And Now This; Aquaculture News From Jersey, Farm Bill Perspective, and 'Get Real' Combest advises 'inverted pentagrams'
botia
PressofAltanticCity.com
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer,
May 31, 2006
"There's no question we need to have a focus on aquaculture for
jobs," Assemblyman Jeff Van Drew said. He and Assemblyman Nelson
Albano, both D-Cape May, Cumberland Atlantic, want to improve
technology to make aquaculture a thriving industry in the Garden State.
New Jersey has 172 licensed fish farms and other aquaculture growers.
But these farms haven't reached their full potential, Albano said.
"Aquaculture does not have a big enough voice in the state," he
said.
News of California Aquaculture?................maybe another day, as
Aquaculture in CA, does not have a big enough voice in the state.
On the National Front;
The Farm Bill (The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002) set
to expire in
2007. " This past April, Congress enacted a budget resolution that
called for streamlining $34.7 billion in entitlement spending over the
next five years." Brian M. Riedl at the,
* inhales* Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in
the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation - what a fancy dancy title - wrote in a diatribe aimed
at the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee for what
he called 'nonsense subsidies'
The Senate Attempts To Prematurely Extend the Bloated Farm Bill Through
2011
by Brian M. Riedl
WebMemo #899a
October 27, 2005
whereby
" This $60 billion commitment will likely eliminate any chance to
meaningfully reform the bloated farm programs and may seriously imperil
America's ability to open foreign agriculture markets."
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm899a.cfm
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Not quite in step with Heritage, and an excellent article from Farm
Press;
Producers to ag committee: Stay the course, extend '02 farm bill
May 31, 2006 9:40 AM
By Ron Smith Farm Press Editorial Staff
"I think the 2002 law works well," said Colin Peterson, Minnesota,
ranking minority member of the [Agriculture] committee.
http://southwestfarmpress.com/news/053106-ag-committee/
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Yet another party weighs in, and negative of the current subsidies
program.
In it's entirety, due to the complexity of the issue, follows.
I get that it boils down to commodity price juxtaposed income support,
but I get fussy with the gross margin this, and duty that... "crop
specific"
approach seems to me, a good idea:
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Extending farm bill 'not a good idea'
JEANNINE OTTO
jo...@agrinews-pubs.com
WASHINGTON - Two former agriculture secretaries and the leader of the
American Farmland Trust said that extending the current farm bill would
not be a good idea for American agriculture.
As the American Farmland Trust released Agenda 2007, the
organization's proposal for the 2007 farm bill, leaders of other farm
groups said that they would be introducing farm bill proposals of their
own.
"As far as extension of the current farm bill, we don't believe in
the long term that's a good idea, that it's feasible," Ralph
Grossi, president of the American Farmland Trust, said. "If you
accept that change is on the horizon, then the earlier you start on
change the easier it is to make that change and the more likely that
agriculture will play a major role in that change."
"The politics of doing nothing brings fewer and fewer players into
the mix," said Dan Glickman, former secretary of agriculture under
president Bill Clinton. Glickman added that the longer that the
agriculture community waits on changing farm policy, the more likely it
is that agriculture will be shut out of the decision-making process.
Clayton Yeutter, a former U.S. trade representative as well as
secretary of agriculture under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W.
Bush , said agriculture would not help U.S. Trade Secretary Susan
Schwab with a farm bill extension.
"I would say, as a former U.S. trade representative, that (extending
the 2002 farm bill) would be a major mistake. We want to get all the
market access we can possibly get from the Doha Round and the only way
to get that is at the negotiating table," he said. "We would do
Secretary Schwab no favors by pulling the rug out from under her. It
would be a very major tactical error on the part of the United
States."
At a later question about whether the Doha Round of trade talks were
essentially on life support, Yeutter cautioned against assuming Doha
was dead and said that could mean trouble for U.S. agriculture.
