| Chapter 1: | Farm Bills, Interest Groups, and Policy Change |
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competitively (Knutson et al., 1990; Orden et al., 1999; Philpott, 2007; Pollan, 2006; K. L. Robinson, 1989).
The policy provisions of 1973, aimed at increasing production and using excess supply for exports and to feed the poor, had important implications for sustainability and farm policy. Though they provided needed calories to lower-income consumers both domestically and internationally, they also reinforced incentives in many cases to expand production onto marginal lands, increasing soil erosion and water pollution and undermining the resource base upon which future agricultural production depended (Lubowski et al., 2006; Pfeffer, 1992; Thurman, 1995). Donated surplus crops also made it harder for poor farmers in other countries to compete, contributing to weaker farm economies even as they helped feed consumers. And domestic hunger programs, by using surplus commodity-based foods heavy in calories and light in nutritional value, did little to stem the rising incidence of obesity and diet-related illness among low-income consumers (Oxfam America, 2006; Pollan, 2006). Though a boon to the food, fiber, and feed industries and a help for food-insecure populations, these policies contributed to increased environmental degradation, domestic health problems, and farmer insecurity abroad.
Farm bills did, however, try to address some of these environmental and rural development concerns as they arose. The 1956 Soil Bank's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), reinstituted in 1985, paid farmers to keep erodible farmland out of production for 10–15 years and in grass or tree cover. The 1990 farm bill contained provisions for wetland reserves, sustainable agriculture, and water quality research, and the 1996 Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and 2002 Conservation Security Program (CSP) supported farmers for conservation on working farmlands (Faeth, Repetto, Kroll, Dai, & Helmers, 1991; B. A. Johnson, 2004a). These provisions were geared to mitigate some of the negative environmental impacts of modernized agriculture but in the end did not address the tendency of corn, soybean, wheat, rice, and cotton subsidies to favor agricultural methods that fostered soil erosion, water pollution, and a loss of agricultural diversity in addition to efficiency. Similarly, rural development portions of the farm bill were