"You are what you eat," is an old saying. We all eat and purchase our food at grocery stores and markets and the 2007 Farm Bill will affect what we eat.  As Food and Water Watch explains: "Throughout 2007, Congress will debate policies that determine what food is grown in the United States, how it is grown, who grows it, and who can afford to eat it."  The Farm Bill is important to us all.  Food and Water Watch offers a brief, interesting, informational primer called Farm Bill 101.

In the 1930's FDR's New Deal created programs to stabilize farm policies by managing the supply of major agricultural products.  It was established to help family farms that were struggling in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

Now juxtapose that with Emptywheel's posting on how the gazillionaire King Ranch is the welfare queen of the farm bill, another one of those corporate we-love-the-free-market agribusinesses who make their billions by swilling at the government trough.  From 1999 to 2005 it oinked up $8.3 million in subsidies, while from 1997-2006 it spent at least $960,000 in federal campaign contributions and since 2001, $850,000 in lobbying.

The King Ranch's board of directors is a who's who of Republicans including Papa Bush's Secretary of State James Baker and Ray Hunt, oil magnate and Bush family friend, who recently made an oil deal with the Kurds in Iraq exacerbating already strained internal Iraq relations.  The board also includes Jack Hunt, the ranch's CEO, appointed to the Texas Water Development Board by then Governor George W. Bush.

Emptywheel followed that up today with a post about other Republican billionaire corporate porkers, Dick DeVos and his wife, snarfing up dollars at the government farm subsidy feed lot.  It's a handy money machine funded by American taxpayers and kachinged by mil/billionaires, absentee landlords, and big factory farms.

According to the Environmental Working Group, the federal government issued more than $34 billion in federal commodity subsidies between 2003 and 2005.  Of that, 66% or $23 billion went to 10% of American farmers.

This corruption of Farm Bill subsidies has got to stop.  The Farm Bill must serve real family farmers, not the rich, politically connected and must ensure that taxpayers' dollars are spent wisely, not lining the pockets of super wealthy farmers and corporate agribusiness.

Those are just some of the issues addressed in the Food and Farm Bill of Rights, a bill sponsored by US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).  As Rep. Blumenauer points out, "Sixty percent of America's farmers and ranchers get no support while a great bulk of subsidies and federal support go directly to big special-interest corporations. It's even worse for people who grow most of our food: fruits, vegetables, and row crops are largely bypassed in favor of lavish subsidies for a few commodities. Here we have an opportunity to craft a policy that is fair to all farmers."

Every Democrat on Capitol Hill should support the Food and Farm Bill of Rights. They should stop doing business as usual, a policy that is hurting family ranchers and farmers; those who grow our fruits, vegetables, and row corps. Corrupt business as usual has been unfair to 60% or more of farmers and ranchers who receive no support. 

Democrats in Congress must return to the Democratic Party's New Deal roots of fairness, justice, and equality for all.  Those typical American farmers and ranchers, the antithesis of agribusiness, who supply us with the healthy, safe food we need, deserve no less.