American farmers should brace for deep cuts to their farm subsidy programs, given the cost-cutting mood of the U.S. Congress, says one of the authors of the 1985 farm bill.
Robert Thompson, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said there won’t be as much money to fund programs in the 2012 farm bill as there was in its predecessor.
“It seems pretty clear that direct payments are on their way out,” he said in response to a question by a delegate attending the Canola Council of Canada’s annual convention in Saskatoon.
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“That’s going to be the first thing cut.”
Farmers can also forget about overlap or duplication in the various subsidy programs.
“Almost inevitably there is going to be some rationalization of those to reduce the redundancies,” said Thompson.
Spending on agricultural research and development will be severely reduced, which Thompson said is a short-sighted approach to the belt-tightening process.
Given the likelihood of shrinking subsidies, Thompson anticipates commodity groups will for the first time in his memory be in a cutthroat battle over available government resources.
“In the past there has always been the threat of that, but in the end there has always been enough money on the table that the commodity groups have never gone for each other’s jugulars,” he said.
