STATEMENT:   –  Congress recently received the president’s budget request for the next fiscal year. Among the Administration’s proposals was a $250,000-a-year cap on farm program payments and a phase-out of an important element of the safety net for farmers with crop sales above $500,000.  Not only are these proposals bad for Missouri farmers (a soybean farmer with $500,000 in sales would probably take home only $36,000 a year), but the budget also fails to recognize the realities America’s farmers face in foreign competition. 

This month the European Union released its first report on EU subsidy recipients (although not all countries had disclosed their recipients when the report was written). Based on the most recent data available, the recipient of the most farm program spending in the United States would rank 25th in France. Not in the entire EU, but only in France!  The top recipient in Missouri would rank 17th in the Republic of Slovenia. Slovenia, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a very nice Central European country of 2 million people which is roughly 3,000 square miles larger than Missouri’s Eighth Congressional District. Taken as a whole, spending on commodity support under the European Union’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) in 2007 was $127 per acre, in the United States it was $12 per acre. The EU also outpaced the U.S. in spending on non-commodity support by a tally of $37 per acre to $8 per acre in the U.S.

U.S. farmers, however, have long been willing to reduce farm program payments in return for meaningful access to markets around the globe. So far this access has yet to materialize.  Long-standing trade disputes with the EU over beef and genetically modified crops are just a few of the non-tariff barriers to trade protecting foreign markets. Meanwhile, developing countries continue to demand access to American markets and an end to the U.S. farm safety net, while remaining inflexible in opening up their own markets. The U.S. Government has also hindered American producers’ ability to access foreign markets. For years the Cuban market, once a significant U.S. export market, was closed to American farmers and ranchers. In 2008, the 8th year since regaining access, American agriculture sold over $700 million worth of food and agricultural products to Cuba, while still facing onerous payment requirements.

American farmers and ranchers produce the safest, most abundant food supply in the world. It has been estimated that over the next two decades the world’s farmers must double their yields in order to meet global demand.  We need our family farms now, and we will need them even more in the future. Let us not turn our back on American producers as they face subsidized competition and unfair barriers to trade.