Glad to see a New York Times columnist taking up the charge:
I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where my family grew cherries and timber and raised sheep and, at times, small numbers of cattle, hogs and geese. One of my regrets is that my kids don't have the chance to grow up on a farm as well.Yet the Agriculture Department doesn't support rural towns like Yamhill; it bolsters industrial operations that have lobbying clout. The result is that family farms have to sell out to larger operators, undermining small towns.One measure of the absurdity of the system: Every year you, the American taxpayer, send me a check for $588 in exchange for me not growing crops on timberland I own in Oregon (I forward the money to a charity). That's right. The Agriculture Department pays a New York journalist not to grow crops in a forest in Oregon.Modern confinement operations are less like farms than like meat assembly lines. They are dazzlingly efficient in some ways, but they use vast amounts of grain, as well as low-level antibiotics to reduce infections — and the result is a public health threat from antibiotic-resistant infections.An industrial farm with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a town with 20,000 people. But while the town is required to have a sewage system, the industrial farm isn't.“They look profitable because we're paying for their wastes,” notes Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “And then there's the cost of antibiotic resistance to the economy as a whole.”One study suggests that these large operations receive, in effect, a $24 subsidy for each hog raised. We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?
As Kristof says, "A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers." Agricultural policy was once synonymous with food policy. That's no longer true. The current concerns of the Department's constituency are very specific, and mainly deal with subsidies. The overall impact is that unlike other industries which have to lobby Congress like everyone else, Big Ag has a specific cabinet office meant to receive their lobbyists and convey their concerns. It's a vestigial agency which has been captured by a small interest group. If we were building out a cabinet today, we wouldn't have a Department of Agriculture. It's simply that it's hard to get rid of old agencies after they've outlived their natural usefulness. Kristof suggests renaming the agency to the Department of Food, which would give "primacy to America’s 300 million eaters." It's a smart idea. But it's not just about eaters. Food policy is also energy policy, is also public health, is also social justice. We need an agency able to coordinate across those priorities. We don't need an agency dedicated to the concerns of Big Ag.
