a sizable number of hours in labor or management before paying subsidies.

Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat who has proposed wholesale reform of the farm program, said there should be tougher penalties for violators of the rules.

“Right now, it’s an honor system,” said Kind, who is mulling a bill to let USDA check tax records to verify that someone is eligible. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to justify the use of taxpayer dollars.”

December 17, 2008

TRANSITION: Obama Picks Vilsack for Agriculture Secretary, Allison Winter, Greenwire

President-elect Barack Obama today named former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack — a strong advocate of ethanol as well as cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases — to be his Agriculture secretary.

Obama described the appointment of the Iowa Democrat as constituting a key part of his energy team, highlighting Vilsack’s experience as an advocate for wind and solar power and biofuels. He announced the appointment at a press conference in Chicago, where he also named Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) Interior secretary.

“Tom understands that the solution to our energy crisis will be found not in oil fields abroad but in our farm fields here at home,” Obama said. “That is the kind of leader I want in my Cabinet.”

Obama said he would call on Vilsack to ensure that farmlands are used to grow “advanced biofuels,” to implement the farm bill, to look out for farms of all sizes and to pursue more agricultural research.

Both agriculture and environmental groups welcomed the appointment. Vilsack is a political centrist who is sympathetic to large agribusiness operations, but he has supported scaling back some subsidy programs.

As governor of Iowa, he advocated for biofuels, agricultural biotechnology, conservation programs and stronger water quality standards.

“He’s been outspoken on the need for farm subsidy reform and an advocate for conservation programs, which is encouraging,” Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook said.

National Farmers Union President Tom Buis, once thought a contender for the post, said Vilsack is a “great choice” who would be “right on target” to advance a rural platform with more renewable energy development.

Vilsack’s appointment also adds another strong voice on climate change to Obama’s cabinet. As co-chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on climate change, Vilsack said last summer that the next president should make climate a “signature issue.” A report from the task force calls for the United States to implement a cap-and-trade system and adopt policies encouraging low-carbon development abroad.

Vilsack emerged as the likely front-runner for Agriculture secretary shortly after Obama’s election in November. But speculation about Vilsack all but stopped in late November after he told reporters he hadn’t been contacted by the Obama team and was not a candidate for the job. Asked today what had happened between then and now, Obama declined to address the selection process.

“I don’t know who led him to believe that,” Obama said. “Whoever did was misinformed, because here he stands.”

In newspaper op-ed columns this fall that some farm lobbyists said looked like applications for the job of Agriculture Secretary, Vilsack highlighted the need to put agriculture and renewable energy at the center of plans for both economic development and carbon offsets.

If confirmed by the Senate, Vilsack will lead a sprawling agency with an annual budget of more than $90 billion, more than 100,000 employees spread in offices across the country and jurisdiction over farm programs, food aid and rural energy development.

Most of the major farm policy issues are already set in the farm bill, but Vilsack will oversee the implementation of that legislation for the next four years and will potentially have an opportunity to start laying the groundwork for the next round of farm bill debates.

Vilsack follows a recent line of former Midwestern governors at the Agriculture Department. Current Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer had once been governor of North Dakota. The previous Bush appointee, Mike Johanns, was formally governor of Nebraska.

No drastic changes expected

As the former governor of a state with major hog and corn production, Vilsack is not expected to make drastic changes to many farm support programs.

Some sustainable agriculture advocates had hoped Obama’s campaign for change might lead to a more revolutionary pick for USDA.

High profile “foodies” like writer Michael Pollan had a “sustainable six” list of nominees that included Gus Schumacher, a former USDA undersecretary in the Clinton administration. An online petition drive, fooddemocracynow.org, pushed candidates like Neil Hamilton, a farm law expert at Drake University. Vilsack was not on either list.

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said today he was pleased with the Vilsack selection. The coalition’s members in Iowa have had an easy time working with Vilsack, who has consistently shown support for conservation programs, Hoefner said.

“He is not going to be a revolutionary change agent,” Hoefner said. “But relative to other political names that were suggested, he is more on the change end of the continuum than many other names.”

December 10, 2008

Obama Team Moves Ahead on Ag Issues, Dan Looker, Agriculture Online

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition was one of eight people asked to present ideas at a session on conservation. Hoefner warned that unless funds for food assistance for women, infants and children (the WIC program) are included in the next economic stimulus package, the new administration could be forced to spend less on conservation and rural development. Some USDA programs such as commodity payments and food stamps are entitlements and get funded no matter what the budget is. But the WIC program competes with other ag-related programs in each year’s annual appropriations process in Congress. With rising unemployment and poverty, WIC will cost more than $7 billion this year. The entire agricultural appropriations bill will be around $20 billion, Hoefner said. “If we were smart, we would put WIC in the stimulus package where it belongs,” Hoefner told Agriculture Online.

November 24, 2008

Rich Get $45 Million in Farm Aid, Philip Brasher, The Des Moines Register
Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the USDA has long lacked the will to enforce the rules it already has. “Excuses abound, some with more merit than others, but the crux of the matter is putting a team in place that actually believes in the mission as stated in the statute,” he said.

September 30, 2008
Harkin’s Roots to Conservation Run Deep Dan Looker, Successful Farming
According to Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Harkin’s Water Quality Incentives program was the first program for working lands that made an incentive payment to producers. Before that, working farmland could qualify only for cost sharing on such permanent structures as soil terraces. “It marked a change of eras in conservation,” recalls Hoefner, whose coalition of farm and conservation groups has lobbied for programs like the CSP.

September 23, 2008
Law offers cash to smooth shift to organic farms Philip Brasher, Des Moines Register
The latest farm bill means that organic agriculture will be a permanent fixture among farm programs, said Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the Washington-based Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

September 1, 2008
Organics and the Farm Bill Katy Neusteter, Delicious Living
“[We were disappointed by] the failure of Congress to rein in commodity payments,” says Aimee Witteman, outreach director for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a consortium of farmers and conservation organizations based in Washington, D.C. “The current commodity system contains loopholes that allow some farmers to collect millions of dollars, which contributes to driving small and medium-sized family farmers off of the land.” Still, both say the wins for organics and sustainable farming are sizeable. “Organic conversion and certification assistance, as well as organic research in the Farm Bill, will help more farmers grow organically,” says Witteman.

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