In search of Sodbusters and Swampbusters, I had to find perhaps the only federal bureaucrat here with a ponytail.
“Sodbuster,” explained Jasper Womach, “is a conservation provision in the farm bill. The benefits of commodity programs are so generous, farmers are opening up grazing lands and planting corn and wheat.”
“But the grazing land is environmentally fragile, given to wind and water erosion. So we said, `We won’t let you get the benefits of our programs on sodbusting land.’ “
Clear? And Swampbusters?
Sitting in a cramped office, whose most notable furnishing is a poster of a family of sheep (“Pure Virgin Wool Carpet–There’s Nothing Like It”), Womach succinctly explained that Swampbusters involves a provision of the Food Security Act of 1985 and bans most federal farm benefits from farmers who drain wetlands and then cultivate them.
Well, the farm bill is weird and often unintelligible–not just to city slickers. But if you want to try to understand it, you can do worse than go to Womach.
What historian Edmund Gibbon was to chronicling the fall of the Roman Empire, Womach, a policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, may be to the gargantuan, 1,100-page farm bill.
Want the definition of Findley Payments, flex acres, hydroponics, buffer strips, dairy diversions, milk-feed price ratios, ocean freight differentials, replacement heifers, or stubble-mulching? He’s a great guy.
Technically, the subject of his expertise is called the Food, Agriculture, Conservation and Trade Act of 1990. Call it the farm bill. And when Congress returns this week, get ready for huffing and puffing over it.
Every five years it comes up for renewal. It’s that time again. But with the Republicans in control, and given their desire to cut the deficit, few areas would seem as ripe for possible pickings as the farm bill and its many hard-to-justify subsidies for fat-cat farmers.
In all, the Department of Agriculture doles out $12 billion a year in support for various crops and livestock commodities, including corn, wheat, cotton, milk, peanuts, honey, wool and mohair.
But the pickings may prove slimmer than one might imagine because the farm folks retain ample influence. Further, they’ve been able historically to assemble a pretty broad coalition, which includes many city representatives. The same bill that brings outrageous subsidies to the underproductive domestic sugar industry, or to the tobacco industry, also boasts provisions important to environmentalists, rural developers, crop insurers, international traders, food-safety activists, school administrators (the school lunch program) and advocates for the poor (food stamps).
With such disparate elements in one package, it can be tough even for a city congressman, say, to vote against absurd sugar subsidies (which do inflate what you pay for sugar) because the bill includes the school-lunch and food-stamp programs possibly dear to him.
Womach, 49, and the child of a Washington state farm family, knows about all this stuff because he’s one of nine policy analysts in the food and agricultural section of a little-known, independent federal agency that serves as a Cliffs Notes for your elected representatives.
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Located in the Library of Congress, the service is a place where politicians, or committee staff members, can call for all-they-need-to-know information.
Thus, Womach’s phone messages on a recent day included a request to “discuss sugar program and options to eliminate benefits to Florida,” as well as this: “Member needs information for a press conference. What are the current federal subsidies given to the tobacco industry by the federal government?”
Its publications and papers, none of which are found at drugstore checkout counters, include “Comparing Levels of Farm Support Across Selected Commodities” and are clearly nonpartisan and balanced.
But it’s not out of bounds for the analysts to work, essentially privately, in assisting partisan views. Thus, if a congressman wants to hold a press conference to bash tobacco subsidies, the analyst may well offer the strongest, factually based argument the politician could make for such a position.
“Lawyers do it all the time!” Womach said with a smile. “Figuring out how to help the client.”
The farm bill’s prime elements were born in the Depression with the government decision to assist the then-impoverished farmer. It was a time when the farm was a far bigger part of American life. These days, less than 2 percent of Americans are farm residents, with 460 million acres of cropland.
Womach rattles off farm-related provisions with rat-a-tat aplomb.
There is, for instance, the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1956, clearly an environmental measure. There’s also the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act of 1947, or pesticide legislation crucial to the Enviornmental Protection Agency.
Yet even for the ever-courteous Womach, it can be difficult explaining, in real people’s language, certain cornerstones of the bill. Take milk marketing orders. Please.
“Wow, this one is really complex,” he began.
“Basically, it authorizes the creation of regional boundaries around milk-producing regions. I really don’t know the logic to the boundaries; it’s not states or counties.”
“The boundaries are created by a combination of consuming and producing areas. Tallahassee, for instance, is a consuming area, surrounded by local dairy farms. We draw a line around that area and allow that order–“
Womach stopped upon uttering the word “order.” He knew it was unintelligible to the layman. He began to laugh, saying,”I’m not quite sure how else to explain this” and continued:
“Marketing orders are authorized by the government. They cover the marketing of milk in that geographical area. They establish minimum prices that milk handlers, who buy from producers, pay for milk that goes into a fluid market, which means prices for liquid milk, not cheese or powered milk.”
He went on to note that the government seeks to ensure that local producers supply local markets with milk. But you have a big potential problem with supply and demand because milk production is higher in the spring than the winter (that’s just the way cows do their thing) and the production is not in sync with seasonal consumption (school, for example, is out when production is high in the summer).
The government thus guarantees minimum pricing to protect farmers and handlers. So even if you could produce and ship milk cheaper to Florida from, say, Pennsylvania, the handler must still pay a mandated minimum price and not buy it any cheaper. It’s a way of ensuring that local dairy farmers stay in business.
“With advances in refrigeration, we can move milk easily and supply all of Florida’s needs New England,” said Womach.
“We don’t need dairy farmers in Florida. but it’s something we decided to do in the 1930s and continue to do it.”
Only in New York
“Serbs ‘Em Right”–New York Post, Page 1, Thursday.
“Serbs Them Right”–New York Daily News, Page 1, Thursday.
Ah, great minds . . .
Killer party, Guv
The source’s claim seemed too weird. But a call to the hunters division of the National Rifle Association last week confirmed the following:
The NRA is holding a formal dinner and dance called the Governor’s Dinner to Benefit the Hungry on Saturday at the McLean, Va., home of Warren and Joan Polk, with Virginia Gov. George Allen the co-host.
Proceeds will go to the Virginia Hunters Who Care and, get ready, will help “provide venison to the hungry.”
Venison.
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A young lady at the hunters division indicated that there are 100 seats at $500 apiece, with 15 spots remaining.
What if one of the hungry prefers steak au poivre?