We'll Reap What We Sow By Daniel Imhoff
The Los Angeles Times Thursday 10 April 2008
The farm bill is loaded with ****k and environmentally disastrous
provisions.
If you've ever driven through the southern end of California's
Central Valley in September,
you're familiar with the grids of lint-strewn cotton fields that blur by
for nearly 2 1/2 hours.
You might even have pondered the wisdom of planting such a thirsty crop as
cotton on a million
acres - an area larger than Yosemite National Park - in a state facing a
water crisis. Then
again, you might ask a similar question about the half a million acres of
rice, a grain adapted
to the monsoons of Asia, on the valley's northern end.
Cheap irrigation water is part of the equation, but there is another
common denominator.
It's a massive federal legislation package passed every five years known
as the farm bill, which
House and Senate members are scrambling to reauthorize by an April 18
deadline. Over the last
decade, the farm bill has allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to
shower tens of billions
of dollars in subsidies on the nation's cotton and rice farmers (along
with corn, soybean,
wheat, sugar and milk producers). These subsidies flow whether growers
need them or not. They
flow even as they damage the environment and our nutritional well-being.
They flow, all the
while enabling the biggest farms to consolidate into mega-farms.
It wasn't always this way. The farm bill emerged during the Dust Bowl
and Great Depression
as a tem****ary financial safety net for family farmers. It included
programs to promote soil
conservation and distribute food surpluses to the needy. In the seven
decades since that genie
was let out of the bottle, however, the farm bill has become a high-stakes
game of political
horse-trading that has changed how we farm and what we eat. Today, more
than a third of the
budget goes to an elite group of commodity farms that grow grains and
oilseed crops, mainly for
feeding livestock and making processed foods (and now, fuels).
When current farm bill negotiations started in 2006, a proverbial
food fight erupted. An
array of nonprofit organizations, including Oxfam, Bread for the World and
the Sustainable
Agriculture Coalition, pushed for a bill that would emphasize farming
livelihoods, more
effective environmental protection and better nutrition. Prices on nearly
all commodities,
except cotton, have been soaring. Average 2008 farm household income is
anticipated to reach
$90,000 - nearly 20% above the national average. Meantime, commodity
farmers were set to receive
$13 billion in direct and indirect payments, disaster bailouts, crop
insurance and (some worthy)
conservation incentives in 2008 alone. Surely, reformers argued, this was
the right time to stop
throwing money at giant farming operations already making hay in current
markets.
They lobbied for a $250,000-per-farm subsidy cap, but that got struck
down by a status-quo
Senate. They pushed for more locally grown produce in public school
cafeterias, a noble effort
but minimally successful. The efforts to cut cotton farming subsidies -
which distort global
trade - fell short. They fought for full funding for the Conservation
Security Program, which
rewards farmers for good land steward****p - reducing use of chemicals,
diversifying crops,
saving water, etc. Here, reformers won a large increase, but the fund
remains vulnerable;
year-to-year, it often gets robbed to fund commodity programs.
A few worthy new programs also were added: funds for organic farming
research and to help
pay organic certification fees; an expansion of local farmers markets;
assistance for beginning
farmers; and sup****t for "specialty crop" producers, who for decades have
been locked out of the
subsidy game. (Specialty crops is farm bill-speak for crops that are
actually edible, such as
fruits, nuts and vegetables, which many California farmers supply to the
nation.)
But, by and large, the farm bill song remains the same: Commodity
agribusiness gets the
lion's share; reformers get table scraps. Absent a more vocal public
outcry, the agribusiness
lobby, which spent $80 million in 2007, again holds the winning hand.
What can we citizens expect if the proposed $300-billion farm bill is
signed into law?
Federally subsidized feed - corn, soybeans and cottonseed - for animal
factory farms that spread
disease, greenhouse gases and dangerous working conditions wherever they
set up shop. (Farm bill
"environmental quality" programs will even pay up to $450,000 for the
construction of lined
"lagoons" to be filled with lethal concentrations of manure.) The
continuation of America's
obesity campaign, which ensures the cheapest and most widely available
foods are made up of such
high-calorie ingredients as high-fructose corn syrup, refined flours,
saturated fats and
unhealthy meat and dairy products. And more federally backed ex****ts of
California's water - in
the form of cotton and rice, mostly sold overseas.
But here's the one that's really hard to stomach. More than $4
billion in permanent
disaster assistance to growers in the Northern Plains. The brainchild of
Montana Democrat and
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, this is essentially a trust
fund to guarantee
income to farmers plowing up prairies and grasslands - lands prone to
drought and erosion - to
plant corn and wheat. Many observers fear a second Dust Bowl.
No final bill has been passed, and President Bush, who signed the
extravagant 2002 farm
bill, has threatened a veto if considerable reforms aren't made to
commodity programs. There is
still time to let everyone in Congress know that they should vote on the
farm bill as if the
nation's very health, future and security is at stake. Because it is. And
we deserve better.
Daniel Imhoff is the author of "Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to a
Food and Farm Bill."
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
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http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
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