High Plains Grifters
A misguided Senate plan repackages agricultural welfare as disaster relief.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

EVERY SO often, nature turns its wrath on American agriculture. Even for very efficient farmers on prime land, drought, floods and frost are occupational hazards. And when extreme, unforeseeable weather conditions destroy crops and livestock, it's appropriate for the nation to provide financial aid to the folks who produce our food and fiber.

But what about farmers and ranchers who plant grain where unfavorable weather is the norm rather than an exception? Not much rain falls on Oklahoma, the Dakotas or the Texas panhandle. That's just the way it is. Between 1985 and 2005, more than 12,000 purportedly drought-stricken agricultural producers in those states claimed federal disaster payments at least every other year. This group collected $1.4 billion in all, about 60 percent of total federal farm disaster relief aid during those two decades, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

You'd think that Congress would have concluded that there are better uses for federal tax money than propping up the same relative handful of semi-arid farms year after year. Perhaps Washington could provide some modest assistance to convert marginal cropland to environmentally sustainable grassland. Instead, the Senate Finance Committee has voted to create a five-year, $5.1 billion permanent disaster relief trust fund. The logic of the bill, championed by Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana -- a state that is also one of the top 10 recipients of disaster payments -- is that farmers are entitled to a secure source of disaster relief, rather than having to ask Congress for it every year.

The program does offer some advantages over current law. To be eligible for disaster relief, farmers would have to purchase crop insurance; those who repeatedly experience crop failure might find themselves facing rising premiums, an incentive to reduce planting on the most marginal lands. Yet crop insurance itself is heavily subsidized by the federal government, so this requirement hardly takes the taxpayer off the hook.

The bill originated in the Senate's tax-writing Finance Committee, because the Agriculture Committee needed extra money for other farm programs, and the only way to get it was either through spending cuts or additional revenue. Mr. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman, came up with some tighter rules on alleged tax-avoidance schemes by business, and, with the backing of his committee, dedicated part of the resulting money to the disaster fund. Not even the House, which has already passed its own subsidy-rich farm bill, dared to do the same. Congress seems bound and determined to adopt a bloated farm bill this year. But it should at least stop this attempt to package agricultural welfare as disaster aid.