Posted: 07/26/2007
Misguided Farm Bill Faces Veto
Farm Bill Filled With Wasteful And Misguided Pork, Says NCPA’s Burnett
DALLAS (July 26, 2007) - The House Agriculture Committee voted last week to approve a massive expansion in farm subsidies that will be a boon to the wealthiest farm owners at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. Further, the legislation is rife with often contradictory incentives, according to H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).
"Only Congress would pay farmers for each acre of planted land while at the same time pay them to keep land untouched," said H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the NCPA. "We wouldn't need the latter if we didn't have the former.
"The irony is that crop subsidies encourage farmers to plow marginal lands that would otherwise lie fallow, and would therefore provide critical habitat for wildlife or make high quality wetlands."
Burnett points out large, wealthy farms, owned by few people or by corporations, receive most of the subsidies. Smaller, family-owned farms, get little or no subsidy and thus cannot compete with corporate farms.
Additionally, there is very little reason to remove free-market forces from the farming industry. Farmers and the agricultural industry should be subject to the same profits and losses experienced by every other industry or business in the U.S.
"We're throwing money at farmers with little regard for our economic health," said Burnett. "Sugar is a good example. The price for sugar is heavily subsidized for sugar farmers, yet candy manufacturers are leaving the U.S. because they can't afford to buy sugar produced here. There is something wrong with this picture."