POLITICS Want local? No you don't, say feds & big agribusiness

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?_r=3 & ei=5090 & en=3d2c87b95

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New York Times

March 1, 2008

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

By JACK HEDIN

Rushford, Minn.

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that

the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers

are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and

vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle

of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal

government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food

movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States

Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the

farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes

into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know

this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand

have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity

farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those

restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the

outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in

mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets

started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet

demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the

alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons,

tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-

supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners

discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm

Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs

the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually

grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops

(soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables.

Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base”

acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with

the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden

fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his

subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market

value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be

permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties

apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow

another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season

alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that

only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in

effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers

faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm

program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me

to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California,

Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like

myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those

states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s

fresh produce markets.

That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a

significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to

enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the

tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill

that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply

processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for

example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up

his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other

penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce

states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm

bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps

as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a

Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on,

say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would

face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable

production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has

influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest

price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will

have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of

less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is

crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers

need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and

vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the

federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.