Federal farm subsidies require a more balanced diet?

WASHINGTON — Nash Huber grows more than 100 types of fruits and vegetables on his 400-acre farm in the Dungeness Delta near Sequim, from strawberries to beets to cabbage.

Across the state, on a 6,500-acre farm in Eastern Washington, Jim Davis produces only one crop: wheat.

But because wheat is what is known as a "program" crop, Davis, president of the Washington Farmers Union, receives substantial subsidies from the federal government.

His revenue from direct sales is relatively small — in the $200,000 range. But when payments from federal conservation and farm programs are factored in, Davis said, the total sum is "going to be a pretty high number."

Huber, meanwhile, after 30 years of farming, received his first check from the federal government just last year: "a few hundred dollars" for good conservation practices. That's a small fraction of his $750,000 in annual sales.

Since the beginning of the New Deal, the federal government has written a bill once every five years to set farm policy. Currently, the federal government hands out more than $7 billion a year to so-called "program" or "commodity" crops, such as corn and wheat, but less than a tenth of that to "specialty crops" like fruits and vegetables, although the annual values of production of the two kinds of crops are almost equal.

That's of particular concern to Washington state, where the only commodity crop grown in large quantities is wheat, and even that accounts for only around 7 percent of the state's total agricultural output.

This year is a farm-bill year, and the subsidy program that gives Huber so little and Davis so much is under attack like never before.

It's being bombarded from outside the U.S. and from within: Poor countries claim the U.S. subsidy program creates an unfair trade balance and are starting to flex their muscles in international courts. And fruit and vegetable growers in the U.S. are demanding a larger piece of the farm-bill pie as foreign produce floods domestic markets.

In addition, an energized "alternative" agriculture movement wants to radically change the way America eats, and a tight federal budget could constrain Congress' usual largesse.

It all adds up to what Don Stuart, the Pacific Northwest director of American Farmland Trust (AFT), calls a "really remarkable set of special circumstances" that in his view offers a "genuine opportunity to transform this farm bill into one that truly helps all of agriculture and provides the public with some benefits."

The trust has been pressuring Congress for a more environmentally conscious farm policy since 1980.

Stakes high for this state

One clear winner of a more equitable policy would be Washington state, for the simple reason that it is the third-largest producer of specialty crops in the nation.

The state is first for production of apples, sweet cherries, pears and raspberries, according to the state Agriculture Department, and ranks high in potato, asparagus and grape production. In 2005, sales of apples alone amounted to more than $1.2 billion.

But in the past five years, the U.S. specialty-crop industry has been threatened by globalization, as fruit and vegetable imports have risen by more than 60 percent.

As a result, practically all major specialty-crop organizations in the country, including those in the state, for the first time have joined a farm-bill alliance to "improve competitiveness in a global marketplace."

Previously, organizations representing different fruits and vegetables had been reluctant to collaborate.

"It's a very competitive industry," said Shannon Schaffer, a spokesman for the U.S. Apple Association. "There's probably been some thoughts that if we all work together, nobody's going to get as much."

But, Schaffer said, "that viewpoint has changed." As a "larger group, you have a larger voice, and you're better able to make your voice heard throughout Congress."

And in the administration as well, apparently: In its guideline for the farm bill released at the end January, the Department of Agriculture acknowledged that specialty crops were "underrepresented in farm-bill policy" and proposed spending an additional $5 billion over 10 years on expanding research, promoting exports and encouraging consumption of fruits and vegetables, especially in schools.

At the same time, the Agriculture Department's plan would further diminish the gap among the different types of growers by reducing large loans to program-crop producers and by cutting off direct payments to farmers making more than $200,000 a year.

No subsidy plan

Notably, one thing the Agriculture Department is not proposing is to provide specialty-crop producers with subsidies similar to those given to program crops.

And that's perfectly fine with most specialty-crop producers. Many fear that subsidies would hurt competitiveness within the industry. And they also recognize that asking for subsidies would make for bad publicity.

"Nobody wants to be seen with their hand out," Schaffer said.

Newspaper editorials regularly lambaste crop subsidies. And, last year, a World Trade Organization panel ruled that subsidies were suppressing the world cotton market.

There also is a growing group that opposes subsidies in the belief that they support "industrial" agriculture, which in turn produces bland, unhealthful food while damaging the environment.

Their legions are strong, especially in Western Washington, which has a climate suited to small to midsized organic and crop-diverse farms as well as a large, liberal-leaning market to which those farms can sell.

Mary Embleton, executive director of the nonprofit Cascade Harvest Coalition in Seattle, which works to support small, local farms, says it's a "common story. You get tomatoes that are basically picked green. It's packed, it's gassed, it's shipped, and it doesn't really have any flavor by the time you get it."

