The Farm Bill screws the little guy ... again

Growing locally, legislating nationally: Rules hinder Minnesota's specialty farmers

By KEVIN DIAZ, Star Tribune

March 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - Jack Hedin calls it forbidden fruit.

The organic fruits and vegetables that Hedin grows on his Featherstone Farm in southeastern Minnesota find eager buyers in co-ops all over the Twin Cities, frequented by urban dwellers hungry for fresh, locally grown food.

But in Congress, where lawmakers are rewriting federal farm policy for the next five years, much of what Hedin and other small-scale farmers grow in the Midwest falls under federal planting restrictions that add millions to the tab shoppers pay at the register.

Although the restrictions are facing more scrutiny this year in Congress, political handicappers -- including Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee -- say they're unlikely to go away soon.

Large-scale specialty crop growers in the South and West, particularly California, have successfully fought efforts in the farm bill to open up more Midwest farmland to fruit and vegetable production.

More here. Jack Hedin's op-ed piece on this subject published earlier this month in the New York Times is here. The irony, of course, is that the Farm Bill, which has been crafted and re-crafted since the 1930s ostensibly to help small family farms, has become just another means of corporate welfare for rich farmers and farm land investors, many of whom don't even know the the hitch end from the blade end of a plow.

A second irony is that this issue crosses party lines. While the Republican White House strongly advocates lowering farm subsidy payments, they find themselves doing battle against a coalition of southern, southwestern and western politicians who are mostly Republican in league with Midwesterners from both parties.

File under FOLLOW THE MONEY (Senate) and FOLLOW THE MONEY (House).