I wrote about this recently and after looking over the bill itself, I would like to explain why I say that the Farm Bill needs to be voted by the President.  I know…..few believe that I would actually be on the side of Bush on anything, but The Farm Bill veto has more support.

A few things about the bill that makes a veto imperative.

• The bill provides no real relief for US counties with the highest rates of poverty, since subsidies mainly benefit the wealthy owners of corporate farms.
• The bill grants subsidies for crops like corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybeans — US imports dumped into poorer countries, hurting subsistence farmers in these countries and hindering farmers in other countries from competing in international markets. When prices for food plummet as a result, local farms fail and are replaced by giant agribusinesses, and poverty increases.
• The bill does not support cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and instead promotes an economy that encourages cheap calories and drives up the price of nutritious foods, aggravating obesity and other health problems.
• The bill encourages production of sugar and corn to be used for ethanol, which Greens call an inefficient replacement for fossil fuels; the rise in ethanol-based energy has converted land that could be used for food production into a source of fuel. This conversion has caused economic and food supply crises in several African countries, as agricultural land now benefits the high energy-consumption demands of the US and other western nations.
• The richest 5% of US farm owners would win more than half of the bill’s federal subsidies. Black farmers complain that they would be excluded from the subsidies program.