Brad Wilson, a member of Iowa CCI and former board member of NFFC, recently wrote an OpEd for theCedar Rapids-based newspaper, The Gazette. Brad sheds light on the history of farm bill subsidies and diminishing price floors.
In 1996, Republicans ended price floors and called for also ending farm subsidies by 2002. Farm prices quickly crashed to the lowest levels in history, thus serving as a huge de facto subsidy for Confined Animal Feeding Operations, (CAFOs,) and they were forced to pass four emergency farm bills prior to 2002, increasing subsidies, but not restoring the New Deal approach, even at the low, 1995 level. Without supply management, record low prices continued for the major crops. All of these changes made feed grains and soybeans available to CAFOs at prices cheaper than farmers could raise them, and as a result, most farms in Iowa lost all value-added livestock to CAFOs, and resulting from that, most Iowa farms lost all of the sustainable livestock crops, grass pastures and clover and alfalfa hay, damaging water quality.