"My best guess is that if the Doha Round were to fail, every one of
our existing commodity programs is destined to be challenged in the
World Trade Organization," he said. "To operate in that environment
is very risky indeed. I don't believe we should yet conclude the Doha
Round will not succeed. It is much too early for that. There is a lot
of ebb and flow in negotiations and we should not yet write off the
Doha Round by any means."
Representatives from different ag groups, for the most part, had little
to say about the AFT proposal, noting that it was only one of many that
would be presented in the coming months.
"It has some really interesting concepts," said Rick Tolman, chief
executive officer of the National Corn Growers Association. "There
are some things in it to things we had previously proposed in the 2002
farm bill. There are some elements that are interesting to our
group."
"They would target revenue and, in one respect, it does address one
of the holes in the current program," Sam Willett, senior director of
public policy for the NCGA, said. "I think the concept of a national
income or revenue program, that's one of the similarities (to the
NCGA proposal for the 2002 farm bill), but it's constructed
differently."
Willett added that the NCGA proposal was written to recognize
differences in the different program crops, while the AFT proposal for
the 2007 farm bill does not get crop-specific.
"You have to give credit to any group that's taken the time to put
resources together and generate new ideas," he said.
On the same day that the AFT released Agenda 2007, U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns visited the Chicago Produce Show and announced
the release of a risk management analysis paper. The paper is the first
analysis paper and is based on the comments gathered during the 52 USDA
Farm Bill Forums.
A spokesman for Johanns said that the agriculture secretary, while not
endorsing any policy options, welcomed the input.
"We've received it and it's something certainly that we will look
at," Ed Lloyd, press secretary for Johanns, said. "We are certainly
glad to have their ideas on the table."
"We certainly welcome all voices and opinions as part of this
national discussion," Lloyd added. "We think it is very important
for the future of farm policy to have all the information on the table
so we can make informed decisions next year for the farm bill so we can
decide how best to structure our support for agriculture."
"We hope many different producer and ag groups will step forward and
make their voices heard. We're glad that people are joining the
discussion and we would encourage more people to do that, whether
it's from individual farmers or farm groups."
Officials from other farm groups said those groups are forming their
own plans to bring to the table.
"We look at it as an addition to the farm bill debate," said Chuck
Spencer, Illinois Farm Bureau director of national legislation and
policy development. Spencer said the group had no official position on
the AFT proposal. "It's going to take input from a variety of
sources."
"I haven't had a chance to look at the report, I don't have a lot
to say about it," Kent Yeager, director of government relations for
the Indiana Farm Bureau, said. "We're certainly interested in any
of these that come out."
Yeager noted that Hardin, an Indiana farmer, has been involved in the
IFB farm bill process, in addition to his work with the AFT.
"Our farm bill task force continues to meet and we'll talk more
about suggestions for the farm bill," Yeager said.
"We don't have any comment on their proposal. We have formed a farm
bill policy task force and we are gathering information from all
different kinds of groups," Dave Warner, spokesman for the National
Pork Producers Council, said. "We're still working on what we would
like to see in the next farm bill."
Warner added that the NPPC is going to take input from producers during
a listening session at the World Pork Expo, scheduled for June 7-11 in
Des Moines, Iowa.
"We're in the process of putting together our own proposal and
we're not ready to go public with that," Melanie Batalis, director
of external relations for the Indiana Soybean Association.
A spokesman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association echoed
that.
"We're developing a framework for our membership," said Karen
Batra, NCBA director of public affairs, adding that the association had
no comment on the AFT proposal.
http://www.agrinewspubs.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=207&ArticleID=10209
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But the article that takes it all the way to the "break out the
inverted pentagrams" bank, is the on Larry Combest.
Again, for complexity, the June 06 perspective relating Farm Bill
formation, in it's entirety:
________________________________________
Posted on Fri, Jun. 02, 2006
Deep roots: The power of the farm lobby
BY MIKE DORNING AND ANDREW MARTIN
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - If anyone has an insider's view of the cozy and enduring
alliances that maintain America's generous farm subsidy program, it's
Larry Combest.
