Is Anyone for the Farm Bill?

I just got the following action alert from OxFam:

The Senate bill being considered, like the House version that passed, favors a relatively small number of producers at the expense of most farmers and rural communities, and it falls short of meeting its obligations to families that depend on food stamps and to conservation programs that protect rivers and streams. To make things worse, the Farm Bill would actually hurt poor farmers in developing countries. . . . [Meanwhile,] millionaire farmers . . . receive unfair subsidies.

My question is: is it mainly interest group politics and campaign finance transactions that permit bills like this to pass over and over? Or do they naturally flow from a Senate that may overrepresent big agribusiness? Tom Geoghegan notes that "the 50 Senators from the 25 [least populated] states represent 16 percent of the population."

Posted by Frank Pasquale at 04:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Agriculture and the Pharmaceutical Industry

In this policy brief, the Oakland Institute argues that "The enormous public resources invested in agriculture have benefited [pharmaceutical] companies by promoting the sale of [genetically engineered] seeds over and above their actual value and by allowing them to multiply their research efforts at minimal cost through collaborations with public institutions." It's an argument that I've seen before, although this is perhaps the most reader-friendly version that I've seen.

What I find interesting is the framing of subsidies as occuring through the (semi-)public works of "public-private partnerships and the patenting of university generated knowledge," because it seems analogous to earlier public-works agricultural subsidies: that is, big water projects. What I also find interesting (and maybe it's because of my relative newness to this field, and my focus more on the agricultural/environmental side of things) is its emphasis on the companies as part of the pharmaceutical industry, rather than on companies as part of Big Agriculture (which is more of what I see in the agricultural literature). I think this further highlights the importance of promoting dialogue between agricultural reform advocates (who often focus more on direct subsidies) and biotech patent reform advocates, as well as a reassessment of earlier public works projects and their unintended detrimental effects.

Posted by Steph Tai at 02:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack