Farm Subsidies: Sacred Cows No More

WASHINGTON—The hunt for cuts has come to this: Even agriculture subsidies—billions in spending both parties have embraced for years—are on the table.

With the farm economy booming and Washington on a diet, a program set up in the 1990s that cuts checks to farmers could be trimmed or eliminated next year when Congress writes a new five-year farm bill.

A group of conservative lawmakers has set its sights on these direct payments, and even farm-state Democrats who like the program say high crop prices make the outlays of about $5 billion a year harder to justify. Recently, the National Corn Growers Association, an industry lobby group, urged Congress to revamp the program, fearing it would be eliminated altogether.

Washington is looking everywhere for savings, even to programs once viewed as sacrosanct, including farm programs and defense spending.

Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's blueprint for the fiscal 2012 budget puts agriculture subsidies in the cross hairs, seeking to cut $30 billion over a decade—starting when the next farm bill is passed in 2012—out of a total of some $150 billion in total expected spending on farm subsidies.

"We are very focused on getting a grip on spending—that means a lot of things even I like," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R., Okla.) The direct payments have "a target on them," said Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.), a former supporter of the program.

The farm payments at risk were supposed to be temporary. Lawmakers designed the program in the 1996 farm bill to wean farmers of rice, feed grains, cotton and later soybeans off years of subsidies tied to keeping portions of land fallow.

The direct payments have endured and are now a cornerstone of American farm subsidies. The $5 billion in direct payments to farmers accounts for a third of the roughly $15 billion in total farm subsidies last year, according to government data.

Benefiting are about one million farmers on 260 million acres of land spread around 364 of 435 congressional districts, according to the Agriculture Department and the Environmental Working Group, a organization that wants to eliminate some farm subsidies and use the money to protect natural habitats.

With the farm sector booming—the USDA estimates net farm income this year will be the second-highest in 35 years—direct payments have become an easy target. Iowa State University economist Chad Hart notes that the payments go to farmers regardless of crop price or quality—a way to provide assistance without violating international trade rules.

Farm subsidies have survived previous attempts to cut them back, and defenders will likely cite the continuing support for farmers in Japan and the European Union. This time, the U.S. industry has pared its defense of the status quo.

"Our members of Congress are telling us that they just can't support this program anymore," said Anthony Bush, a policy expert with the National Corn Growers Association.

"In times of record-high prices [the government is] still handing out money like this, it's just politically not possible, feasible or popular these days," he said.

Mr. Bush said corn farmers have the most to lose if direct payments are eliminated altogether. He said $2.1 billion of the roughly $5 billion in direct payments go to such farmers.

Corn futures Wednesday settled at $7.63 a bushel, down slightly after reaching an all-time high above $7.70 Tuesday. Prices have more than doubled since last summer on strong export demand, record ethanol output and steady buying by domestic livestock producers.

The National Corn Growers Association voted earlier this month to "investigate transitioning direct payments" into a more politically acceptable form of subsidy.

Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, said the direct subsidies have become indefensible because they don't go to farmers who need them to survive tough times.

Most of the payments go to the largest farmers in the U.S., given the amount of land they own. From 2002, when the program was expanded, through 2010, the top 10% of recipients received 67% of the funds, according to David DeGennaro, an Environmental Working Group legislative analyst.

Mr. Lucas of Oklahoma, the Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said in an interview that direct payments were fair game for lawmakers looking to cut spending next year. He still wants to resist some cuts, a point of view he outlined in a March 15 letter to the House Budget Committee written with Rep. Collin Peterson (D., Minn.). He didn't specify what might be protected.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), however, suggested earlier this month that farm subsidies were a likely budget-cutting target. He didn't specify which programs, but said, "Commodity price for farms, farm products have never been—never been higher than they are today. There's money there."

Study: No-Till Farming Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In the January edition of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, researchers at Purdue University published a report that found that cropland, left unplowed between planting seasons, significantly reduces the amount of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas (GHG), released into the atmosphere compared to conventionally plowed fields.The federally funded study concluded that no-till farming can help counteract global warming, as well as help farmers use their costly nitrogen-based fertilizers more efficiently. Researchers looked at the amounts of nitrous oxide released by no-till fields and plowed fields for three years, and found that no-till fields released 57 percent and 40 percent, respectively, less nitrous oxide than two types of tilling called chisel tilling and moldboard tilling. 

