Dean's farm policy

One of the areas that I strongly disagree with Dean is farm policy. Dean strongly supports ethanol for example, which in my opinion is a massive welfare-esque boondoggle subsidy. An AP story comes out now with a LOT more detail about Dean's rural plans:

He urged new restrictions on giant factory farming operations, including giving local residents veto power over the building of big livestock confinement operations nearby.

Dean called for new venture capital investments in rural areas, coupled with tax credits for farm-based business development and a boost in grants for businesses that add value to basic farm commodities. For the most part, he did not estimate costs.

He also urged stronger backing for renewable energy sources such as wind and biomass, along with a requirement that there be 10 percent ethanol in gasoline. Ethanol is distilled from corn, a crop that is important to Iowa and many other farm states.

Dean was to outline his policies for rural America on Wednesday at Grundy County Lake in northeast Iowa. He chose the area to underscore his commitment to conservation as part of his development plan.

The appearance comes as Dean completes a tour of 26 of Iowa's most rural counties. His speech and an outline of his policy proposal were provided to The Associated Press.

He also proposed:

_ Banning meatpackers from owning livestock prior to taking delivery for processing.

_ Requiring country-of-origin labeling, forcing the disclosure of where products are grown.

_ Requiring labels on genetically modified products.

_ Moving toward a goal of opening trade with Cuba, while leaving in place sanctions for human rights violations.


There are some good ideas in here and some colossally bad ones (like biomass and windpower as a marge-scale replacement for energy? um, not unless the laws of physics have changed recently. We should be spending money on fusion research). I certainly don't agree with Matthew Yglesias' take, who characterizes the whole package as "subsidizing rural areas" - there certainly is a tougher line towards megafarm corporations. What do you think?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gay Saudi Arabia

Five Things Dean Supporters Can Do Right Now to Fight Terrorism