He spent 18 years representing west Texas cotton country in Congress,
fighting for subsidies on Capitol Hill while reaping political benefits
back home. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee the last time
Congress rewrote the farm bill, legislation that provided farmers a
windfall of federal largess. Now, after leaving Congress, he's on the
farm lobby's payroll with the job of persuading his former colleagues
to keep the good times rolling.
Combest's success in protecting subsidies means consumers pay twice,
once at the grocery store and again on their tax bills.
Regular as the harvest for 73 years, the renewal of farm subsidies is
being challenged by a coalition that includes the Bush administration,
environmentalists and fiscal conservatives. Congress is expected to
rewrite the farm bill next year.
But Combest is hardly trembling.
At a recent gathering of agribusiness leaders in Washington, Combest
was cocksure.
"I'm not saying it's impossible to force radical change onto the
farmers of this country," he said, according to a partial transcript.
"I'm just saying that before all the medley of malefactors who are
teamed up to bring farm policy down in this country break out the
inverted pentagrams or whatever voodoo that unites them, they need to
understand that the real environment - as opposed to the one they are
trying to conjure up - is not on their side."
The "real environment," personified by Combest, is a self-perpetuating
cycle of money, votes and political power that has made agriculture one
of Washington's most entrenched special interests, even as the number
of farmers has dwindled to about 1 percent of the population.
On the inside, it's a wheel of fortune for everybody involved,
including farmers, lobbyists and farm-state congressmen. Taxpayers pick
up the tab: a record $23 billion in farm subsidies last year. For
critics, subsidies are a costly anachronism in a country that long ago
moved from its agrarian base.
Critics also contend the system encourages unhealthy eating. Corn
subsidies lower costs of grain-fed meat and sweeteners used in soft
drinks. Consumers generally pay full cost for fruits and vegetables,
most of which are not subsidized.
But supporters of farm programs say they provide a safety net to help
farmers and ensure an abundant, relatively inexpensive and homegrown
food supply. They also argue subsidies level the playing field because
many other wealthy nations subsidize their farmers.
"I think Americans like the fact that we produce a lot of our food in
the country," Combest said. "And we have less subsidies than some other
countries."
So Washington sends subsidy payments to farmers. Farmers reward the
politicians with votes and money. Farm groups and agribusinesses
lubricate the system with campaign contributions and lobbying jobs.
With elections less than six months away, the 20 members of the Senate
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee already have collected
more than $7.1 million in campaign contributions from the farm sector
while their 46 House counterparts have received $2.9 million, according
to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Combest is far from the only person to pass through the capital's
revolving farm door. The House Agriculture Committee's former
top-ranking Democrat, Charles Stenholm of Texas, lobbies on behalf of
agriculture interests too. In all, at least 19 congressional aides who
worked on the 2002 farm bill have taken jobs as agriculture lobbyists
or with commodity groups or farm organizations.
What's more, members of Congress and staff can count on being treated
to junkets: Big Sugar plays host at mountain resorts, and the cotton
industry in Las Vegas and New Orleans.
Although the health-care industry and trial lawyers spend far more than
Big Farm to influence Washington, the farm lobby is distinguished by a
well-organized grass-roots network of organizations that extends
throughout rural America. In the capital, farmers are represented by a
core group of long-serving lobbyists who regularly band together,
setting aside divergent interests to keep the dollars flowing to farm
programs.
And this lobby can draw on public sympathy for a stereotype of a quaint
family farm.
The political structure also works in its favor. The Senate's equal
representation gives voters in sparsely populated rural states extra
political weight.
And it doesn't hurt that the first presidential caucus is held in Iowa,
where candidates ritually pay homage to the myth of the family farm.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., former chairman of the Senate agriculture
committee, stands as an anomaly. He opposed much of the farm subsidy
program the last time Congress rewrote the farm bill.
