New Ag Direction Offered by Senator Lugar and House Colleagues

In May, Senator Lugar introduced the Food and Agriculture Risk Management for the 21st Century Act (FARM 21) in the U.S. Senate, which was accompanied by the House version introduced by U.S. Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Dave Riechert (R-WA).

The bill, S. 1422, would end the current market and trade distorting farm subsidy system and replace it with a new system of risk management accounts and insurance tools managed by farmers. FARM 21 would direct savings into deficit reduction, nutrition programs, conservation efforts and renewable energy development. A copy of the bill, summary and other information can be found at http://lugar.senate.gov/farmbill.

"Current Federal Farm Programs target payments to a relatively narrow sector of American farmers and provide direct payments regardless of commodity prices. The bulk of these payments are made to growers of just five crops. Cotton, rice, corn, wheat, and soybean farmers receive about 85 percent of the annual payments provided by U.S. taxpayers," said Senator Lugar, an Indiana farmer and former chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. He is the first advocate for this taxpayer-friendly approach who sits on either the Senate or House Agriculture Committees. A growing list of outside humanitarian, conservation and taxpayer advocacy groups have endorsed the reform.

"The current farm subsidy system is inequitable, inefficient and disconnected from the core goal of maintaining a family farm safety net. It is also self-perpetuating, in that it stimulates over-production and stagnant prices that produce calls for greater government support," Senator Lugar said.

"We need a true safety net that would embrace all farmers, avoid incentives to overproduce commodities when market signals do not exist, and lower costs for taxpayers."

"The reforms I propose would make our farm and food policies as modern and entrepreneurial as our farmers, and at the same time provide additional resources to America's hunger, energy and environmental needs. These changes will also bring our farm policies into compliance with our existing global treaty obligations and jump start current multilateral trade negotiations," Senator Lugar said.

The plan would save $20 billion by 2012 and $55 billion by 2018. The savings over the next five years would be invested in: $5 billion for debt relief, $6 billion for conservation (a 33 percent increase in these programs), $6 billion for nutrition programs (a 4 percent increase these programs), and $3 billion for renewable energy (a 448 percent increase these programs).

Senator Lugar also met last month with Executive Director of the World Food Program Josette Sheeran, actress Drew Barrymore and the world’s fastest marathon runner, Paul Tergat, to discuss the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.

Under Senator Lugar’s new farm bill the McGovern-Dole program provides food assistance in secular schools in developing nations and would increase by $1.1 billion over five years. The program has shown success in improving school attendance of children, especially girls.  Participant countries are required to have in place a sustainability plan, meaning they will eventually take over the administrative and funding responsibility for the school meals program.