On July 24, the federal minimum wage jumps to $6.55 an
hour. That means a family of four with
two adults working full time at minimum wage will be ineligible for food stamps
from the federal government because they earn too much. In an economy where food prices have soared
with higher energy prices, rapidly rising incomes sparking demand in the
developing world, and farm crops being turned into fuel for our cars rather than
our bodies, those minimum wage earners are on their own for groceries.

Not so the behemoth industrial agribusiness operations that
raise most of our food.

Half the food produced in the United States each year comes
from agribusinesses that sell at least a million dollars worth, and nearly one
fourth came from agribusinesses with sales over $5 million. As food production has become concentrated on
these huge farms, federal farm policy has become less concerned with the fate of
modest sized family farms and more concerned with absorbing the risk assumed by
the largest farms that produce so much of the food. These farms are not only big, but they are
deep in debt, and they are too big to let fail.

So even as farm prices soar to record levels and farm income
for 2008 is forecast to be $92 billion – 51 percent above the average over the
past ten years — Congress passed a Farm Bill in June with a well-woven package
of safety nets that commit the taxpayer to make large payments to large agribusinesses
in the event things turn sour.

In fact, things don’t even have to turn sour. Under a program that makes “direct payments,”
an agribusiness can receive up to $80,000, no matter how abundant the crop or
how high the crop prices. And unlike the
good old days when we used to pay farmers not to farm (to minimize surpluses
and prop up crop prices) all an agribusiness has to do to get a direct payment today
is own farmland that once produced crops. You get the payment whether you plant those crops, or almost any other
crops, or no crops. Farm policy has
reached a new plateau of moral ineptitude – it’s gone from paying people to do
nothing, to paying them to do whatever they please.

But take heart. In
the same spirit that keeps minimum wage workers off the food stamp dole, but
with perhaps less zeal, Congress heroically prohibited individuals with
off-farm income of over $500,000 ($1 million for married couples) from
receiving most farm program payments. And anyone whose profit from farming exceeds $750,000 ($1.5 million for
married couples) cannot receive those direct payments, either. But below those thresholds, get in line for
the dole. That’s tightening the old
belt. A sop to populism in an election
year is always a good political move.   

And don’t forget, like the minimum wage
earners, the princes of agribusiness can’t get food stamps, either. As the pundit observed, laws against sleeping
on park benches must apply equally to the rich and the poor.

All this largesse for big agribusinesses simply puts them in
a position to outbid family farms for farmland and further wrap agriculture
into the province of industrial agribusiness. This Farm Bill was too much greed even for President Bush, who until now
never saw a break for the rich he didn’t like. He vetoed it. And Congress
overrode.