David Hilliard, executive chef at Seattle's Blackbird Bistro, which specializes in organic dishes, said: "I think we should break those larger corporations down on a federal level, spread the wealth back out to the populous and have fresher, healthier food, on a smaller level."

Shift envisioned

Instead of a landscape dominated by giant, single-crop farms that are encouraged by the federal government to sell ever larger quantities of low-cost commodities to a global market, people like Embleton and Hilliard envision a world with more farmers like Huber.

By rotating a variety of crops, Huber enriches his farm's soil with nitrogen the old-fashioned way, avoiding the use of fertilizers.

It's tricky and labor-intensive, and not every farmer has Huber's advantages: 30 years of organic-farming experience, a degree in organic chemistry and a farm near the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula that gets a moderate amount of rain.

But Huber says the rewards of his farming technique are many: high-quality produce, lower costs, healthy soil and unpolluted water runoff. Plus the pleasure of selling directly to the customer at farmers' markets, where he chats about cooking and gets "a lot of pats on the back."

He also sells to local stores, such as PCC Natural Markets, which carries his "Nash's Best" carrots.

In the past decade, acreage certified as organic by the state Agriculture Department has jumped from 12,000 to almost 75,000. In the same period, the number of farmers markets in the state more than doubled from about 40 to 90, according to the Washington State Farmers Market Association.

Feelings mixed

Advocates for alternative agriculture have mixed feelings about proposals to help specialty-crop producers.

They like the idea of more support for the food that people regularly eat, and are enthusiastic about increasing funding for more healthful school-lunch programs.

But when Hilliard, the Seattle chef, hears about promoting fruit and vegetable exports overseas, it strikes him as "the opposite direction from the way we should be going," toward more locally grown food.

As a result, alternative agriculture has its own lobbying groups, the most powerful of which is the American Farmland Trust.

Policy goals

Among AFT's policy goals is phasing out all program-crop subsidies and replacing them with "green payments" that "would reward farmers and ranchers for sound land management and resource conservation."

The AFT's Stuart said "it's quite amazing" how much more attention he's been getting this year compared to previous farm-bill rounds.

And although he says the Agriculture Department's proposals to cut subsidies and fund conservation programs could go a lot further, he also credits the administration for taking "big steps forward" in its "willingness to try out some ideas for how to change the farm bill to a new direction."

But Congress in the end will write the actual farm bill, and it's traditionally been reluctant to alter the status quo.

"You've got a whole lot interests," Schaffer said. "You've got lawmakers on both sides that are committed to the industry in their area," and most politicians on the agriculture committees are from the Midwest and South, where corn, soy and other commodity crops predominate.

This year, for the first time in recent memory, neither the House nor the Senate agriculture committee includes a representative from Washington.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens, lost his seat on the House panel this year when the Democratic leadership decided to add three freshmen to the committee.

Larsen says committee Chairman Colin Peterson, D-Minn., has said he will consult him on Northwest issues. And Larsen introduced specialty-crop legislation last month.

Then again, getting support for Northwest agricultural interests was difficult for Larsen even when he was on the committee.

"I like to joke that we moved specialty-crop support in the 2002 farm bill from a half a percent to a full 1 percent [of the total farm-bill expenditures]," Larsen said.

Congressional hearings on the farm bill are just getting under way, and a spokesman for the House Agricultural Committee says the goal is to get the bill to the president's desk by Sept. 30.

Larsen is an advocate of agriculture-aid reform, but he urges people to "fly around the country and see some of these areas before you totally dismiss out of hand a subsidy structure.

"We need people to grow corn. We need people to grow wheat. As long as we have a cheap food policy in this country, we're going to have to support farmers to grow the crops. Fly to Kansas and they'll tell you."

Or, wheat grower Davis would add, just fly to Eastern Washington.

There's a high demand for wheat, but producing a consistently good crop in uncertain weather conditions is very challenging, according to Davis. Subsidies are necessary "if you want to keep farmers for more than just one good year."

And, he added, people on the state's west side, which gets 30 to 35 inches of rain a year, can have little idea what it's like where the average annual rainfall is 8 inches.

"If I could grow a viable pumpkin patch on five acres, I might consider doing that," he said. "But I can't."

In fact, Davis says he has neighbors who are trying to grow organic wheat.

"They have a family farm, and they want to make sure that if organic farming is the wave of the future that their offspring have some experience with it."

But, Davis said, he recently spoke to one of his neighbors who told him that the project wasn't working out — labor costs were too high.

"You know," he said, "it's the market."