U.S. Farm Bills and Policy Reforms: Ideological Conflicts Over W ...

to the changing farm policy context, and sets up the research questions and methods for this study. Chapter 2 brings policy change and social movement literatures to bear in more detail on these questions of farm policy change. Chapter 3 looks historically at farm policy to distill factors that have made for change and for stability in previous farm bills.Chapter 4 focuses on the political context, interest group positions, and framing strategies that facilitated the opening of a policy window for change in 2005–2006 under WTO pressures. Chapter 5 turns to the changes in political context, interest group positions, and framing strategies that subsequently closed the window for farm policy reform in 2006–2008 during a moment of excitement over biofuels. And chapter 6 holds the 2008 farm bill case back up to policy and social movement theories to examine the implications of this ever-changing policy window for sustainable land use and future farm policy change.

Shifting Prospects for Farm Policy Reform, 2005–2008

U.S. agriculture is a large-scale model characterized by high levels of technology, productivity, specialization, mechanization, and business integration, supported both by market forces and by financial incentives embedded in the farm bill, the primary piece of agricultural legislation in the United States (Hayami & Ruttan, 1970; Womach et al., 2007). These farm bill policy incentives, primarily subsidies for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice, were developed in the wake of the 1930s farm crisis to bring farm incomes up to par with nonfarm incomes, minimize the risks associated with variable crop yields and prices for agricultural goods, and ensure a stable (and ideally increasing) grain supply to the American public and for export (Knutson, Penn, & Boehm, 1990; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1987; K. L. Robinson, 1989; Talbot & Hadwiger, 1968). In the decades since the original 1933 farm bill, these commodity subsidies have also contributed to a shift in agriculture from smaller diversified farms to large-scale specialized production of supported commodities, often in monoculture.⁴ Though enormously efficient, this change has contributed to increased fertilizer