Hays Daily News, KS
09-01-07
Rural Kansas declines amid billions in farm aid
Hays Daily News
SHIELDS (HNS) -- Over the years, Rod Bentley, 86, has watched as farms and
schools have consolidated, businesses have closed and many residents of rural
Kansas have died or left for other places.
He expects that process to continue, and sees its effect in his own family. His
children -- a son and two daughters -- have declined to return home and take
over the 9,000-acre farm he built in southern Gove County.
Fred Schields at Goodland is in the same situation. None of his four daughters
wants to return home to take over the farm, but he is hoping that perhaps a future
son-in-law might one day aspire to become a farmer. Schields, 58, farms about
10,000 acres near Goodland.
Even Steve Baccus, the Kansas Farm Bureau president who also farms in
Ottawa County, faces a similar dilemma.
"None of them has a desire to farm full time for a living," he said of his children.
"The response has been, 'I want a steady job with steady pay and benefits.'"
The exodus of children has led to population declines in small communities
throughout the Great Plains. Some blame farm subsidies for that, saying they
hasten the consolidation of farms.
Those farm subsidies are at the heart of the debate as Congress works to write a
new farm bill this fall. Among the provisions sought by President Bush and many
lawmakers are limits on federal commodity subsidies paid - especially to the
biggest farms.
Kansas landowners have benefited handsomely from the federal farm bill,
collecting nearly $9 billion in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2005. That makes
Kansas the country's sixth largest recipient.
U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran's 1st Congressional District, covering 69 of the state's 105
counties, accounted for $7 billion of that, making it the top recipient among
congressional districts.
Kansas is a net importer of federal dollars, said Joe Aistrup, chairman of the
political science department of Kansas State University, primarily because of
federal subsidies that flow to farmers.
Subsidies killing communities?
But in the view of Jon Bailey, the massive scale of federal farm payments further
perpetuates an ever-increasing growth in the size of farms.
Bailey, director of research and analysis at the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons,
Neb., said subsidies allow the largest farms to bid up the price of land, hike rents
and expand their operations. Subsidies encourage farms to grow because
farmers can obtain additional payments by further increasing their acreage, he
said.
When the size of farms grows larger, there are fewer farms for individuals to work
on, leaving fewer opportunities in farming, he said. As a result, there are fewer
business opportunities directly linked to farming operations.
"People who don't have the resources then are sort of left out of the equation,"
Bailey said.
He also said there's evidence that as farms get larger, they take their business to
larger, regional hubs instead of locally owned shops.
Mary Fund, communications director at the Kansas Rural Center, said there is
evidence in the harm of subsidies in a 2005 study done by economist Mark
Drabenstott, former director of the Kansas City Federal Reserve's Center for the
Study of Rural America. That study found, as Drabenstott put it, that "commodity
programs wed regions to an ongoing pattern of economic consolidation."
The result: In many of the counties whose farmers receive the most in subsidy
payments, growth in employment and new businesses is the weakest.
Cornelia Butler Flora, an Iowa State University professor of agriculture and
sociology, concurs. She said it is essential that the biggest subsidies be capped
because they are contributing to the decline of rural communities.
"Generally, what we have found are correlations that show the greater the
amount of farm payments, the greater the out-migration," Flora said. "The greater
the payments, the greater the crop monoculture and less diverse the local
economy."
The suffering of small communities is seen in census data.
Since 1940, only 30 of the state's 105 counties have grown. Most had doubledigit declines. Rural Jewell County in north-central Kansas suffered the most,
losing 77 percent of its population since 1940.
But whether farm subsidies are to blame for crippling rural communities is a point
of dispute.
Baccus, the Kansas Farm Bureau president, said current subsidy levels offer
some stability and a way to ensure profitability. Without them, the consolidation
trend in farms would continue at a faster pace.
"There are people who are more efficient, and have money, who are going to
farm that ground and continue to get larger doing it," Baccus said. "If the
subsidies dry up, that's going to dry up the communities faster than it does now."
Troy Dumler, a Kansas State University agriculture economist, concurs, saying
subsidies enable marginal farmers to continue farming.
