In a separate editorial the editors of the Washington Post, considering the appointment of Tom Vilsack to another stint as Secretary of Agriculture by President-Elect Biden, call for “fresh thinking”:
The ostensible goal of farm policy, food security, has long since been achieved: Not even a global pandemic caused significant shortages, even if individual families did often struggle to afford what was available due to job losses or other economic hardship. Farms in the United States are so productive that exports are now a major source of their income — though President Trump’s tariff war with China certainly put a crimp in sales to that country. Mr. Trump channeled $28 billion in offsetting aid to farmers; as of mid-2019, 70 percent of the money had gone to just 100,000 individuals, according to an NPR analysis. Buoyed by federal aid, both for the trade war and $5 billion related to coronavirus (a fifth of which went to just 1 percent of recipients, according to the Environmental Working Group), net farm income is set to reach $120 billion in fiscal 2020.
During the campaign, Mr. Biden’s positions on agriculture policy took the form, mainly, of promising rural America that the plans he had for the country as a whole — expanding health-care access, increased taxation of upper-income Americans, investing in clean energy — would benefit small towns and farm areas as well. It was admirable, in a sense, not to pander more directly. (Mr. Biden did pledge to promote ethanol, which is politically sacrosanct in Iowa.) And given the power congressional committees would ultimately exercise over the next farm bill anyway, it may have been politically realistic, too. Still, the result is that Mr. Biden reaches the White House having done little to create a mandate for the fresh thinking that U.S. farm policy needs.
The one change in U. S. agricultural policy that would do the most for developing countries would be to stop subsidizing the production of cotton. It would be more efficient for us, too. Every year we export about $6 billion of raw cotton, wool, mohair, and other fibers to be processed in other countries. Meanwhile over the last 30 years the number of operating cotton gins has plummeted down to about 900, without changes in the amount of cotton processed per gin. How can that be? We’re sending it abroad for processing.
I’m not actually sure what the editors are thinking. If there’s one thing the Biden Administration will not be bringing with it, it’s an infusion of new blood into the federal government. Maybe their experience is different from mine but I generally don’t look to old government hands for fresh thinking.
I have low expectations for the Biden administration, especially with a divided legislature. Novelty is never something one should expect from septuagenarians, particularly politicians.
I think it’s normal to keep doing something you’re good at and what has made you successful. People who continually re-evaluate are rather rare.
American agriculture is so Concentrated and so successful that the government has to pay them not to do it, (CRP and set aside acres.)
In the absence of any critical limitations on Federal budgets, and pork barrel politics being what they are, I would expect increasing payments to wealthy landowners to stop planting.
Maybe even cotton.