How to Redefine US Agriculture for Working Families

US agricultural policy has become a mess of subsidies that no longer meet our country’s policy goals in how they affect our population’s health, wealth, and mental well being, while also damaging our planet. US agricultural subsidies have become too focused on cheap products and pleasing big business, instead of considering the implications and impacts of those products and their production on our population and the family farmers who make up 99% of all farms in America. 

It’s time for us to stop prioritizing big business over rural Americans. With that in mind, we’ve outlined five critical adjustments to US agricultural policy that will help working families and our planet by creating jobs, prioritizing families over big business, diversifying our fuel supply, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Reform agricultural subsidies

One of our core systemic agricultural problems is our subsidy system—there are multiple types of agricultural subsidies, and they all need significant changes. The most extensive farm subsidy program is crop insurance run by the USDA's Risk Management Agency. Spending on the program has averaged more than $8 billion a year. It subsidizes both the insurance premiums of farmers and the 16 private insurance companies’ administrative costs that offer the policies. First, let's talk about administrative subsidies. On top of these direct subsidies for administration, companies also earn inflated profits from the high premiums they charge while the USDA pays 62% of premiums for farmers. The problem is that the "farmers" who have their premiums paid are multi-billion dollar corporations that aren't owned by the people who work the land. According to the Congressional Budget Office, they have received $65 billion more in claims than they have paid in premiums since 2000. To begin to fix this, we need direct negotiations with insurance companies to lower premiums and an independent, nonpartisan commission to prevent fraud and make sure that actual farmers and not CEOs get the insurance they need.

Next, we have Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC). This program pays subsidies to farmers if their revenue per acre, or their county's revenue per acre, falls below a benchmark or guaranteed level. The lower the prices and revenues, the larger the subsidies. The program only covers the 20 crops most commonly grown by agribusiness and thus is easily abused. 

We also have Price Loss Coverage (PLC). This program pays subsidies to farmers based on the national average price of a crop compared to Congress’s reference price for that crop. The larger the fall in a crop's national price below its reference price, the larger the payout to farmers. Once again, this program is frequently abused by agribusiness. Congress always sets the reference price too high because then their agribusiness donors will give them more campaign cash. To prevent abuse, you have to choose to participate in either ARC or PLC, but these farms owned by big agribusiness can also enroll in crop insurance, which has the same general function. So these agribusinesses can double dip should their crop revenues come up short. We support ending PLC, expanding ARC to the top 100 crops grown nationally, removing the ARC alternative county-wide benchmark, and implementing yearly audits to see where funds go and prevent abuse.

Other subsidies such as Conservation Programs, Disaster Aid, Research, and other forms of support are necessary, and we do not support any cuts or changes to these programs.

Change how we feed livestock to reduce methane 

Livestock raised in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) eat an enormous amount of corn and soybeans—it's almost their entire diet. Over the last 80 years or so, U.S. farm policy has promoted commodity crops such as corn and soybeans, nearly half of which end up feeding livestock. Partially because of this diet, livestock are the dominant source of methane and nitrous oxide in the United States, but it doesn't have to be this way. By more adequately distributing those subsidies to family farms instead of large agribusiness and, most importantly, subsidizing the production of different livestock feeds, we can create healthier livestock and reduce the amount of methane and nitrous oxide livestock produce.

We support strengthening oversight on income support commodity programs, which has favored agribusiness over small family farmers for far too long. That way, we can make sure the USDA lives up to the goal of stabilizing, supporting, and protecting farm income and prices for all farmers, not just major corporations. We also support using the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to promote more fats and oils in livestock diets. These have shown the most potential for practical application to farming systems and have shown methane emission reductions of 15–20%.

Mandate off-farm manure storage

There are few regulations on animal manure storage. Many CAFOs dig massive pits in the ground and just dump the waste on-farm. Whether or not these pits are covered, they pose major work safety and environmental hazards. Hazards from manure storage include toxic gases (hydrogen sulfide), corrosive (ammonia), asphyxiant (carbon dioxide), and explosive (methane). Drowning is also possible with each additional installation, the probability that a fatal accident will occur increases. Tragically, experiences in several states indicate that when an accident does occur, it is likely to involve multiple fatalities. There have also been several cases of large numbers of livestock perishing due to manure gases. These pits also can leak into the groundwater, causing mass pollution, sickness, and even death. 

The safest way to store manure is off-farm in an above-ground storage facility. We must mandate that CAFOs use off-farm manure storage and create safety regulations for smaller family farms that may have no option but to have on-farm manure pits to maintain worker, animal, and environmental safety.

Improve the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) needs improvements, including increasing annual volumes for biodiesel and advanced biofuels and the ending of Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs). Increasing the RFS volume requirements for biomass-based diesel helps farmers and rural communities by providing a market for surplus soy oil while also creating jobs, diversifying our fuel supply, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The RFS can create stability for biodiesel producers and blenders through annual renewable volume obligations. However, this program is under threat; the SRE waiver allows smaller refineries to ignore the RFS and thus causes more greenhouse gas production. We must end these waivers.

We also need to study and evaluate biofuels’ continued impact on the environment to ensure that we don’t overly focus on biofuel production through resource-intensive commodity crops. The RFS’s reliance on conventional biofuels—particularly corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel—is not helping further our climate goals, instead exacerbating climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) has been previously mandated by Congress to produce a report every three years on “the impacts to date and likely future impacts [of the RFS] on air quality, water quality, water availability, soil conservation, ecosystem health and biodiversity, and other environmental issues.” However, the climate impacts associated with the production and use of these biofuels fell outside of this reporting scope. We must change this to ensure the inclusion of the climate impacts of production and biofuel use are part of the EPA’s congressionally-mandated report. We must adjust the RFS mix to focus on the least climate-intensive fuels and provide a just transition that doesn’t leave family farms behind.

Expand clean Biofuel subsidies

Biofuel is a crucial transitional energy source key to help the environment and provide a market for U.S. soybean oil. Without biodiesel as an alternative market, surplus soy oil would significantly negatively impact soybean prices already so low that farmers are going bankrupt. It also acts as a viable solution now to start lowering our demand for fossil fuels. We should double and provide a 5-year extension to the biodiesel tax credit and pursue an adjustment to the credit to focus on the least climate-intensive biofuels. When the tax credit is in place at the beginning of the year, the biodiesel industry grows with confidence. For example, in 2013 and 2016 – the last two times the industry could look forward to the tax credit – U.S. biodiesel production grew by 400 million gallons, and demand increased by 800 million gallons. According to LMC International (2019), every 100-million-gallon increase in production supports 3,200 U.S. jobs and $780 million in economic opportunity for our rural communities and the family farmers that make up 99% of all farms in America.

Conor Bronsdon contributed to and edited this piece.