Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

Today the final touches were put on this year's farm bill. The subject of farm aid comes up every few years, since the first Agriculture Adjustment act of 1933. However you would think that in a year where we can constantly hear the whispers and screams of the "Global Food Crisis", it would be a great time to reexamine the way we deal with farm subsidies.

First the good news: If you're a farmer making less than $1.5 Million a year, help is on the way (maybe)! God forbid you only get a piddly $700,000 in income or so. The bill, which comes with a $300 Billion price tag for tax-payers, would also increase food stamps and emergency food assistance, eliminates some loopholes, and has a $3.8 billion disaster fund to help farmers through extreme national disasters. These could be considered good things for some, I suppose.

Now the bad news: The bill increases subsidies for certain crops. It also continues the subsidies for ethanol, albeit reduced from $0.51 to $0.45 per gallon, our token bio-fuel program. Ethanol is where most of the blame is being placed for the food crisis, and it seems, does absolutely nothing to reduce harmful emissions.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-profit organization that focuses on tracking wasteful government spending, or pork-barrel spending, is urging the President to veto this "reform bill", because, well:

There is no significant reform in H.R. 2419.

There are rumors that the President just might. However, I doubt that any bill that met with the President's approval would stop the most egregious abuses of this bill, such as paying people who don't grow anything.

While the Federal Government might have some role in creating assistance programs to help with natural disasters, as are outlined in the new bill, It seems ridiculous to me that we would be spending billions of dollars a year paying anyone not to work, or paying subsidies for ethanol, whose value is still constantly debated. In a year where there have been riots over the availability and cost of food around the world, it would make sense to me to stop giving farmers tax-payer money to produce less of it.