Farm bill contradictions

Opinion: April 18, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

San Jose Mercury: 2011 was a great year for corn farmers. Record-high prices. A record-high volume of 14 billion bushels produced. It was such a remarkable year that farmers are expected to plant 94 million acres of corn in 2012 — 18 million more than in 2010. More corn will be planted in the United States in 2012 than in any year since World War II.

So have the record prices and yields made Midwestern farmers and Big Ag happy? No, no, no. As Congress takes up the 2012 Farm Bill, the wails for subsidies will be as loud as ever.

Don’t worry. House Republicans will dry their tears. When lawmakers went looking for ways to reduce the Farm Bill’s five-year budget, they went easy on corn growers and instead sharpened their machetes for — get this — food assistance and school lunch programs for the poor.

Really. Of the proposed $180 billion cuts in the House Farm Bill, $133 billion comes from the food stamp program. An additional 8 million poor American adults and children would go hungry. But hey, the corn growers will be fat and happy. What’s important?

That is the question. Even in the worst economy, should the U.S. be a country where children go hungry, or malnourished, or both?

Faced with the need to reduce health care costs, Congress should be nurturing more responsible agriculture operations that produce fruits and healthy vegetables and provide fresh foods for school lunch programs.

If conservatives argued to end all subsidies for business, we’d respect that as a coherent philosophy. But continuing to subsidize growers of food that’s bad for us while cutting food aid for kids whose only healthy meal of the day may be a school lunch?

That’s not conservative. It’s just mean.