Friday, Jul 25, 2008
Congress is set to hand over $170 billion to farmers. But to one grower of fava beans in California's Central Valley, the money isn't just bad economics -- it's an outright insult.
May 1, 2002 | Denesse Willey stands before a crowd of 35 high school students who have come to visit her small organic farm in California's Central Valley. The teenagers -- members of the Future Farmers of America -- chat, flirt and laugh. They squint into a morning sun that's just beginning to evaporate the dew on rows of fava beans and leeks.
"How many of you are considering a career in farming?" Willey asks.
"Do you mean agriculture?" says someone near the back of the group.
"No," Willey replies. "I mean producing, actual farming."
Only three hands go up.
Willey, all farmer in a pair of denim overalls and sunny yellow shirt, sighs with disbelief. "That's disappointing," she says. "We need more family farmers. We need more people on the land; more small and medium-sized family businesses."
Preacher-like rhythms and intonations begin to flow from Willey as she argues that there are clear-cut benefits to becoming the owner of a farm. It's not just that farmers tend to be especially active in their communities, "the coaches in Pop Warner, the parents on the school board," she says. It's also a matter of self-interest. Running a farm, according to Willey and her husband Tom, means gaining the greatest rewards from capitalism -- the freedom to define your own hours, your own eating habits, your own life.
"So I'm here to encourage you to become entrepreneurs," she says, finishing her 15-minute lecture. "I'm here to tell you to become business owners, not workers."
The cause for Willey's concern -- industrialization of the food industry and the gradual elimination of small farms -- is hardly new. Low prices and increased worldwide competition have been pushing independent farmers out of the market for generations; the '80s bust is now being followed by a 21st century implosion. But the Willeys stand out because they oppose what's become the standard solution, government assistance. In fact, by arguing for free markets and against subsidies -- in front of future farmers, in e-mails and in lectures -- they're setting themselves apart, cutting against the grain of politicians and most of their farming colleagues.
In 1996, President Clinton signed farm legislation that aimed to wean the industry from government subsidies, but today most people who concern themselves with farming are clamoring for cash. Industrial agribusinesses want increased subsidies to protect against low commodity prices. Organic farming organizations want the government to subsidize conservation. The California Department of Agriculture is even asking Congress to subsidize fruit and vegetable farms, which have always been left out of the subsidy packages that got their start during the Depression.
For the most part, Congress has gone along. Both houses passed farm bills earlier this year and on April 25, legislators -- anxious to win votes during a year of midterm elections -- finished combining the competing bills. If President Bush signs the proposal into law, taxpayers will pay out about $173 billion to farmers over the next decade. That's nearly a 50 percent increase over the last farm bill, and an amount roughly equivalent to what the U.S. spends on family welfare payments.
Which is far too much, according to the Willeys and a small but vocal core of critics. They remain convinced that help from the government only hurts owners of small farms; not only because they discourage entrepreneurship but also because subsidies are "a Band-Aid for a broken market," says Tom Willey. If politicians really wanted to help farmers, he argues, they'd eliminate every last dime of assistance from the farm bill's budget and fight harder for free-market reforms.
"Subsidies distort everything," he says. "Usually, a farmer produces according to what people want, but subsidies give an incentive to produce what the market doesn't need. And once you go down that road, you end with greater distortions: the mess that we're in now."
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