Expecting More, Committing Less 91docket every five years—or until Congress chose to remove the
permanent designation.
Early farm bills, sold to the public by promising more food with
less uncertainty, were designed to stabilize food prices and increase
farm income. Eight decades later, new farm bills are still being en-
acted despite average farm income long ago surpassing non-farm in-
come and continuing food surplus. Each new bill is an increasingly
costly grab bag of subsidies and protections, which invariably attracts
more interest groups and lobbying. Other than loose connections to
agriculture, no coherent policy direction exists. Meanwhile, the option
to remove the permanent designation sits on the congressional shelf
collecting dust.
Food-production subsidies are not confined to farm bills. The Re-
newable Fuel Standard encourages farmers to grow corn for ethanol,
with subsidies paid for by consumers at the gas pump. The Clean
Water Act exempts most farms from regulations banning chemicals,
fertilizers, or animal wastes that run off fields and into shared public
bodies of water. Disaster relief is provided for what the government
considers extreme climatic events, natural disasters, or disease out-
breaks. Export promotion, targeted food aid to countries, and federal
funding for irrigation projects are other examples of ongoing subsidies.
Subsidies, debt, size, and specialization define how the majority of
food in America is produced. Over time, the number of farms and
size of farms have moved in opposite directions. Today, nearly 90 per-
cent of agriculture sales comes from 12 percent of all farms. Over a
decade, corn received 0 percent of farm subsidies; five crops (corn,
wheat, soybeans, rice, and cotton) received two-thirds. Subsidizing
major crops has also benefited concentrated animal feeding operations
that rely on milling cheap grains into animal feed.
To administer wide-reaching subsidies and protections, government
programs assume that each farmer acts in their own self-interest. To
secure a loan, bankers likewise presume that farmers will maximize
income by enrolling in government programs. Like most economists,
regulators and bankers describe this emphasis on self-interest as simply
“rational behavior.”
The problem with acting “rationally” is the ensuing rejection of
informal norms, with individuals no longer accepting responsibility