THE CANDIDATES still running to become president of the United States talk loftily of restoring American leadership in world affairs.
In passing the latest farm bill, Congress ignored such aspirations and showed instead that American lawmakers can be as shallow, parochial and tied to pork barrel politics as any tin pot dictator.
Canada and its trading partners must protest this law in every way they can.
The impetus needed to transform the farm bill was abundantly available this year: the world food crisis, a huge U.S. budget deficit and world trade negotiations looking for inspiration. Washington lawmakers could have swept away production distorting supports and handouts to the wealthy and created a modest, production neutral safety net and incentives for sustainable farming.
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They opted instead to carry on with discredited ways, and even enhance some of them, to keep folks in the Midwest happy.
Those representing other parts of the country went along with it because of the $289 million in the bill, two thirds goes to food subsidies for the poor and children.
What a tangled web Congress has woven in its long support for this discredited policy.
For decades, farm bills insulated American farmers from market signals, encouraging overproduction of certain crops. Those surpluses depressed grain prices, hurting farmers in countries unable to match the subsidies. Without profitability there was no incentive for them to adopt new yield-enhancing technology.
Cheap grain encouraged farmers to find new uses for their product and the biofuel moment began. U.S. lawmakers jumped on the bandwagon and showered more billions of dollars on ethanol, over stimulating its development. That new demand, combined with anemic global yield growth and a few years of bad weather, sparked the food cost spiral.
Ironically, successive U.S. administrations have led efforts to rein in farm subsidies and free agricultural trade, but there is a stunning disconnect between what American trade negotiators lecture others to do and what Congress builds to cosset U.S. agribusiness.
President George Bush vetoed this latest bill, but there was enough congressional support to override it.
The new farm bill insults the work done so far on the World Trade Organization’s Doha round and likely precludes compromises needed to make a successful deal.
America’s trade partners must clearly show their disagreement with what Congress has delivered.
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz was right to condemn the bill. Canada is already leading a group of countries challenging farm bill corn subsidies and must also prepare a North American Free Trade Agreement challenge of the country of origin labelling requirements in the new farm bill.
Alas, such challenges grind slowly and will not force change for years, if ever.
In the meantime we will continue to listen to empty words about American leadership and reform, while in Congress, it’s business as usual.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
