The Sustainable Farm Bill: A Proposal for Permanent Environmental Change
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| Author | William S. Eubanks II |
5-2009 NEWS & ANALYSIS 39 ELR 10493
A R T I C L E S
The Sustainable
Farm Bill: A
Proposal for
Permanent
Environmental
Change
by William S. Eubanks II
William S. Eubanks II, who wrote this piece as part
of a larger LL.M. thesis at Vermont Law School, is an
associate attorney at the Washington, D.C., public interest
environmental law rm of Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal.
A thorough analysis of the U.S. Farm Bill highlights the
grave implications of buttressing our nation’s industrial
agricultural system with ever-larger subsidies. By encour-
aging large-scale, monoculture megafarms, a subsidized
industrial agricultural system leads to severe environmen-
tal consequences such as water pollution from fertilizer
and pesticide runo, soil erosion, and eects on wildlife
and biodiversity, such as fragmented habitats and spe-
cies decline. To combat these trends and slow or reverse
environmental degradation caused by industrial farming,
Farm Bill reform discussions should be recentered on
subsidies to scale up sustainable farming.
The following Article aims to inform policymakers
and the public about the single most important stat-
ute aecting the United States today. Specically, this
legislation has the most signicant environmental impact of
any statute enacted by the U.S. Congress. No, this A rticle
does not focus on the Clean A ir Act, the Clean Water Act,
the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered
Species Act, or any of the myriad environmental protec-
tion statutes enacted in the early 1970s in response to the
alarming destruction of the natural environment. R ather,
this Article focuses on a piece of legislation that aects all
aspects of the natural environment, not just one specialized
facet like t he statutes listed above. In addition to this stat-
ute’s impacts on the environment, this legislative enactment
has far-reaching implications for the most salient issues fac-
ing our nation today. e statute drives public hea lth policy
in t he United States and is a predominant reason that our
nation suers from record levels of obesity, heart disease,
diabetes, and asthma. At the same time, this statute imple-
ments policies that result in severe malnutrition and hunger,
both domestical ly and abroad. Additionally, this legislation
encourages overproduction, trade distortion, a nd depression
of world market prices, which directly and immediately drive
immigration toward the United States f rom the developing
world. Lastly, this statute strips rural communities of their
senses of identity, cultural values, and traditional heritage.
For all of these reasons, it is time to inform the public about
this statute so that a new-found awareness can lead to much
needed reform of the current policy system.
Most people will be surprised to learn that the statute
referenced above is the U.S. Farm Bill. How can something
called t he Farm Bill aect all of the sectors of society men-
tioned above? is question demonstrates one of the inherent
problems with attempting to resolve the dicu lt conicts
created by the Farm Bill: the statute is much more tha n a
mere bi ll for farmers, but its deceptive name prevents the
public from recognizi ng its true costs and implicat ions.
Writer Michael Pollan argues that Farm Bil l reform must
start “with the recognition that the ‘farm bill’ is a misno-
mer; in truth, it is a food bi ll [among other things] and
so needs to be rewritten with the interests of [the public]
placed rst.”1 us, the time is now to once aga in summon
the courage demonstrated by environmentalist Rachel Car-
1. Michael Pollan, You Are What You Grow, N.Y. T M., Apr. 22, 2007,
available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.
html?pagewanted=1&_r=1.
A
Rotten System: Subsidizing Environmental Degradation and Poor
Public Health With Our Nation’s Tax Dollars, STAN. ENVTL.
L.J.
39 ELR 10494 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 5-2009
son in the 1960s and apply her message to the new cause of
reforming our nation’s Farm Bill:
We urgently need an end to these fal se assurances, to the
sugar-coating of unpalatable fact s. It is the public that is
being asked to assume the risks . . . e public must decide
whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can
do so only when in full possession of the fact s.2
In order to gather the f ull possession of facts with regard
to the Farm Bill, this Ar ticle seeks to provide comprehen-
sive information regarding the Farm Bill’s eects on Ameri-
can society.
Section I of this Article analyzes the history of the Farm
Bill a nd generally discusses the far-reaching impacts of the
Farm Bill in its current form. Section II scrutinizes the vast
o-farm environmental degradation caused by the Farm Bill’s
insistence on an industrialized agricultural system. Section
III recenters the discussion on Farm Bill reform by proposing
an innovative policy solution that ca n single-handedly solve
many of the problems identied in the preceding sections.
