It emerged this week that congressional leaders in the USA have failed to come to an agreement over the farm bill which would see billions of dollars of cuts being made to US farm spending. On Wednesday, the ‘Super Committee’ responsible for negotiating deficit cuts in agriculture announced that they had missed their self-imposed 23rd November deadline and, as a result, the push to develop a plan for curbing farm spending has been set aside.

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Congress now has one year to target and negotiate government spending if it wants to avoid $1.5 trillion in cuts being made automatically across the board. In this case, food stamps and conservation would be the only programmes spared from the automatic cuts to farm spending. Currently, about 80% of Farm Bill spending is in nutrition programs, primarily SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps). Analysts say a reduction of direct payments for farmers seems inevitable.

Congressional agriculture committees had earlier committed to US$23 billion cuts; under the now defunct farm bill negotiations, US$15 billion in cuts would come from programmes subsidising or insuring particular crops and US$8 billion from conservation and nutritional programmes.

The nature of the negotiations has been secretive; although a proposal from the Senate farm committee to the Super Committee was leaked last Friday, the full contents of the committee’s work are unlikely to be disclosed immediately.

Farm bill negotiation attracts criticism

The farm bill has been the subject of much controversy, mostly over the secretive manner in which it has been brokered. Organisations including Oxfam have condemned the farm bill’s lack of consideration for developing the USA’s small-holders. Eric Muñoz of Oxfam said the bill’s authors have “abdicated responsibility for a farm bill that is responsive to the interests of people affected by our farm policy.”

American public interest group Food Democracy Now has also been highly critical of the way in which the farm bill was negotiated. The group asked its supporters to register their discontent and take action to prevent the bill from being passed, which resulted in 70,000 calls being made to the congressional agriculture leaders behind the bill.

FDN described the negotiation process, which was largely carried out behind closed doors, as undemocratic and underhanded. In a statement made following Wednesday’s announcement, the group lamented that the senate Agriculture Committee had crafted “$23 billion in budget cuts to U.S. food and agricultural programs behind closed doors in total secrecy.” The organisation claimed the deal would have been brokered with agribusiness lobbyists to the detriment of farmers and smallholders.

David Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, called for details of the negotiations to be made public. He said, “This budget negotiation process happened during work hours and on the taxpayer dime and if we’re going to have to pay for Congressional salaries and retirement plans, we might as well get a look at the schemes these public servants cooked up behind closed doors,”

“It’s one thing to write a major piece of legislation in total secrecy, but it’s another thing to refuse to release the final bill to the American public after announcing on multiple occasions that they would do so.”

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