Sensible investment, unforgiveable pork, and the farm bill

H.L. Mencken, a genial man who got away with saying the darnedest things because of it, wrote an essay condeming the American farmer, chiefly, I suppose, because everyone else writes in praise of that particular fellow. The prevailing view, in his day as in ours, was that the farmer was a hard-working sort, carrying on the American way against all odds, and we would do well to be more like him. Mencken obstreperously argued that the American farmer was, in fact, un-American, because he voted to elect to Congress any lowdown unsavory scalliwag provided he pledged to raise crop subsidies and price supports. I would suggest that today the difference between the farmer in our hearts, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands calloused, and reality is that he has been mostly replaced by Archer Daniel Midlands, which is company, not a person, calloused or otherwise. The crop subsidies and price supports finally got so lucrative that they attracted big business. I have asserted previously, on other topics, that Hawaii is a time as well as a place, where things happen that used to happen on the mainland but don't any more. Here is another example of that. We still have small farms. We have almost nothing but small farms. We have 600 farms growing coffee on the Big Island alone. Even our bigger farming operations, such as Kauai Coffee Co. or Maui Pineapple Co., would scarcely qualify for their own Interstate exits in South Dakota. So when the annual farm bill comes out of Congress, after being fertilized and tilled and sprayed by Big Farm lobbyists, if Hawaii reaps anything it is largely an accident. Such an accident has happened on Capitol Hill this week, where the House approved the farm bill Wednesday with more than enough votes to override a threatened presidential veto before sending it to the Senate for a likely similar outcome Thursday. The nature of the accident is easy enough to describe: California farmers, who have loads of clout on the Hill wanted some things that will also benefit Hawaii, even if that was far from their minds when they demanded them. When farm state lawmakers don't control powerful committees or sit in the House or Senate leadership, they woo the powerful by throwing in a lot of projects for the home districts of the people who do hold power. That's how the food stamp program, important to cities, came under the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Congressional agriculture committees: coalition building. At the moment, however, farm state lawmakers sit in many powerful chairs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got more than 300 representatives to vote for the farm bill even though members knew President Bush had a valid point when he made his veto threat. That point is that the bill contains $40 billion business-as-usual subsidy dollars for corn, wheat and other grain farmers who are currently reaping their highest commodities prices ever. Food stamp recipients can lose their qualification just by working part-time. A farm couple can earn $2.5 million and still qualify for checks from the government. H.L. Mencken would be rotating were he not already composting. President Bush said he wasn't going to sign a bill that gave billions to millionaire farmers. (I'm not sure if he also meant Kentucky breeders of thoroughbred racehorses, who won an amendment to allow three-year depreciation of their investments.) He won't have to. Congress will override his veto in less time than it takes to weed a garden. Yet the bill does some potentially good things. There are many reasons why Americans now get fat in elementary school instead of waiting until their thirties to do it, but one of them is that cash-strapped public school cafeteria programs switched to cheaper, more fattening foods at about the same time lava lamps went out (the first time). The bill contains a billion dollars for programs to put fruit and vegetable snacks back into schools. Babyboomers like me tend to be skeptical of this sort of thing, but that's because we grew up indoctrinated by the 1950s television commercials for such nutritional horsemen of the apocalype as TV dinners, Pop-Tarts, Instant Breakfast, and McDonald's. You don't think we were indoctrinated? Then how come I remember this? "Are you hungry for a treat/Want food that's fun to eat/Then go to the golden arches in your neighborhood/McDonald's golden arches, McDonald's makes it so good." Today's children, by contrast, have been indoctrinated by Sesame Street and might actually eat fruit and veggie snacks if they could get them. Either way, the program should benefit Hawaii fruit and vegetable farmers. The bill also contains grant money for research and development, and marketing, for nuts, flowers and nursery products. Hawaii is deep into these areas of agriculture. Maybe marketing will produce enough demand to deal with the current global macadamia nut glut.