EVEN by the typical standards of special pleading practiced by the American farm lobby that competitors of the United States around the world love to hate, it looked excessive.
It seemed as if the farm lobby that convinces Washington politicians to send billions of dollars their way as a matter of course each year could not allow itself to miss any available chance to ask for more.
Last week, as Congress debated how many tens of billions of dollars should be allocated to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and to compensate for the public policy collapse that led to the disaster, American Farm Bureau president Bob Stallman put pen to paper.
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Farmers were affected by Katrina and don’t forget about them when emergency disaster assistance legislation is being written, he wrote.
And beyond that, don’t forget that farmers somewhere in America are always facing disasters of one sort or another.
The message to politicians was simple: be sure this response to a great unprecedented disaster includes some way to ensure some of those new billions will make it into farmer mailboxes.
Of course, that would be in addition to the billions already flowing from the farm bill.
“As harvest begins, there is a mounting sense of alarm over a potential financial blow to America’s farmers,” Stallman wrote. Disruption in the (subsidized) Mississippi River barge system will affect midwest producers, hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland were damaged by the hurricane and flooding and by the way, there also have been droughts and tornadoes elsewhere this year.
The Farm Bureau, America’s largest farm lobby with close ties to the governing Republicans, announced that it had “asked Congress to remember not only the extreme hurricane losses but also the other disasters that farmers across the nation are enduring when it drafts emergency disaster assistance legislation.
“As the appropriations committee develops legislation to respond to destruction of Hurricane Katrina, we respectfully request that you address all agricultural disasters that have occurred or are occurring around the country on an emergency disaster basis,” Stallman wrote Sept. 14.
Now, there is no doubt that tens of thousands of farmers will be affected by the aftermath of Katrina and it is the Farm Bureau’s job to make sure its members do not carry the losses alone.
It happens everywhere. When Hurricane Juan, a minor event by Katrina standards, swept through Nova Scotia two years ago, farm lobbyists made sure farmer losses were included in the debate over compensation.
But with hundreds of thousands of often impoverished New Orleans residents now penniless refugees in their own country, it seems more than opportunistic to use the tragedy as yet one more opportunity to plead for farm aid.
It easily could have been a political blunder. With the U.S. facing a record deficit, escalating war costs and unknown bills for the southern reconstruction, the politicians in Washington are under pressure to cut spending somewhere. Coincidently, debate over the next farm bill heats up next year and the pressure is on at world trade talks to cut subsidies.
It’s difficult to imagine the farm lobby won itself any brownie points with American taxpayers last week.