The researchers also found that emissions were fewer in fields with rotating crops than fields planted only with one crop each year. Nitrous oxide contains 310 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide and can remain in the atmosphere for 120 years. The findings represent another benefit to the practice of no-till farming, which has been shown to reduce erosion and improve soil quality. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. nitrous oxide emissions came from farmland in 2008, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

For additional information see: AP, Purdue Press Release, Study

The Six-Legged Meat of the Future

At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.

Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."

The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy. They are prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices and served with sticky rice. Further back in history, the ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet fare, and the Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers. In the 20th century, the Japanese emperor Hirohito's favorite meal was a mixture of cooked rice, canned wasps (including larvae, pupae and adults), soy sauce and sugar.

Will Westerners ever take to insects as food? It's possible. We are entomologists at Wageningen University, and we started promoting insects as food in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Many people laughed—and cringed—at first, but interest gradually became more serious. In 2006 we created a "Wageningen—City of Insects" science festival to promote the idea of eating bugs; it attracted more than 20,000 visitors.

Over the past two years, three Dutch insect-raising companies, which normally produce feed for animals in zoos, have set up special production lines to raise locusts and mealworms for human consumption. Now those insects are sold, freeze-dried, in two dozen retail food outlets that cater to restaurants. A few restaurants in the Netherlands have already placed insects on the menu, with locusts and mealworms (beetle larvae) usually among the dishes.

Insects have a reputation for being dirty and carrying diseases—yet less than 0.5% of all known insect species are harmful to people, farm animals or crop plants. When raised under hygienic conditions—eating bugs straight out of the backyard generally isn't recommended—many insects are perfectly safe to eat.

Meanwhile, our food needs are on the rise. The human population is expected to grow from six billion in 2000 to nine billion in 2050. Meat production is expected to double in the same period, as demand grows from rising wealth. Pastures and fodder already use up 70% of all agricultural land, so increasing livestock production would require expanding agricultural acreage at the expense of rain forests and other natural lands. Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently predicted that beef could become an extreme luxury item by 2050, like caviar, due to rising production costs.

Raising insects for food would avoid many of the problems associated with livestock. For instance, swine and humans are similar enough that they can share many diseases. Such co-infection can yield new disease strains that are lethal to humans, as happened during a swine fever outbreak in the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Because insects are so different from us, such risks are accordingly lower.

Insects are also cold-blooded, so they don't need as much feed as animals like pigs and cows, which consume more energy to maintain their body temperatures. Ten pounds of feed yields one pound of beef, three pounds of pork, five pounds of chicken and up to six pounds of insect meat.

Insects produce less waste, too. The proportion of livestock that is not edible after processing is 30% for pork, 35% for chicken, 45% for beef and 65% for lamb. By contrast, only 20% of a cricket is inedible.

Raising insects requires relatively little water, especially as compared to the production of conventional meat (it takes more than 10 gallons of water, for instance, to produce about two pounds of beef). Insects also produce far less ammonia and other greenhouse gases per pound of body weight. Livestock is responsible for at least 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Raising insects is more humane as well. Housing cattle, swine or chicken in high densities causes stress to the animals, but insects like mealworms and locusts naturally like to live in dense quarters. The insects can be crowded into vertical stacked trays or cages. Nor do bug farms have to be restricted to rural areas; they could sprout up anywhere, from a suburban strip mall to an apartment building. Enterprising gourmets could even keep a few trays of mealworms in the garage to ensure a fresh supply.

The first insect fare is likely to be incorporated subtly into dishes, as a replacement for meat in meatballs and sauces. It also can be mixed into prepared foods to boost their nutritional value—like putting mealworm paste into a quiche. And dry-roasted insects can be used as a replacement for nuts in baked goods like cookies and breads.

We continue to make progress in the Netherlands, where the ministry of agriculture is funding a new $1.3 million research program to develop ways to raise edible insects on food waste, such as brewers' grain (a byproduct of beer brewing), soyhulls (the skin of the soybean) and apple pomace (the pulpy remains after the juice has been pressed out). Other research is focusing on how protein could be extracted from insects and used in processed foods.

Though it is true that intentionally eating insects is common only in developing countries, everyone already eats some amount of insects. The average person consumes about a pound of insects per year, mostly mixed into other foods. In the U.S., most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. For chocolate, the FDA limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters (just over a cup). We also use many insect products to dye our foods, such as the red dye cochineal in imitation crab sticks, Campari and candies. So we're already some of the way there in making six-legged creatures a regular part of our diet.

Not long ago, foods like kiwis and sushi weren't widely known or available. It is quite likely that in 2020 we will look back in surprise at the era when our menus didn't include locusts, beetle larvae, dragonfly larvae, crickets and other insect delights.