| Chapter 1: | Farm Bills, Interest Groups, and Policy Change |
|
|
formulated to address the need for housing, small business loans and grants, waste and water facilities, and access to broadband and Internet in rural areas. But again these were piecemeal measures that did not address any baseline loss of community vitality implicated by an increasingly efficient, but increasingly consolidated, industrial model of agriculture (Cowan, 2007; National Agricultural Law Center, 1973).
Thus, while farm policy did expand over the years to incorporate rural development and conservation, as well as trade and nutrition concerns, it did so in an additive rather than a substitutive way. Even through all the changes made to farm bills over time, commodity supports for corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton remained in place. This stability of crop subsidies, which were originally intended as a temporary measure of emergency farm support for the Great Depression, is due largely to the existence of a strong support base, successful issue expansion, and policy inertia.
The support base for commodity subsidies has been maintained through an alliance of industry and commodity lobbies with established political networks in Washington, D.C., as well as through strong public support for agriculture (Knutson et al., 1990; K. L. Robinson, 1989). Opinion polls have shown that even in the 1980s, when government spending on subsidies was high compared to previous years, 41% of rural dwellers and 51% of urban dwellers supported increased farm funding (Knutson et al., 1990).6
The farm agenda has also undergone successful issue expansion, meaning that as legislation broadened to encompass more than just traditional commodity crop provisions, it garnered support from new sectors of society. In the 1960s and 1970s the farm establishment brought in the support of an antihunger lobby concerned with poverty and malnutrition by incorporating domestic food aid provisions such as food stamps and free school lunch programs into farm legislation (Knutson et al., 1990; K. L. Robinson, 1989). More than half of the farm bill budget is now dedicated to food stamps and nutrition programs, creating a situation in which urban legislators vote for farm subsidies in exchange for rurallegislators supporting food stamp programs. In turn, crop subsidies keep