| Chapter 1: | Farm Bills, Interest Groups, and Policy Change |
|
|
B. A. Johnson, 2004a; B. A. Johnson, 2004b; Lenz, 2003). Funding CSP at authorized levels was thus one goal of many sustainable agriculture groups for the 2008 farm bill (Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 2006).
Promoting CSP, and a related proposal for “green payments,” in the 2008 farm bill was seen by many sustainable agriculture groups not only as support for working lands conservation but also as a way to encourage more radical farm policy reform. Because CSP payments were generally considered non-trade-distorting—they supported farmers for conservation practices without affecting crop market prices—they were touted by groups as a way to convert commodity crop subsidies into an alternative environmentally friendly farmer safety net that conformed to WTO pressures. A green payment program would provide farmers a payment on top of whatever price they received for their crops in the marketplace, in this case rewarding them for soil, water, and wildlife conservation on their farms rather than for their crop production per se. Adding green payments into the farm bill, and eventually channeling them into a substitute for commodity payments, was thus one form of radical farm policy reform that had been proposed by such groups.
Summing Up: Interest Groups and Questions
of Farm Policy Change
Despite the enormous increases in productivity associated with industrialized agriculture and its use of fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and improved seed technology, there have been a number of negative consequences associated both with industrial agriculture itself and with the subsidizing of it through U.S. farm policy. Although many provisions were incorporated into farm policy to mitigate these impacts, the baseline incentives for monoculture production remained in place. It was primarily because of these continued environmental, health, trade, and community impacts that sustainable agriculture, environmental, rural development, trade, and social justice groups pushed for varied levels of farm bill reform for the 2008 bill, even as many commodity groups argued that federal support for agriculture had been appropriate.