Bringing in the sheaves - farmers and environmental policy - Column

Sierra, May-June, 1995 by Carl Pope

Harvest time comes early this year for rural America. The seeds were sown last fall by Agribusiness, Inc., and now American farmers are set to reap a bitter crop.

Ag Alert is the weekly newsletter of the California Farm Bureau Federation. Its pages, like those of many other farm publications, have beaten home a simple message for the past decade: the federal government is a threat to farmers' way of life. Lavish ads for the latest pesticide formulations are interspersed with lurid, trumped-up horror stories about arrogant environmental regulators. Editorials demand that Congress dismantle environmental rules, return power to the states, and get off farmers' backs.

Now, with the new congressional majority busy fulfilling this wish list, the giant corporate farms, multinational food conglomerates, and chemical companies are gloating. For agribusiness, federal farm programs (apart from the welcome subsidies) are annoyances that tend to put rural people first, not global markets. In Ag Alert, Dean Kleckner, head of the American Farm Bureau Federation, welcomes the "tidal wave of change in D.C.," including cost/benefit analysis of environmental regulations, payoffs to property owners for complying with federal regulations, and curbs on the federal government's ability to set environmental standards for all Americans.

Not all of rural America has signed on to the Farm Bureau's anti-government, anti-environmental crusade. Farmers are a diverse and independent bunch. Many are committed environmentalists; some are members of the Sierra Club. Farm groups like the National Farmers Organization and Prairie Fire explicitly reject the Farm Bureau's approach.

And with good reason, given that the quality of rural life has been greatly improved by the vilified federal government. Even Farm Bureau newsletters rely on a federally supported rural mail delivery system financed largely by city dwellers. Rural reading lamps are powered by electrical co-ops built by low-interest federal loans, which also finance the telephone lines Farm Bureau supporters use to harangue their neighbors about the evils of big government. Many western farmers owe their livelihoods to heavily subsidized Bureau of Reclamation water projects, and ranchers run their cattle at below-market (and below-cost) rates on public land. In wetter parts of the country, the dams, dikes, and flood relief programs that help farms survive come, largely, courtesy of Washington, D.C., and new crop varieties and farming techniques are developed through federally supported research at land-grant colleges and by the USDA. Finally, farmers turn to federal farm subsidies to increase the price they get for their crops.

Historically, farmers have voted their interests based on where the parties and candidates stood on these farm issues. As late as 1986, hard times and hostile Reagan administration farm policies yielded stunning defeats for Republican congressional candidates in the Farm Belt. Last November, however, rural voters were convinced to vote not on the basis of farm policy, but on environmental policy; in many districts, they provided the crucial edge for the Republican electoral sweep.

Now the budget-cutting Congress they elected takes up the $50-billion Farm Bill. Thus far, the Farm Bureau has been slow to admit that the interests of its members and those of the new order in Washington may not always coincide. Even as he trumpeted deficit reduction, for example, Kleckner still imagined a 1995 Farm Bill that 'increases net farm income" and spares farm programs--a naive hope at best for a Congress fixated on slashing the budget.

But family farmers stand to lose more than their subsidies. Farmers suffer more than most people from environmental degradation, yet rural environmental standards are already far weaker than those protecting cities. Drinking water in the countryside is far more likely to be contaminated; pesticide poisoning is a serious problem, causing certain types of cancers to soar; industrial facilities have far less stringent air-pollution controls; and hazardous-waste dumps are increasingly being sloughed off on rural communities, particularly those with large minority populations.

Also poisoned has been the common ground between rural Americans and urban environmentalists. An opportunity to heal that rift is coming with the debate over the Farm Bill, when both groups can unite to support programs that will improve economic prospects for small farmers, preserve wildlife and wetlands, reduce health threats in rural communities, and improve water quality. Farmers may be correct in identifying Washington, D. C., as a threatening place--but the threat is from those who would pit one group of Americans against another on the issue of a clean and whole environment.