Lugar said lawmakers use votes for the farm bill as a sort of currency:
Senators from non-agricultural states agree to support subsidies as
long as farm-state senators back the others' favored programs.
"They say, `Give us our program, and we won't cause you a whole lot of
trouble,'" said Lugar. "So expediently, people will say, `Well, that's
probably about right.'"
And there are practical considerations. Farmers vote. And in states
dependent on agriculture those votes can swing a race.
What's at stake for farmers who benefit from subsidies is a regular
payment from the government, not unlike Social Security.
Others also gain. Subsidies are paid to absentee landowners who live
far from the fields, in places like Chicago and to wealthy gentleman
farmers. Recipients have included former basketball star Scottie Pippen
and newsman Sam Donaldson.
On a sunny Saturday morning last month at a farm exhibition in Great
Bend, Kan., Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., a member of the House Agriculture
Committee, stood onstage dressed in Wranglers and cowboy boots to take
questions.
The farmers there had a one-track mind: maintaining government aid for
farmers, from drought relief to ethanol promotion to the more basic
subsidies.
"And even when they don't talk about it, it's never far from their
minds," said Moran, whose district has collected the second most in
farm subsidies since 1995, $6.2 billion, according to the Environmental
Working Group, a conservation organization. "It is a part of whether
their son or daughter has a future in farming."
Farm subsidies were started during the Depression as, in theory, a
temporary emergency measure to aid farmers amid a decline in crop
prices.
Even then, politics were part of the calculus. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt used subsidies to get rural and Southern support for the New
Deal.
The program survived and expanded even as its natural constituency
dwindled. In 1930, 1 in 4 Americans lived on a farm; now about 1 in 100
do, and many farmers are only part-timers. Two-thirds of farmers
receive no subsidies, as the benefits go only to producers of a handful
of basic crops.
Defenders of subsidy programs say their $23 billion cost is a miniscule
percentage of the federal budget, less than 1 percent.
"There are other programs out there that spend money that probably have
a lot more controversy surrounding them," Combest said.
He said he sees nothing wrong with fighting for farms as a lobbyist. "I
have agriculture as an interest. I've had it all my life," he said.
"People have a tendency to stay involved in an area that they have some
expertise and knowledge. ... I'm not working for an industry I disagree
with."
But critics argue that farm programs stifle U.S. business by blocking
trade agreements and encourage large-scale industrial agriculture
because the system rewards farmers for growing as much as possible. And
they indirectly damage the environment, critics say, because intensive
farming relies so heavily on chemicals.
Developing nations say they can't compete when U.S. overproduction is
dumped on world markets. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has joined the
critics, blaming artificially high sugar prices supported by the farm
program for driving Brach's and other Chicago-based candy-manufacturers
overseas.
The renewal of the farm subsidies is typically reauthorized in six-year
increments.
And each crop brings its own constituency. The Midwest covets corn and
soybean subsidies. The Great Plains pitch for the wheat program. The
Southwest, Texas and California plead for help for cotton, rice and
peanuts. The Northeast, upper Midwest and Southeast appeal for dairy
programs. And sugar support comes from cane growers in Florida,
Louisiana, Hawaii and beet growers in many Northern states.
Nutrition programs for the poor - such as food stamps - were added to
the farm bill in the 1960s. That way, urban lawmakers agree to support
farm subsidies as long as farm-state congressmen vote in favor of
nutrition programs.
"There's no secret why food stamps are in the ag bill - because they
get votes from people who wouldn't know a corn stalk if they saw one,"
said Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a former Agriculture Committee member.
The coalition of farm groups has been resilient, in part because none
of the interests has waged war against another. Even when health
advocates attacked tobacco subsidies, the coalition continued to
support them until tobacco growers agreed to a federal buy-out.
"It was made very clear to those of us on the committee," LaHood said.
