Most economists agree that a removal of subsidies would to some degree wreak havoc on America's small farmers. The question is, how much havoc?

Some experts expect a situation similar to what happened in the 1980s, when thousands of farmers lost their land due to a sudden drop in commodity prices and high interest rates, which made their debt particularly onerous. "If Congress would have said, 'Ah, screw it, the hell with the farm bill,' then you would have had an amazing amount of dislocation," says Sumner at UC-Davis. "You'd have farmers struggling to pay their landlords because they were locked into contracts that had prices based on the assumption that they'd be receiving subsidies. It would have been chaos."

Sumner figures that it would take at least three years for the market to stabilize. But the adjustment, others counter, wouldn't be nearly as painful or overwhelming as the crisis of the '80s. "It wouldn't be as big of a shock because in the '80s, commodity prices fell almost in half. Without subsidies, the payments would drop -- for those in the worst-case scenario -- by 30 or 40 percent. And if you spread the effect all over the land [to those who don't receive subsidies], there would be about a 15 percent change in revenues. Plus, farmers' debt isn't as high as it was in the '80s and land prices haven't been bid up as high as they were then."

"It would be a problem," he adds. "I don't want to minimize it. But it wouldn't even be half the magnitude of what we had in the '80s."

And regardless, even those who see the subsidies as short-term necessary assistance argue that an end to subsidies would ultimately help minimize oversupply.

The House's original farm bill, before amendments, weighs in at more than 200 pages and contains more than 60,000 words. The idea that so much legislative effort doesn't tamper with the market strikes most economists as ludicrous. Regardless of whether legislators have good intentions, their results continue to damage the markets that they purportedly seek to help.

Specifically, "subsidies have continued to encourage production and have driven down the marketplace," says Ronald Knutson, an agricultural economist at the University of Texas A&M. "Consumers are enjoying cheaper food than would otherwise exist but land prices are being bid up due to subsidies."

Subsidies distort expectations. Landowners calculate their land's value based on projected income, so because subsidies make the land more profitable, the owner can charge more money -- making the land more expensive for future farmers who want to get started. It's essentially a redistribution of wealth, with the money mainly going to already wealthy landowners. When the government is already running in the red, and when farmers now make as much as the national average income, if not more, do subsidies make as much sense as they once did?

No, say many economists. And, they say, taxpayers need to ask questions. "Do we want to be giving federal dollars to landowners?" asks Daniel Sumner, professor of agriculture and resource economics at the University of California at Davis. "People who are not poor people by any stretch?"

The subsidies don't just carry social and taxpayer costs; there are also signs that subsidies only lead to more subsidies and more economic trouble.

"These situations are difficult to get out of," says Knutson. "Subsidies lead to higher subsidies due to higher costs, lower prices and less competitiveness internationally."

Other countries, particularly those with crops to export, also won't be pleased with the U.S. decision to raise payments to farmers, says Richard Rominger.

"It hurts our ability to open the world up to free trade, to create robust new markets," he says. "We talk free trade and yet we increase our payments for production and at the same time we're slapping tariffs on steel and lumber. And the textile industry wants to keep tariffs too. This is a big problem, particularly for the developing world."

To some, the farm bill is nothing more than a hodgepodge mix of mistakes, a snowball that's collected together decades of failure. "What we have now [with the farm bill passed by Congress] is a mix of the failed policies of the '30s to the '80s, on top of the Freedom to Farm payments of the '96 bills," says Susanne Fleek, director of government relations for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. "What farm bill negotiators have said is that if we combine two programs that failed to work, we might get success. Let's throw more money at failed policies and hope for a different outcome."

The Willeys tend to agree with most, if not all, of these criticisms. But living day-to-day on the land, working six days a week, 10 hours a day, they stress the more subtle, psychological toll that subsidies take. The farm they run hasn't made them rich; on $1.5 million in sales last year, the Willeys made about $100,000, which is about average for their farm. But they're clearly proud of what they've achieved. They speak energetically about how they work as a team (Denesse does most of the marketing; Tom handles day-to-day production.) They sound like teachers when they explain that by using four fields -- and harvesting each in a different season -- they can hedge against price fluctuations while also keeping their 30 employees on the payroll full-time. And they clearly revel in giving tours. During my visit, they insisted on walking the future farmers through their fields, despite the fact that Tom has a pronounced limp -- and to the chagrin of one teenager who had a cast on her leg.

In other words, they see themselves as embodiments of the American dream: capitalists, entrepreneurs, community activists, parents, friends. Subsidies then only insult their hard work and the hard work of others like them. The payments make it harder for them to compete in the marketplace, by adding to the bottom line of the large companies that keep buying out small farmers. Worse, the payments make hardworking farmers feel like weaklings, they say.

"Subsidies are a welfare system," says Tom Willey. "And it's degrading, actually. When you see how hard farmers work, it's crazy that at the end of the year they have to ask the government for money. It's disgusting."

Willey remembers feeling embarrassed a few years ago when local stores gave discounts to farmers. The 5 percent cut in prices might have helped his wallet but it hurt his pride. "Just pay us a decent price for our food and we'll be fine," he says.

Denesse agrees. "I'm in favor of a high-priced food policy," she says. "I just want a fair price for my food."

Their pitch won over at least one person on the tour. Charles Gustafson, a chaperone and high-tech entrepreneur, said that before meeting the Willeys, he was wondering whether their farm -- with its organic focus -- was some kind of commune. But at the end of his visit, just before getting back on the bus, he could barely contain his effusive praise. "This is capitalism at its finest," he said. "This is pure entrepreneurship; America's best."

A handful of influential observers agree; the Willeys are not completely alone in their quest. Richard Rominger, for example, also acknowledges that "we're not paying enough to cover farmers' costs," and says that "we have to figure out some way to pay farmers for protecting their resources while they're producing the food." (One aspect of the farm bill -- an increase in funding for farmers who take part in land conservation -- helps protect the land but, he says, completely ignores the larger issue of setting fair prices.)

But will America ever really change the way that farmers are forced to do business? Will there be any more farmers to protect if and when subsidies are eliminated? Two of the future farmers who visited the Willeys didn't offer much hope for those who would like to see more small farms proliferate. When asked if they would consider a career in family farming, both Chris Jougin, 15, and Whitney McMasters, 16, said no. Sure, the Willeys seemed happy and competent, they said. But small farms are too risky.

"The failure rate is so high," said Jougin.

"Yeah," added McMasters. "It's just so hard to succeed."

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