The Cultivation of Influence: How Farm Bill Politics Are Paid For

The report, Cultivating Influence: 2008 The Farm Bill Lobbying Frenzy, finds that the 2008 Farm Bill was one of the most well-financed leg­isla­tive fights of the past decade and breaks down the lob­by­ing spend­ing by more than 1,000 com­pa­nies, trade asso­ci­a­tions and other groups.

“The pub­lic out­cry for a health­ier, more equi­table food sys­tem has been muf­fled by the gusher of cash that spe­cial inter­ests spent lob­by­ing to shore up the Farm Bill sta­tus quo,” said Wenonah Hauter, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Food & Water Watch. “As Congress lurches towards final­iz­ing the 2012 Farm Bill under bud­getary aus­ter­ity, the lob­by­ing jug­ger­naut has only intensified.”

The sprawl­ing leg­is­la­tion drew a host of leg­isla­tive inter­ests beyond agri­cul­ture includ­ing petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies and Wall Street as well as advo­cates for nutri­tion pro­grams and inter­na­tional food aid. Other firms secured spe­cial tax give­aways or USDA fund­ing in the 2008 Farm Bill—like the $180 mil­lion tax break for Weyerhaeuser or $126 mil­lion tax break for race horse industry.

Although most farm, agribusi­ness and food indus­try groups lobby on many pro­vi­sions of the Farm Bill, their inter­ests can vary widely. Crop and live­stock buy­ers want to pro­mote more pro­duc­tion, which low­ers prices, but fam­ily farm­ers want to ensure their eco­nomic sur­vival if prices col­lapse. The analy­sis breaks down the lob­by­ing effort based on indus­try sec­tor and Farm Bill pol­icy area.

“The agri­cul­ture lobby is not mono­lithic,” Hauter noted. “Farmers are often at log­ger­heads with agribusi­nesses and food man­u­fac­tur­ers, and inde­pen­dent farm groups are wildly out­spent by the grain traders and meatpackers.”

Key find­ings include:

• An army of well-heeled insider lob­by­ists. Special inter­ests hired at least 45 for­mer mem­bers of Congress, more than 450 for­mer con­gres­sional and exec­u­tive branch staff, and nine of the top 10 K Street lob­by­ing firms.

• Half the lob­by­ing ($85.8 mil­lion) tar­geted core farm poli­cies. The largest por­tion of the lob­by­ing money focused on the com­mod­ity pro­grams, con­ser­va­tion pro­grams, crop insur­ance, farm credit, spe­cialty crops and live­stock – the core farm poli­cies in the Farm Bill. Commodity inter­ests (includ­ing grain traders, com­mod­ity crop trade asso­ci­a­tions and com­mod­ity proces­sors) spent an esti­mated $17.0 mil­lion; farm credit, crop insur­ance and equip­ment inter­ests spent $12.0 mil­lion and food man­u­fac­tur­ers spent $11.0 million.
• Wall Street inter­ests spent $10.8 mil­lion lob­by­ing on com­mod­ity futures trad­ing rules. The finan­cial sec­tor spent $4.1 mil­lion, com­modi­ties mar­kets and futures traders spent $2.5 mil­lion and large com­mod­ity users (like oil com­pa­nies and air­lines) spent $4.3 mil­lion lob­by­ing on Commodities Futures Trading Commission pro­vi­sions that laid the ground­work for broader futures and deriv­a­tives reforms later incor­po­rated into the Dodd-Frank finan­cial reform bill.
• Energy inter­ests spent $23 mil­lion lob­by­ing. Although many bio­fu­els poli­cies and pro­grams were shifted to the 2007 energy bill, fos­sil fuel inter­ests spent $7.1 mil­lion, ethanol inter­ests spent $5.5 mil­lion, biodiesel inter­ests spent $1.1 mil­lion and util­i­ties spent $7.3 million.
• Farm Bill lob­by­ing bat­tle ranks with health care and finan­cial reform. Food & Water Watch’s $173.5 mil­lion esti­mate for lob­by­ing on the 2008 Farm Bill makes it one of the most expen­sive leg­isla­tive fights in recent mem­ory, rank­ing amid the Center for Public Integrity’s $250 mil­lion lob­by­ing esti­mate for the Dodd-Frank finan­cial reform bill and $120 mil­lion for health care reform.

“The only way we’re going to over­come the cor­po­rate half-a-million-dollar-a-day lob­by­ing front is if a crit­i­cal mass of con­cerned cit­i­zens join with like-minded farm­ers and inde­pen­dent leg­is­la­tors to build polit­i­cal power and take on the entrenched power of big agribusi­ness,” said Hauter.

The report can be down­loaded here: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/cultivating-influence/

Source: Food and Water Watch release