In 1985, Ex Parte Hibberd, an administration decision by the US Patent and Trademarks Office, extended property rights to the individual components of organisms, including genetic information, thus anticipating some of today’s contentious Genetically Modified Organism debates. Ten years later, Asgrow Seed v. Winterboer denied the rights of farmers to save and resell patented seed products, marking the continuation of a series of legislation that progressively placed power in corporate hands. In 2001, J.E.M. AG Supply v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a legal dispute between a large seed company and small seed supply center, affirmed that newly developed plant breeds are covered by expansive utility patents. In 2013, furthermore, Bowman v. Monsanto held that patent “exhaustion doctrine” does not cover farmers’ reproduction of patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent owner’s permission, further reflecting and securing corporate profit and influence. Lobbying: Although inadequate disclosure laws make it difficult to determine the exact amount expended on the Farm Bill and on other pieces of legislation, during the two years preceding the passage of the Farm Bill on February 7, 2014, at least 600 companies spent over $500 million in lobbying. The largest spenders ranged from Fortune 500 leaders in banking, trade, transportation and energy to non-profit organizations. A joint investigation by Harvest Public Media and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that the top 18 corporations and groups spent at least $5 million each in total lobbying from 2012 to the First Quarter of 2014. These corporations and groups include: the US Chamber of Commerce, Exxon Mobil, Du Pont, the American Bankers Association, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Wells Fargo, AARP, Monsanto, Independent Community Bankers of America, Coca-Cola, Association of American Railroads, Nestle, Nextera Energy, BNSF Railway Company, PMI Global Services Inc., Bayer Corporation, and American Forest & Paper Association.
The commodities support programs outlined above make up one major set of Farm Bill issues influenced by such lobbying efforts. These direct payments have long received the attention of growers groups and other interest groups that are beholden to corporate interests. Specifically, alongside the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, pipp vertical racks and other general farm organizations, all major agricultural commodities are represented by a lobbying organization that aims to keep the Farm Bill’s commodity programs intact as per the supposed interest of the producers of such commodities. These organizations include: the National Cotton Council, the Sugar Association, and the National Corn Growers, among others. While indeed all industries are represented by lobbying organizations, the relative political and economic strength of actors within the US food system that are already oriented toward large-scale production, processing, distribution, and service—such as those above—highlights their significance, particularly concerning contemporary campaign finance reform efforts. With the change to crop insurance as the safety net centerpiece, banks and insurance companies spent at least $52.6 million in lobbying the 2014 Farm Bill and other issues in the two years prior to its passage. For example, Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest US bank, spent approximately $11.3 million in lobbying efforts, signaling the potential gain to be had by the company’s Rural Community Insurance Services, the largest crop insurance provider in the country. The American Bankers Association, another group that will benefit most from the boost to crop insurance, reported spending $14 million on lobbying, including advocacy for crop insurance and other rural lending plans. Other lobbyists for crop insurance included Independent Community Bank-ers of America, ACE INA Holdings and Zurich , the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents, and Deere & Co., the large equipment manufacturer that also has a crop insurance arm.
Private Funding: Private sector spending on agricultural research has risen steeply since the 1970s and 1980s, exceeding public sector spending on agricultural research. From 1970 to 2006, private agricultural research expenditures—both in-house research and donations to land-grant universities—rose from $2.8 billion to over $8 billion, in inflation-adjusted 2014 dollars. Yet total public funding—directed toward land-grant universities and the USDA—rose from $3.1 billion to $6.1 billion in that same period. Federal funding of land-grant universities in particular reflect such trends: by the early 1990s, industry funding had already surpassed USDA funding of agricultural research at land-grant universities and by 2009, private sector funding had soared to $822 million, compared to $645 million from the USDA. Significantly, the economic recession substantially restricted research funding. Yet USDA land-grant university funding dropped twice as fast as private funding between 2009 and 2010, from 39.3% and 20.5%, respectively, reflecting the increasing dependence of university research on corporate funds, particularly during economic downturns. Strategic Mergers: During the 1990s there were numerous mergers between agricultural, pharmaceutical, and chemical firms tied to the global seed industry that aimed to take advantage of potential synergies and secure even greater corporate profit and strength. Because the mergers took place within the globalized market where most seed industry markets exist beyond one nation-state, however, these expected synergies were not realized and resulted in the spin off of numerous agricultural divisions: Monsanto, for example, merged with Pharmacia and Upjohn before a new Monsanto division, now focusing on agriculture, separated to form a new entity. Syngenta began with the merge between the agribusiness divisions of Novartis and Zeneca. However, AstraZeneca, which focuses on pharmaceuticals, remains a separate company. Bayer acquired the agribusiness operations of Aventis, yet Sonofi-Aventis remains a financially distinct pharmaceutical company. By 2009, six companies with pharmaceutical and chemical origins held control over 67% of the global seed industry. “Revolving Door”: Collectively, in addition to the lobbying strength they exert and the private funding they funnel into public institutions, corporations have also been effective in translating their economic power into political power by way of the “revolving door” between corporations and the government.