"I don't grow one leaf of tobacco in my area in Illinois. The point
was, even if you don't like tobacco, you'd better be for tobacco if you
want corn and (soy) beans to be taken care of."
The farm lobby works hard to maintain chummy relations on Capitol Hill.
When the sugar industry hosted Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Kent
Conrad, D-N.D., and five congressional staffers at its "sweetener
symposium" in Vail, Colo., in 2004, the leisure activities included
white-water rafting and golf. Three mornings of seminars on trade and
sugar issues were spread over the five-day event.
As a general rule, the more controversial the farm program, the more
money its backers dole out in junkets and campaign contributions.
And the biggest beneficiaries of agriculture's funding are the
leadership of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, and the
leadership of the agriculture appropriations subcommittees.
Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, chairman of the House appropriations
subcommittee, has raised $300,000 from the farm sector, and Sen. Saxby
Chambliss, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee,
$287,000.
The farm lobby also generates good will by offering jobs to members of
Congress and their staffs. The committees overseeing agriculture have
become a reliable farm system for the USDA, commodity organizations and
lobbying firms. Dale Thorenson is a typical example.
A farm boy from North Dakota, Thorenson started as an aide for Sen.
Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in 1999. He helped with the 2002 farm bill.
Just months after it passed, Thorenson joined Gordley Associates, where
he lobbies on behalf of some of his home state's key crops.
"Everybody in town knows that if you want to stay in town and get a
job, you've got to get along with the big commodity groups, because
they are the biggest employers," said a former congressional staffer
who worked on agricultural issues.
Thorenson disagreed, saying he fully intended to move back to North
Dakota after his work was done on Capitol Hill. While denying a quid
pro quo, he said congressional staffers who work on agriculture issues,
most of whom have farm backgrounds, are uniquely qualified to lobby
Congress.
"If you have not been a staff person up there, it's pretty hard to know
what they go through and the demands they face each day," he said.
The loose alliance working to reform American farm policy is broad and
diverse. It includes the Environmental Defense, the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations, the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group
based in Washington, and the Food Products Association, a trade
association fighting for market-oriented farm programs that would
reduce sugar prices and accelerate trade talks.
The groups have different reasons for trying to change farm policy -
some want more money for conservation, others want to lower the federal
budget deficit - but they all want to roll back subsidy payments.
Even the most passionate reformers, however, acknowledge it will be
hard to match the intensity of the farm lobby.
"You get an association such as mine, we've got a lot of priorities,"
said Cal Dooley, a former California lawmaker and member of the House
Agriculture Committee who is now president of the Food Products
Association. "This is one of them, but it's not even a top priority.
The farm lobby has a narrower agenda: They are all about perpetuating
the farm bill."
Even so, reformers believe they have at least a shot at change this
time. Defenders and critics of the farm program cite two wild cards
that could upend the debate: political anxiety over the massive federal
budget deficit and the increasingly likely prospect of retaliation from
global trading partners aggrieved by American farm subsidies.
In addition, there is mounting pressure to give a larger share of the
farm payments to renewable fuels such as ethanol, conservation programs
and fruit and vegetable growers. Even some farm backers worry that the
farm lobby, so durable during the last seven decades, could be severely
tested if the pool of money shrinks.
"When you have a lot of money to spend, it's a lot easier to hold
together," said Jon Doggett, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers
Association. "You have a limited number of dollars ... then it has to
come out of someone else's pocket."
For now, the strategy seems to be for farmers to hold on to what they
have for as long as possible. The American Farm Bureau, the nation's
largest farm organization, is pushing for an extension of the current
farm bill, and there is already a bill before Congress to do just that.
Former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., who served on the Senate
agriculture committee, is among those betting that the farm lobby will
prevail again.
"If you believe that farm policy is ever going to be reformed, then I
got some swamp land to sell you in Louisiana," he said. "It ain't going
to happen."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14724385.htm
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It's all relative -- ain't it?