For anti-sprawlists in Connecticut, many of whom are
environmentalists, local farms are essential to a movement that seeks to nudge
businesses back into cities; the more farms there are in the hinterlands, the
less land will be available for “exploitation” by businesses and home
construction companies. Environmentalists do not generally object heatedly to “urban
sprawl.”
Onerous federal regulations on farms have now invaded
Connecticut’s environmental Eden, according to a report in a Hartford paper.
Connecticut farmers have offered multiple objections to new
regulations co-sponsored by 3rd District US Representative Rosa DeLauro. Mrs.
DeLauro’s district, largely urban, has suffered a crippling reduction in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) subsidies during the last six years. Federal subsidies from 2009-2010 amounted to about a million dollars per year; during
2012, the subsidies dropped precipitously to $157,039. At the same time, the federal government is suffering a huge
deficit; the Obama years alone have added $6.061 trillion to the national debt,
which surpassed $18.1 trillion last January. The usual cowardly detours that
allow legislators to avoid painful spending cuts to balance budgets – massive
borrowing, budget shape-shifting and inflating the money supply – are
considered politically inadvisable, and so the federal government has begun to
trim subsidies; which is to say, the feds are now backpedalling on their promissory
notes to states. Nothing unusual there: In the bust and boom economy, all
Americans have become American Indians; the promises of Washington to
regulatory victims have been repeatedly and notoriously violated.
The new farming
regulations, piled on top of others, farmers say, are costly and complex; but
then what federal regulatory instruments are not costly and complex, a virtual
playpen for lawyers and tax attorneys? The Obamacare bill runs to thousands of
pages; Dodd-Frank financial regulations are not much shorter, and the
regulatory apparat in Washington is equally complex and expensive. Washington
specializes in growing the administrative apparat and complex legislation that
may be understood only by accountants and attorneys for large corporations that
can afford to hire both to avoid taxes and regulations. It is small
corporations – such as farmers -- that feel the sharp edge of the regulatory
and tax axe.
Farmers in
Connecticut want to be able to grow and offer their produce at competitive
prices. Because the profit margin in farming is so small, any additional costs
are potential straws that certainly will break the camel’s back and reduce
farmers’ very narrow profit margin – or, worse, force them to sell their land
to developers, who then may sell the farmland to businesses hoping to cut costs
by moving from urban to suburban centers. Result: further suburban sprawl
occasioning tons of editorials bemoaning the reduction of “Smart Development.”
Connecticut is now witnessing a regulatory snake swallowing its own tail.
One small example
may serve for many. The Lydall Farm stand on Route 44 in Coventry boasts on a handmade
sign that the stand has been in business since 1926, three years before the
start of the Great Depression. But this year will be the stand’s last stand.
Why? The profit margin is too small and new regulations are far too costly.
So complex are new
Environmental Protection regulations that nearly any small farmer may now be
put out of business by nearly any lawsuit waving bureaucrat or, worse, any consumer
protection U.S. Senator (cf. Blumenthal, Dick). Then too, the more time and
money small farmers spend complying with byzantine regulations, the less time
and money is available to make the crops come out of the ground.
Why not sell the
ground?
Though Mrs. DeLauro
is Chairwoman of the House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee, this Catch
22 may be low on her list of things to worry about. The constituents Mrs.
DeLauro relies upon to re-elect her to a twelfth term in the U.S. Congress are, many of them,
urbanites who may think food is grown in the parking lots of the grocery stores
where they buy their lettuce and peaches. These are the nephews and cousins of
the magic thinkers who suppose that the nation’s wealth is produced by a golden
tree the leaves of which can be cashed in to pay the salaries of the army of
bureaucrats pushing farmland into the greedy hands of developers responsible
for urban sprawl.
Connecticut Farmers in Mrs. DeLauro’s District keenly feeling the sting of reduced subsidies and excessive regulations know better. But the farmers in Ms. DeLauro’s District who would be willing to vote
against pro-suburban sprawlists are far outnumbered by urban dwellers who have
not thought about the plight of Connecticut’s small farmers since the Great
Depression.
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