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U.S. policies on ag, environment like one whopping big field of corn
Klamath Falls Herald and News Editorial
April 21, 2009
    As a kid, did you ever run down a row of corn?

    Not a row on the edge of the field, and not through a garden plot or an acre or two of sweet corn. But down a middle row of tall feed corn, where you lose sight of the field’s edge behind you before the edge up ahead comes into view?

    When you’re a kid and you hustle into a cornfield, something slows you to a walk. The corn is taller than you and you can’t see around. The air in there changes. There’s a sound over to your right. There’s a sound just behind you. There’s the rustling. The tassels shake. You imagine something lurking.

    Then you’re out the other end, you look back, and it’s just a field of corn. A big field, row after row, and you see that the things lurking down that one row weren’t so sinister.
 
    Every few years, there’s a drought or disaster of some sort and then a serious investigation into farm programs. Somebody — a news organization, some taxpayer or environmental group, or lobbying outfit — suspects some lurking about by agriculture producers. Like a kid in a cornfield, they don’t get that whole-field picture; they naturally think something’s wrong and someone’s to blame. It’s a “gotcha.”

Lawns vs. crops

    An Associated Press report last week (printed in the Sunday Herald and News) starts out contrasting the plight of families in the drought-stricken West, having to shorten their morning showers and let their lawns turn brown, with ag producers, who are receiving hundreds of millions of subsidy dollars to grow “water-thirsty crops in what was once desert.”

    The AP looked into USDA programs that send subsidies to California and Arizona to support cotton and rice — crops that rely on a good deal of water (they could single out any number of USDA programs meant to keep America’s food and fiber industries on an even keel). You are led to extrapolate that: it’s silly to grow water-greedy crops in dry climates; that using water for agriculture in those areas should come down the priority list in favor of urban needs; and that it’s really crazy for taxpayers to be subsidizing it all.

    There are some parts in the story where balance is attempted, and if the logic comes up short for such programs, at least some reference to their complex evolution is made.

Evolving programs

    There’s no doubt some USDA programs need serious redesign to adapt to a changing world. The programs started more than half a century ago have evolved, taking into consideration regional, national and international circumstances, economics and politics.

    It just takes a drought to reduce it all to something simplistic. Go down any particular row and you’re liable to notice lots of buggy areas, mud holes, dry spots, critters making noises, etc. But get to the end and look back and you see that the United States’ food, agriculture, and environmental policies are all like one whopping big field of corn. You better go beyond just production agriculture policies, and think about our continuing population boom, consumerism, urbanization — where does the list end?

    We’re not trying to enlarge the spectrum of issues to the point of impasse; we’re just saying each rank and row touches another. If you want more water for thirsty cities, what about when their residents need to eat and be clothed?

    And why should rural folks worry about such a report?

    A spokesman for an Oakland-based environmental outfit, quoted in the story, asks, “Why do we let them buy water so cheap?” He’s talking about agriculturists. It’s a fair question. But it ought also to be asked of everyone in a ranch-style home with two-and-a-half bathrooms and a lawn out front.

    Politicians will ultimately be the deciders. And the vast majority of them will be from places where lawns are turning brown, showers are growing short, and a field of corn (or cotton or rice or potatoes or anything) is out of sight and out of mind.
 

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