I. How Did We Get Here? History of the U.S.
Farm Bill
e United States has a rich agricultural history that still
inuences the public’s perception of domestic agriculture in
the 21st century. Soon after our nation declared indepen-
dence from England in 1776, omas Jeerson and other
political leaders encouraged a “national agrarian identity.”3
Jeerson envisioned the United States as a democracy com-
prised of yeomen farmers whose impeccable virtues would
propel the young nation to stability.4 When Jeerson became
president in 1801, 95% of the nation’s population worked
full-time in agriculture.5
By t he early decades of the 20th century, t he commer-
cialization of agriculture, coupled with the multitude of
employment options in America’s capitalist economy, led to
a decreased proportion of Americans in the agricultural sec-
tor. In just over a century from 1801 to around 1910, the
percentage of our nation’s citizens that farmed full-time had
dropped from 95% to only 45%.6 Within a few decades,
however, those remaining farmers suered se verely from the
Great Depression. During the early to mid-1930s, nearly
40% of the nation’s population, including a large portion
of the farming population, was grinding out an impover-
ished subsistence a s bank foreclosures and economic down-
turn resulted in dicult times in the United States.7 At this
point in t ime, one in four Americans still lived on a farm.8
2. R C, S S 13 (Mariner Books 2002) (1962).
3. D K L K, A N A P U
S 6 (2003), available at http://www.mnproject.org/pdf/A%20New%20Ag-
riculture%20Policy%20for%20the%20U .S.%20by%20Dennis%20Keeney
%20%20Lo..pdf.
4. See id.
5. D I, F F: T C’ G F F
B 33 (2007).
6. Id.
7. Id.
8. Id.
Although poverty a ected all sectors of societ y, many schol-
ars contend that the farming economy was the hardest-hit
because of the convergence of bank closures, home foreclo-
sures, drought, dust storms, and oods.9 ese economic
and meteorological woes were the visible culprits that led
to the “fa rm crisis,” but the underlying cause for the farm
crisis escaped scrutiny because it was obscured from public
view. e farm crisis was “triggered not by too little food,
but by too much.”10 e nation’s overzealous planting dur-
ing the 1920s, combined with innovative advances in both
mechanization and soil inputs, led to vast overproduction of
most crops.11 is immense surplus beneted “distributors,
processors, and monopolists who were increasingly dominat-
ing the food system,” but seriously curtailed the prots of
farmers as domestic and global crop prices fell dramatically.12
As the crop prices fell below their respective costs of pro-
duction, farmers could no longer stay aoat: the total farm
income dropped by two-thirds between 1929 and 1932; 60%
of farms were mortgaged in hopes of surviving; and by 1933,
the price of corn registered at zero and grain elevators refused
to buy any surplus corn.13
Recognizing the importance of farmers in preserving our
nation’s food supply, the federal government acted quickly
to enact a farm bill to temporarily protect small farms. is
response to the fa rm crisis, called the Agricultura l Adjust-
ment Act of 1933,14 “emerged as one of the most ambitious
social, cultural, and economic programs ever attempted by
the U.S. government.”15 As part of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda, the 1933 Farm Bill ambi-
tiously sought to do many things: bring crop prices back to
stability by weaning the nation from its anity for agricul-
tural overproduction; utilize surplus crops productively to
combat widespread hunger and provide nutritional assistance
to children in the form of school lunch programs; implement
strategies to prevent further erosion and soil loss f rom poor
land conservation policies a nd weather events; provide crop
insurance and credit assurances for subsistence farmers; and
build community infrastructure for rural farming towns.16
In essence, the 1933 Farm Bill was designed to save small
farming in America, and it signa led a return to t he Jeerso-
nian ideal of an agraria n democracy.
At the time, most Americans hailed the Farm Bill as a great
success. Farmers, even those who had criticized the bill ini-
tially, were delighted when “[g]ross farm income increased by
50%” within three years of the Farm Bill’s enactment.17 is
increase, however, did not come without a price; most of the
farm income increases were articial ma rket supports in the
9. Id. at 33-34.
10. Id. at 34.
11. Id.
12. Id.
13. Id.
14. Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, ch. 25, 48 Stat. 31 (codied as amended
in scattered sections of 7 U.S.C.). e text of the original Act is available at
http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/farmbills/1933.pdf.
15. I, supra note 5, at 34.
16. Id. at 34-36.
17. A B, A H: A S 404 (10th ed. 1999).
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