Even in Sacramento, a rapidly expanding city, it’s obvious that we live in an agricultural area. As you fly into the airport here, you pass over a gorgeous patchwork of fields just minutes from downtown. But in general, we tend to be amazingly uninformed about some of the farm-related issues that are most affecting our health and economy, like the 2007 Farm Bill. Here’s a much-simplified version of the inception of this gargantuan collection of policies:

The Farm Bill began during the Franklin Roosevelt administration as an answer to the crisis of overproduction and falling prices. Farmers were left with crops that they couldn’t sell because not enough people could afford to buy them. With the New Deal proposals of FDR, the government began buying excess storable crops like grain and corn and siloing them for insurance against times when weather or economy forced a shortage. But in the subsequent decades, significant advances in plant hybrids, machination of farming, and pesticides caused farm production to skyrocket. It was like a perfect storm set to undermine the good-intentioned government policies.

Then in the 1970s, with the new crisis of continued overage in supply, it became obvious that Americans couldn’t possibly increase their consumption enough to meet the supply. The government began seeking overseas markets, starting with a sale of thirty tons of grain to the Soviet Union—for which we lent them the money to buy it! This began a terrible cycle of the government subsidizing farmers by paying them whenever their crop prices fell below what it cost them to produce. And with more production “improvements” every year, farmers continued to increase yields from every acre, adding to the problem.

So now what? Well, the Farm Bill is up for its once-every-five-years reauthorization, and food- and environment-minded organizations nationwide have been churning out reams of recommendations and alarms. And how does it affect us? The varying proposals in the Farm Bill allot tax monies (about $88 billion over five years) to programs on conservation, nutrition, food safety, ag research, food stamps, and farm subsidies. And that’s a lot of green to dole out.

In the past, up to 84 percent of it has gone to farmers of corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybeans—those commodities that have been historically overproduced, particularly corn. (For more on this, read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan; you’ll never read an ingredient list the same way again.) Meanwhile, farms with less than $100,000 in revenues have an average profit loss of 25 percent. Those are the small farms that you see at your local farmer’s market, but they only command 2 percent of the money that Americans spend on produce (P.S., that’s only $0.40 of the $20 a month per person!).

So the twenty-first century farm crisis is that most family farmers can’t afford to live on their farm revenues, and they don’t qualify for the billions of dollars in subsidies from the government. Add that to the fact that the farm population is aging—many farmers are now over 65 and the next generation is not interested in taking on a losing business proposition. And there is a real labor shortage of trained workers to take on the skilled tasks needed on smaller and less mechanized farms. And the environmental consequences of years of overproduction and farm loss to development has led to lower water and air quality. It’s a cycle that has to be broken in order for our food supply to remain affordable, safe, and most importantly, healthful.

Some of the Issues at Hand:
Conservation: There is a current proposal to increase conservation programs by $7.8 billion over the next ten years. Rice farmers, such as the 2,500 members of the California Rice Commission, benefit from some of these entitlements, with their use of fallow rice paddies for wildlife habitats. Since rice makes up to 50 percent of the economic basis of some local counties, anything that benefits rice farmers has a large impact on our area. There is also $1.6 billion in renewable energy funding proposed, which might make use of some of the glut of corn currently grown. But the continued overproduction of corn leads to a significant use of pesticides and fertilizers to feed land that is never used for anything else.

Food Safety: This is a hot-button issue because of the increase in fear of bioterrorism. But the reality is that most food safety issues are caused by pest infestation and contamination during transport. If more food is eaten locally rather than trucked and flown hundreds of miles, it has less chance to become adulterated. However, as Suzanne Peabody Ashworth of West Sacramento’s Del Rio Botanicals puts it, “The current food safety rules favor non-organic production,” because of row spacing requirements and handling rules that hinder the organic farmer and drive up the cost of their food. There needs to be a recognition in the Farm Bill that it isn’t reasonable to hold large producers and small family farms to exactly the same regulations. Some rules need to be adapted for smaller operations with less mechanization.

Nutrition: The USDA now recommends nine to thirteen servings of produce a day per person. But most people barely make it to three servings, and children are particularly vulnerable. Since California produces more fruits, vegetables, and milk than any other state, bringing the Farm Bill funding for nursery crops in line with Food Pyramid recommendations would theoretically benefit the state. There is $3.2 billion proposed for purchasing more produce for schools and other nutrition assistance programs. But the challenge is that nutrition and mass commodity issues are still at odds. We have to stop producing so many crops that must be processed in favor of those that can be eaten fresh or we won’t even be able to meet the demand for more produce.

Research: There is a proposal in the new bill for $1 billion toward research on plant breeding, genetics, and genomics to improve yields and plant characteristics. The UCDavis is a large ag research facility, and would surely benefit from some of this. But will there be any funded research on how to improve yield without pesticides or other environmentally friendly issues? “It would be great to have someone do side-by-side comparisons to find the best heirloom varieties,” says Ashworth, “I have dozens of things I’d like to have researched.” Currently, much of agriculture research is still funded through large corporations, who are not looking to the small farmer for business.

Farm Subsidies: The new Farm Bill proposes a $4.5 billion decrease in commodity subsidies, in an attempt to encourage farmers to plant based on market prices. That could be a step in the right direction, but what then will farmers do with the land that they don’t need for overproduction? Much of it has been stripped of nutrients from decades of non-rotational planting and massive soil supplementation. It would take some time to make the land able to produce good yields and even longer if the farmer wanted to jump on the organic bandwagon. Because farmers must insure their crops individually, it isn’t worth it for them to insure small acreages, thereby further encouraging large-crop production.

Labor: This is not even addressed in the current proposals for the Farm Bill. California has some of the highest labor costs in the U.S., and the aging farm population and lack of younger generation training leaves a huge gap. It’s an ugly reality that Americans don’t want to do the skilled labor required by farms but don’t want to recognize immigrant farm laborers as necessary. As Michael Pollan pointed out at a recent UCDavis lecture, there’s a moral dilemma in the U.S. over a lack of interest in the humane treatment of farm workers versus that of farm animals. If we step up and make immigration of skilled laborers safe, legal, and organized, it could begin to answer our gaping need for workers.

There is so much more about the Farm Bill policies that can’t even be covered here. It’s a behemoth of government lawmaking that will always engender controversy. But a safe and affordable food supply is an absolute necessity for the health of our people. The less we pay attention to our food, the more we find we need to pay attention to our health. If we stop thinking of this as the land of plenty to be foraged for all it’s worth, then we might begin to recognize it for the land that we need to nurture and respect in order to sustain ourselves into the future.

[Look for the new issue of Edible Sacramento magazine on what you can do to get involved!]