In 1999, for example, Monsanto was described as a “virtual retirement home for members of the Clinton administration.” The outcome of such tight relationships between corporations and governments is readily apparent in federal legislation that upholds agribusiness power. The “Farmer Assurance Provision,” for example—a provision of a bill that was signed into law in March 2013 by President Obama, yet only remained in effect for six months—undermined the Department of Agriculture’s authority to ban genetically modified crops, even if the court ruled that such crops posed human and environmental health risks. Significantly, Republican Senator Roy Blunt worked directly with Monsanto employees to draft the initial provision. Although supporters stated that the provision was necessary to protect farmers from endless legal complaints by opponents of GMOs that hold up critical research, the Farmer Assurance Provision would have ensured a lack of corporate liability. THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION defines food security as having consistent access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. At its core, however, food insecurity is a matter of income and poverty. As such, programs that aim to remedy food insecurity—most notably, the Farm Bill’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program —hold potential not only as key nutrition assistance programs, but also as part of the anti-poverty programs and safety net to support historically marginalized communities in the United States, including low-income communities and communities of color. This is especially the case during times of economic hardship. In this context, Part II first provides a brief snapshot of the state of poverty, food insecurity, pipp grow racks and public nutrition assistance in the United States . It then addresses the origins of SNAP and its supposed concretization as an anti-poverty program in the 1970s, while tracing key periods of the erosion of the program tied to corporate influence and larger trends in public assistance reform. It then addresses in greater detail ongoing corporate influence and gain, particularly in the context of neoliberal economic and political restructuring since the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the myths against public assistance that undergird such gain: anti-poor and racist “culture of poverty” stereotypes, and the stereotype that people on SNAP are “not in a hurry to get off.” Finally, Part II further challenges these and other myths against public assistance and investigates the relationship between SNAP and Unemployment Insurance , another major safety net program, by highlighting their role during the global recession that followed the 2007–2008 financial meltdown. The 2007 subprime mortgage crisis that triggered the “Great Recession” was caused in part by intense financialization: relaxed lending standards and problematic federal housing policies, massive household debt, and the infamous real-estate bubble, among other factors. By exploring the racialized impacts of this decline in economic activity as well as the support available to low-income communities and communities of color—most notably SNAP and UI—this part argues that safety net programs have become essential for such communities. These communities use most of their total expenditures on food and other basic necessities, and are the hardest hit during such economic downtowns. While it also argues that such safety net programs, particularly SNAP, are an important strategy in preventing and alleviating poverty in the United States, Part II ultimately argues that the strong ties between SNAP and corporate control undermine long term and structural work against poverty and structural racialization.The Food Stamps Program, which was later renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program , originated in the rural relief and commodity support policies of the New Deal era and, in the wake of the Great Depression, was just as much a farm price support program as an anti-poverty one. As part of the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation facilitated farmer and consumer support by allowing the federal government to distribute farm commodities, purchased at reduced prices, to state and local hunger relief agencies. Spearheading President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was the 1964 Food Stamp Act, which gained notoriety as a national anti-poverty program. Under the Food Stamp Act, food stamp benefits were financed by the government and administrative costs shared with states. Only with the 1977 Food and Agriculture Act enacted under President Jimmy Carter was SNAP directly incorporated as part of Farm Bill legislation. Before then, despite the work of the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, the Farm Bill had long been geared primarily toward commodity support programs. During a decade that saw Black unemployment rise from less than double that of whites to 2.5 times that of whites , this move by the Carter Administration was generally hailed as their principal anti-poverty achievement. Toward this end, in the 1970s alone, federal expenditure on food support grew by about 500%. In 1981, a series of corporate- and government-driven cuts to public assistance began, with SNAP undergoing severe budget cuts of about $1.8 billion, or 16% of its budget, along with cuts to other food and agriculture support programs under the Farm Bill. President Ronald Reagan, who ushered in the era of neoliberalism, made “welfare queens” an epithet, and turned SNAP into a symbol of the ills of big government, made severe cuts to SNAP and other domestic spending, which coincided with the deep recession of the early 1980s. Subsequently, food insecurity in the United States rose during the 1980s and poverty peaked with 15.2% of the population living under the poverty level, the highest since the end of the 1960s. These cuts also facilitated the rapid growth of food banks and grassroots hunger relief agencies—rather than federal public assistance programs—as an appropriate response to the rise in hunger: more than 80% of pantries and soup kitchens currently operating came into existence between 1980 and 2001. Significantly, these cuts mirrored the broader trends in the corporatization of the food system, as outlined in Part I, including scaling back of federal efforts to stabilize prices for farmers and cushion the impact of market volatility, corporate growth, consolidation, and influence in the food system more broadly. In order to combat the growing hunger crisis in the United States, funding was partially restored to SNAP in 1988 and 1990. Funding increases were accompanied by efforts to not only streamline administration of SNAP with an early form of the Electronic Benefit Transfer card, but also to expand eligibility for low-income communities. Yet SNAP’s growth in the early 1990s was countered in the mid-1990s with the conversion of funds into block grants to the states, and the enactment of more strict requirements on SNAP usage and eligibility.