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Before any farmers -- and I know a lot, and I even live on a farm -- think this an attack on them, get your britches out of twist and read the whole post.
Big Agriculture has indeed won another big fight on capital hill, and for the rest of us -- including family farms-- the result is not good. The agriculture bill recently passed by Congressis another in a long history of payoffs to big agriculture that go back to the founding of the Republic.
"Founding of the Republic? What in the hell is the Gunpowder Chronicle thinking?"
I consider the first big payout to big agriculture the failure to banish slavery to the ash heap of history. Slavery was -- at its immoral, hateful root -- about cheap labor for the "big agriculture" of the day, plantations. What we consider "slavery" today -- the massive important of Africans to North America for the purposes of forced labor, breeding, and subjugation -- did not really appear until the 1720s in large numbers. Before that, the practice was "indentured servitude", when predominantly WHITE, ANGLO-SAXON Scots, Irish, and Welsh were brought over voluntarily or under penalty of law, and given the opportunity to work for seven years. After seven yeras, they were given their "freedom", and sent out. Most ended up in the frontier country, and started the westward expansion of the country into Kan-Tuck-ee, Western Pennsylvania, and the Ohio.
This system ultimately faltered, though (it also led to the French and Indian War). As the cost of making the Atlantic voyage plummeted, the reasons for making the journey as a servant plummeted as well. But those plantations still needed a cheap labor source. The African slave became the answer, and the nation was set on a course of bloody, vengeful civil war. Failing to stop slavery at the founding of a new nation was nothing more than a sop to southern plantation owners. And the great controversies of the early 1800s -- the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, Dred Scott -- were all ultimately about the expansion of slavery into new territories.
The controversies of the late 1800s were about expanding American agriculture and mining into the Indian territories. (That is really what the Homestead Act of 1866 was determined to do). Every treaty with the Indians we broke was about either a) mining (see Custer, Last Stand, Black Hills, Gold) or b) agriculture (see ranching). The Grange Wars of Minnesota and Wisconsin were about the power of Big Agriculture over small farmers.
The whole ethanol thing? Iowa corn farms, "owned" lock stock and corn crib by ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland.
In short, Big Agriculture has been winning these wars for three hundred years.
Now, Big Agriculture gets a farm bill includes a $6 to $8 billion tax increase on the subsidiaries of foreign-owed corporations, plus gobs of subsidies that will set off a) another round of trade wars with Europe and b) will kill most other trade deals. Both will mean higher prices for you and me-- aside from the higher prices we already pay on anything corn-based (HFCS, cereal, bread, milk, meats, etc) from the whole ethanol bullshit. Among the subsidies, over 90% are projected to go to people who don't actually farm. This doesn't help the small family farm -- which is beset by increasing real estate taxes, increased fuel costs, and pressures from city slickers who move into the country and don't like getting caught on the road behind farm equipment.
It also represents a major betrayal for a number of Congressmorons who signed the "No New Taxes" pledge of Americans For Tax Reform-- including Wayne Gilchrest (Q- MD 1st).
Mark this up as another win for Big Agriculture, and a loss for their customers.