The Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment
An Opportunity to Combat Global Poverty
On Thursday, the House of Representatives will consider the Agriculture
Committee’s version of the farm bill which does little to help struggling
farmers in the United States and around the world. The ONE Campaign
recognizes the need to help poor farmers and rural families at home and
abroad, and that is why we support the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy
Amendment.
The Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment – Fairness Amendment –
would limit commodity payments and redirect at least 10 billion dollars in
savings into alternative-support systems for American farmers and other
programs to support the livelihood of farm families, nutrition, and rural
development while simultaneously helping small farmers from developing
countries.
This historic amendment offered by Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI), Jeff
Flake (R-AZ), Joe Crowley (D-NY), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Earl Blumenauer
(D-OR) and Paul Ryan (R-WI), is supported by progressives, conservatives,
farmers, churches, nutrition and environmental organizations, tax reform
advocates, and both free and fair trade supporters. The diversity of support
for real reform and fairness in America’s farm policy is unparalleled.
Key Reforms
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Reduces Subsidies that distort trade and make it difficult for
farmers abroad to compete.
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Expand School Lunches Overseas. The amendment increases by $1.1
billion over five years the McGovern-Dole program to provide school lunches
to hungry children in developing countries.
-
A Fair and Modern Safety Net for Production Agriculture. The
amendment replaces depression-era price guarantees with a modern
revenue-based safety net developed by USDA experts that better protects
family farmers from declines in crop prices and crop yields. Savings: $1
billion over five years.
-
Support Working Family Farmers. The amendment denies subsidies to
large commercial farmers with average annual adjusted gross income greater
than $250,000 and limit annual subsidies to $250,000 per person.
-
Gradually Reduce Automatic Direct Payments. The amendment
gradually reduces direct payments, which were created to wean farmers off
subsidies in 1996 but which have become an entitlement program that will
cost more than $26 billion over five years. Limited resource farmers would
be exempted from cuts, and modest incentives would encourage farmers to
invest payments in rainy day accounts. Savings: at least $7 billion over
five years.
Background
The commodity programs authorized in Title I of the Farm Bill were
created during the Great Depression to provide farmers temporary support to
help overcome economic hardship, but they no longer serve that purpose.
Approximately three-fourths of the payments go to the largest tenth of
producers, with the vast majority of farmers receiving no commodity
subsidies at all. Half of the fund the U.S. pours into farming goes to only
about 20 congressional districts.
Furthermore, the impact of American commodity payments goes beyond U.S.
borders. The current system encourages American farmers to produce more than
the market demands. This surplus floods world markets with crops sold at
artificially low prices, sometimes below cost, making it impossible for
farmers in poor countries to compete, even when it costs them less to
produce the same crop.
What You Can Do
Ask
your Member of Congress to support real reform in the U.S. Farm Bill by
voting for the Fairness Amendment.
