What Happens When The Breadbasket Runs Dry?

The Washington Post reports on a disturbing trend. America's farmers are significantly reducing the amount of wheat they are planting and turning to more lucrative crops (yes, we seem to be on a farm trend this evening).

"Wheat was king once," said David Braaten, whose Norwegian immigrant grandparents built their Kindred, N.D., farm around wheat a century ago. "Now I just don't want to grow it. It's not a consistent crop."

In the 1980s, more than half the farm's acres were wheat. This year only one in 10 will be, and 40 percent will go to soybeans. Braaten and other farmers are considering investing in a $180 million plant to turn the beans into animal feed and cooking oil, both now in strong demand in China. And to stress his hopes for ethanol, his business card shows a sketch of a fuel pump.

Across the Red River and farther north, in Euclid, Minn., Don Strickler, 63, describes wheat as "a necessary evil." Most years, he explained, farmers lose money on it. Still, it provides conservation benefits and can block diseases in soybeans and sugar beets when rotated with those crops.

Wheat's fall from favor, little noticed when it was cheap, has been long coming. Though still an iconic symbol of American abundance — engraved on currency and praised in song — the nation's amber waves of wheat have been increasingly shoved aside by other crops. The "breadbasket of the world," which had alleviated hunger and famine since World War I, now generally supplies only a quarter of world wheat exports.

U.S. farmers are expected to plant about 64 million acres of wheat this year, down from a high of 88 million in 1981. In Kansas, wheat acreage has declined by a third since the mid-1980s, and nationwide, there is now less wheat in grain bins than at any time since World War II — only about enough to supply the world for four days. This occurs as developing countries with some of the poorest populations are rapidly increasing their wheat imports.

Adding to the problem: seed companies have turned away from improving wheat, concentrating on corn and soybeans. Crop yields are stagnant for wheat. Fewer and fewer acres under cultivation for wheat mean the supply is dropping. Bottom line: prices are not going to fall any time soon, if ever. So says the USDA.

Suffering Farmers

Crop prices are skyrocketing, globally and for American farmers. So what's the big debate in Washington today? How much Federal money needs to go to subsidize multi-million dollar earning farmers.

WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators late Tuesday scrambled to meet President Bush's demands on a multibillion-dollar farm bill, considering cutting subsidies for wealthy farmers.
 
Earlier in the day, Bush had renewed his call to reduce such subsidies, saying the "massive, bloated" bill would do little to stem rising food costs. Negotiators met with Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer soon afterward.

That meeting was "sobering," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. He said the Bush administration had a laundry list of demands for the legislation, which lawmakers were hurrying to finish before current farm law expires Friday. The law has been extended several times, and lawmakers have said another one-week extension may be necessary.

Emerging from several hours of meetings, Conrad and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said negotiators would further limit subsidies and cut other spending in response to the administration's demands.

"We moved considerably," said Harkin, though he declined to share specifics and said all of the bill's negotiators had not yet agreed on the cuts.

At issue: Bush wants payments limited for those who make more than $200,000 a year. The House bill limits payments to those suffering farmers who have to struggle by on a paltry $1,000,000 a year. The Senate version caps it at a miserly $750,000. That is your tax money - and mine - that Congress is trying to glad hand away to people who have no need for it.

I rather wish that Bush had come to fiscal responsibility a bit sooner than this. But this obscenity of a farm bill needs to be stopped, even at this late date.

Bonus question: Who really thinks Congress and Washington could come up with the right answer for fixing health care, given this example? If you raised your hand, slap some sense into yourself.

Bad Show, Al

It seems that Al Franken has been avoiding paying state taxes for a number of years. Not one state, mind you. In fact a total of 17 states would like Mr. Franken to cough up some $70,000 he owes them.

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken, frontrunner in the race to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, owes $70,000 in back taxes in 17 states, where he earned income going back to 2003.

Franken on Tuesday told the Associated Press that he never intended to avoid paying taxes and that on the advice of his accountant, had paid taxes to the city and state where he lived.

Franken has been under fire since early March, when a Republican operative revealed that Franken had failed to pay workers' compensation and disability premiums for employees of his New York-based corporation, Alan Franken, Inc., between 2002 and 2005.

New York state officials had tried to collect the back premiums for four years, resorting to a collection agency and even filing a summary judgment against Franken in state Supreme Court last May for $25,000.

Franken said he was unaware of the state's numerous attempts to contact him and finally was forced to acknowledge his error and make restitution earlier this month.

Ed Morrisey happens to know the "Republican operative" who broke the story and points out that Michael Brodkorb didn't even know about 15 of the states who'd like Franken to cough up some of his cash. This is the kind of story that sinks candidates. Franken is representing the Democrats (or their local proxy, Minnesota being somewhat odd) who are very much in favor of raising taxes in general. Apparently, just so long as they don't actually have to pay them.

Splitsville

Barack Obama officially jettisoned Jeremiah Wright today calling Wright's remarks - in recent days, at least - "divisive and destructive."

"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.

"If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."

How badly did Wright poll for Obama to reverse himself from his support - just a month ago or so - of Wright's venom? I would guess it was very badly indeed. James Joyner thinks Obama has stopped the bleeding with this. Possibly. But I'd point out that a lot of damage has already been done and that there is blood in the water now. This latest Wright explosion happened just as many voters were beginning to pay attention. Personally, I suspect Obama barred the barn door about a week after the horse moved out.  

On The Wrong Side

John Fund points out that Barack Obama is on the wrong side of voter identification laws - as yesterday's Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law shows.

In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law – the toughest in the nation – the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.

Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.

But this case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, also revealed a fundamental philosophical conflict between two perspectives rooted in the machine politics of Chicago. Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision, grew up in Hyde Park, the city neighborhood where Sen. Barack Obama – the most vociferous Congressional critic of such laws – lives now. Both men have seen how the Daley machine has governed the city for so many years, with a mix of patronage, contract favoritism and, where necessary, voter fraud.

That fraud became nationally famous in 1960, when the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's extraordinary efforts swung Illinois into John F. Kennedy's column. In 1982, inspectors estimated as many as one in 10 ballots cast in Chicago during that year's race for governor to be fraudulent for various reasons, including votes by the dead.

Fund points out Obama's long association with ACORN, a group that has had numerous run-ins with the law over its questionable voter registrations. Obama filed a brief with the Supreme Court for this case - and was on the wrong side of the decision. (ACORN did so as well.)