"It's kind of like putting a Band-Aid on it," Dumler said. "Subsidies may be slowing
some things down, but they also aren't solving the long-term problems these
communities face."
Lawmakers like subsidies
The latest farm bill is being written at a time when commodity prices are at their
highest, due in large part to an ethanol revolution that is providing a second
marketplace for farm products.
Terry Kastens, a Kansas State University agricultural economist who is in a
phased retirement program that is taking him back to Rawlins County, where he
and his brother farm 12,000 acres, said that no matter the market price,
subsidies have a friend in lawmakers .
"Politicians will keep government subsidy programs around much longer than
farmers themselves even want them," he said. "The reason is it's a huge chunk
of pork coming to agricultural states that they would have a hard time arguing for
in some other venue. They fear they would lose their market share of pork in
Washington."
In response to questions posed by Harris Group newspapers, all six Kansas
representatives in Washington said farm bill aid is important. Each of them
appears to support the existing farm bill's programs, with only minor
modifications.
Sen. Pat Roberts, who's served in Congress since 1980, went so far as to correct
a question's terminology of "subsidies."
"First off," his response said, "we call it crop support in Kansas."
The Kansas senators and representatives all failed to answer a question posed
to them on what farm payment limits should be.
Only Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kansas, even mentioned the $1 million income cap
that is included in the House version of the 2007 farm bill.
"I believe that we could have gone lower, but now is not the time to have that
discussion," Boyda said. "The farm bill is not perfect, but it takes steps in the right
direction. This cap will help to slow the consolidation of independent farms."
It's not just Boyda who favors caps on payments. Moran and Sen. Sam
Brownback said they support them as well.
Yet Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook called the House bill's
proposed cap "laughable." He acknowledged it's better than the $2.5 million
ceiling now in place, but said the $200,000 limit proposed by the Bush
administration would be better.
Brownback said any money saved from the cap on payments should go to
"ensure that agriculture gets a bigger slice of the energy pie."
Moran, who often says farm aid is about helping rural communities, takes a more
cautious approach.
"In setting payment limits, Congress must find a mechanism that avoids
subsidizing operators that do not need assistance, but be careful not to create a
payment limit structure that creates a disincentive to become an efficient and
successful farm operation."
Schields, who farms 10,000 acres near Goodland, said even farms as big need
protection from economic calamity.
"We need some sort of safety net so we can continue to farm when we have
these disasters," he said. "We don't want a handout, we just want to protect our
livelihood. Just because we farm a lot of acres, I don't know that we should have
restrictions or limits. If they reduce those payments in half, we're over."
Even though he's an advocate for change, Jim French, Oxfam America's lead
organizer for its agriculture campaign, doesn't argue that point.
"Whether or not you are small or large, if you are in the commodity game, you
can't do without them," French said of crop subsidies.
But the subsidies, he adds, don't support rural populations.
"I'm not saying subsidies are the only component of that problem," said French,
also a wheat and sorghum farmer near Partridge. But as farms get bigger, they
are not as dependent on the small, local communities.
French doesn't blame farmers, however. "The farmer is using the system that is
set up," he said.
Paul Johnson, Lawrence, an organic farmer and lobbyist with the Kansas
Catholic Conference, said subsidies do little for either rural populations or small
farms.
He notes that Kansas consumers spend about $525 million a year on fruits and
vegetables, yet only about $15 million worth of those crops is grown here.
It would take only 150,000 acres to grow enough fruits and vegetables to satisfy
consumer demand in Kansas, according to studies done by Kansas State
University in the Kansas River valley.
Johnson, a market gardener in the summer, recognizes that not all of the state
would be suitable for fruits or vegetables. But he said Kansas is so focused on
big agriculture that it misses the larger picture.
"I guess it's sexier or more handy to get into a $250,000 combine and ride the
prairie," he said.
Amy Bickel of the Hutchinson News, Emily Behlmann of The Garden City
Telegram and Sarah Kessinger and Chris Green of Harris News Service
contributed to this story.