WASHINGTON, June 22, 2016 - Farmers are a comparative bunch.
They talk to their neighbors to compare the rain gauge
measurements after some needed moisture. They’ve been known to crunch the
numbers on whether they should buy or lease that new tractor. In such a risky
business, their very livelihoods could depend on making the right choice, so
thoughtful comparison is key.
But they probably aren’t too keen on comparing how much
money they received in government supports. Despite their concerns, the Environmental Working Group is doing it for
them, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to determine the recipients
of the $322 billion in farm subsidies doled out between 1995 and 2014 through
their online database.
The information is there for public consumption and the
public appears to be taking EWG up on it. EWG says there have been more than
766 million searches in the database since November 2004. And they have plans
to keep adding more payment data.
While the information may be getting good traffic, many in
agriculture think what’s on display is incomplete. Tom Sell with the Texas-based
lobbying firm Combest, Sell & Associates recently said EWG is using a
“nasty” means of characterization to display the figures without explaining
clearly what they represent.
“They don’t put things in the right context,” Sell said in
an interview with Agri-Pulse. “They
try and couch it as people living off of these subsidies, when in fact it’s an
economic policy that is not really meant about welfare for the farmers, so much
as good, stable agricultural policy.”
The database offers a searchable forum to isolate recipients
by state and zip code and find a total amount of payments received over almost
20 years (1995-2014), including one-time allocations such as disaster payments.
But critics of the database say this information is incomplete.
Take, for example, California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa,
whom EWG classifies as the recipient of the largest amount of farm payments of
any member of Congress. He is part-owner of the DSL LaMalfa Family Partnership,
which initial results show received about $5.3 million in subsidies during the
1995-2014 time period. But users have to click on the operation’s listing
to learn that more than 99 percent of what the partnership received was rice
subsidies, and what the farm once received (an average of $437,280 from
1999-2003) has since decreased sharply (an average of $186,578 from 2009-2013).
And, the farm received nothing in 2014.
Further digging would also reveal - using information not
available on the EWG website - that LaMalfa and his wife Jill own a third of
the partnership, meaning that Rep. LaMalfa has not himself received the
entirety of the $5.3 million.
While the initial search results may focus on the aggregate
number, Scott Faber, EWG’s vice president of government affairs, insisted to Agri-Pulse that EWG does in fact provide
“a lot of background” to explain the numbers on the screen.
“Anyone can get the full picture, year-by-year subsidy
report,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to work hard… to understand why the
reference-price or the old target-price programs would cause payments to be
bigger in some years and lower in others. That basic information about how
subsidies work is available.”
Faber was adamant that EWG is not opposed to crop insurance
and is not using this database to try to kill the program. However, he thinks
there should be a different split between what farmers and the government now
pay for the program, with premium subsidies averaging about 60 percent.
“It’s hard to sustain the notion that the government’s
paying two thirds of the cost of a revenue policy,” Faber said. “Americans love
farmers, we’re always going to help farmers weather the ups and downs of
agriculture, but at some point there’s a limit to our generosity.”
Changes in farm policy such as the elimination of direct
payments and the creation of the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price
Loss Coverage (PLC) in the 2014 farm bill could also lead to very different
figures when the 2015 data are eventually added to the site.
EWG hopes that further changes to farm policy are considered
as Congress begins its deliberations over the next farm bill (the current
legislation expires in 2018). Faber said the group would be focusing
particularly on conservation programs to make sure they are getting the
necessary environmental return.
“These are big pollution challenges that in some parts of
the country are being met, but in other parts of the country are really being
neglected, and the farm bill can really be an important part of the solution,”
Faber said. “We’ve now reached a point where we can step back and look at”
program spending and returns, he added.
There also will likely be a spat over cost sharing of crop
insurance and the overall price tag of the bill, especially because the actual
cost of the 2014 farm bill is turning out to be much higher than predicted. It
remains to be seen whether EWG will approach this issue through suggested means
testing, a changed cost share, or some combination of both, but Faber said
something needs to change.
“There’s a way to strike a better balance between what we’re
providing farmers and the amount of money that they contribute towards
premiums,” Faber said. And when asked what that better balance would be?
“That’s a good question for Congress,” he said.
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