How would you like it if the amount of government assistance you’ve received over the past five years was public and published on an internet website?
The Environmental Working Group, a not-for-profit environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C., has published on its website at www.ewg.org a massive, searchable database of farmers and farm corporations that received U.S. Department of Agriculture assistance from 1995 to 2000.
The group is not against assisting farmers, but it believes that payments are distributed unfairly, with the biggest payments going to the biggest farmers. Also, most payments go to farmers who grow a narrow range of crops, mainly grains and oilseeds.
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For a Canadian, beyond the exasperation of seeing how much some American farms have received over the past five years – the top draw in North Dakota for example was $3.4 million US by Johnson Farms of Walhalla – it is clear that the showers of government largesse do not fall equally.
The bottom 80 percent of those eligible got only $1,089 on average per year.
There is no geographical equity either. In traditional grain and oilseed states such as Iowa, Kansas and North Dakota, more than 65 percent of farmers got subsidies.
But in important fruit and vegetable states such as California and Florida, less than 10 percent of growers got federal assistance.
Legislators working on a new farm bill have also heard criticism that despite all the money handed out, even farmers growing the approved crops, saw little benefit because the key result was to drive up land prices.
But the legislators seem as deaf to these domestic criticisms as they are to trade partners’ complaints about the hypocrisy of America’s anti-subsidy rhetoric and pro-subsidy actions.
The unfairness of the farm bill draft before the American Senate has even attracted the attention of the White House, which complains it will encourage overproduction and break spending limits set under international trade agreements.
In the end, despite the many hammers striking blows against it, only the most jagged edges of the farm bill will be ground down.
It will remain a mighty big rock.
