I know that this sounds like pie in the sky, but it is doable.
First, we need to identify and eliminate the perverse incentives in the farm bill. When we stop wasting money that produces negative outcomes, we gain twofold. It frees up money to fund positive incentives by stopping the negative incentives. Crop insurance subsidies for risky high-input monoculture crops need to be eliminated and replaced with reduced premiums for diverse farming systems and resilient practices. The ethanol subsidies and all fossil fuel subsidies need to be ended immediately. Nutrition programs need to be adjusted to encourage greater diversity in diets. Farmers should get reduced insurance rates for including more soilbuilding crops in their rotations. There should be a surcharge on fertilizers that impact water quality in degraded watersheds. Farmers who improve water quality, air quality, soil health, or who grow crops that attract tourism, should be compensated for their services and the reduced cost of mitigation. There should be a payment for topsoil generated by reducing soil loss below its replacement rate.
We need to increase our production of high-value food crops and reduce exports of grain for livestock feed. The sugar industry is heavily subsidized to produce things that make people sick. We must stop that subsidy. More expensive sugar might even reduce the amount of it that goes into manufactured products. High fructose corn sweetener causes diabetes. It should be taxed like tobacco. White flour could be taxed to reduce consumption and wholegrain flour use should be incentivized.
We could make a lot of progress if we integrated our nutrition programs with health care and ag policy. Think of the money we could save on national
health care costs if our USDA nutrition programs were designed to change eating habits and our ag programs subsidized growing healthy food crops rather than unhealthy ones.
Personally, I’d like to see the production of foodgrade crops be subsidized to give farmers an incentive to stop growing livestock feed and crops for ethanol.
(This is an an exerpt from the full essay, published on the Disparity to Parity website disparitytoparity.org/). Klaas Martens, together with his wife Mary-Howell and his son Peter, farm on over 1200 acres in Pen Yann, NY. They converted to organic systems in 1991. They have converted most of their neighbors so that there are over 6000 contiguous certified organic acres. Klaas is a frequent speaker at organic conferences and regularly advises other farmers on soil health and organic practices. kandmhfarm@lakevieworganicgrain.com.
