| Chapter 1: | Farm Bills, Interest Groups, and Policy Change |
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what the benefits of each of these positions might have been. Further details and nuances of groups’ positions within and across categories, and as they shifted in 2006–2008, will be explored in future chapters.8
Commodity Groups, Farm Organizations, and Industry
In the United States, each farmer produces food for the equivalent of 129 people worldwide; the United States as a whole provides close to 40% of the world's supply of corn and 68% of the world's corn exports. Average yields, again for corn, have risen from 18.6 bushels per acre in 1936 to 149 in 2006, with similarly rising yield trends for other crops (CampSilos, 2005; National Corn Growers Association, 2007a). Much of this increase in yield and productivity can be attributed to research and technological change within the agricultural industry—to the development of improved crop varieties through plant breeding and increased use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and sophisticated machinery post–World War I (Cardwell, 1982; Cochrane, 2003; Fernandez-Cornejo, 2004; Romanowski, 2006). These trends have in turn been reinforced by farm bill policies that subsidize commodity crops and that protect farmers in case of crop loss (Philpott, 2006a).
Commodity groups, farm organizations, agribusiness corporations, and trade associations take pride in these trends. These groups are the more production oriented, and historically the more involved, groups in farm bill debates. They typically see agricultural productivity and technology as key to an American responsibility to “feed the world.” Most argue that U.S. agriculture and agricultural policy has been remarkably successful—that its incentives for productivity and research-based technological sophistication are what have made U.S. agriculture so prolific.
Positions diverge, however, over what the role of farm policy should be in ensuring continued productivity. Grain-based commodity groups (e.g., National Corn Growers Association, National Association of Wheat Growers) and general farm organizations (e.g., American Farm Bureau Federation, National Farmers Union) represent farmers who typically receive commodity subsidies and who argue that commodity supports should be maintained to provide a safety net for agriculture. Some of