Rob:  Every five years, congress writes a new farm bill, legislation that’s responsible for pumping billions of dollars into farm states like Oklahoma, money that covers everything from food stamps to farm subsidies.  And while just a fraction of the total cost of the farm bill, it is the farm subsidies, those direct payments and price supports for farmers that generate most of the controversy.
Rob:  Created during the dustbowl days by President Roosevelt, farm subsidies were a way to save thousands of small farmers on the brink of disaster.  Since then, tens of billions of dollars has flowed into farm country to control commodity prices, while also helping farmers through the lean times.
Jeff Krehbeil:  What we need to keep in mind is farm subsidies were originally established to insure a domestic food supply for the United States.  And that’s why they’re there today.
Rob:  Field work can wait for farmers like Jeff Krehbeil.  On this Saturday morning, Krehbeil and some fellow wheat growers are busy baking bread, passing it out to a public increasingly unfamiliar with what goes on down on the farm.
Krehbeil:  There might be the new home in the rural setting that the man lives in, the family lives in, and they work in town, but they still don’t have a tie to agriculture, and the number of agriculture producers across the United States is steadily declining.
Rob:  Less than two percent of Americans are now involved in production agriculture, yet farmers remain a powerful force in our nation’s capitol.  Negotiations of the 2007 farm bill have spilled over into 2008, in part because of political infighting and a promised veto from President Bush, over its cost, two hundred and 80 billion over a ten year period.
Tom Coburn:  First of all, we can’t use price supports anymore if we want to compete in the world.  It we truly want to have open agriculture exchange that really benefits the agriculture community in this country, we’re going to have to get away from that.
Rob:  Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has earned a reputation as a crusader against what he believes is unnecessary government spending, and he says while farm subsidies are just a fraction of the total cost of the farm bill, he believes the entire system is in need of reform.
Coburn:  Look at rural Oklahoma.  So many of our small farms are gone, and they’re being farmed either on lease or something else.  I mean, how do you buy a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar combine and make it efficient on 400 acres?  You can’t!  Most of our agricultural groups, our farmers, are under cap law.  So, why do we have price supports?  Because, they can’t make it through the normal changes in the market, most farmers I talk to would much rather have a market set where they didn’t have to depend on anything from the federal government.  But, we live in a global world.  So, we’ve got to have either a good trading system, or we have something that allows them to compete.
Rob:  Competition increasingly complicated by a global economy.  Worldwide, no industry is more regulated and manipulated than food.  Tariffs tax imports coming into countries, while farm subsidies support exports going out, a dynamic the World Trade Organization says helps rich nations, while hurting the poor.
Rob:  In West Africa, cotton is vital to their local economy.  Labor is cheap here, just about a dollar a day.  But farmers still struggle to make a profit, something they blame on western farm subsidies they believe keep world cotton prices unnaturally low.
What we want is to stop subsidies.  So the government should not provide any subsidies, so that we are on equal foot regarding the markets.
Rob:  Unlike in the U S, farmers here receive no help from the government.  To survive, they grow food crops for their family, and cotton for cash, earning in a good year only about three-hundred dollars.
Our life depends on cotton.  For example, if the price of cotton is 400 CFR, and if there are too many producers who have cotton on the market, the price can reduce to 25 CFR.
Rob:  Price fluctuations that effect farm economies around the globe.  
The world markets shape and hurt all of us.  
Rob:  Back in Oklahoma, Matt Mueller is preparing to plant another cotton crop.  In Oklahoma, it’s cotton farmers that receive some of the largest farm subsidies, amounts Mueller believes can be misleading. 
Matt Mueller:  I don’t think the general public understands the amount of money that we go through.  I’m a 1200 acre farmer.  That is small for my county.  As far as money I will go through, I will go get a loan for 300 hundred thousand at the bank to put a crop in.  We go through tens of thousands of dollars just to pay for our equipment, and our fuel, and our labor, and our chemical and seed.  We handle a lot of money and make a very small margin on it, and so that’s why when you talk big numbers, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a big profit towards us. 
Rob:  Still, Oklahoma producers received about 3-point-4-billion dollars in federal farm support over a ten year period, with the largest ten percent of the producers receiving about 70 percent of all the benefits.  Money farmers, like Mueller, defend as an investment in entire communities.
Mueller:  The subsidies we receive are basically passed on throughout the economy; so that we can go buy John Deere tractors; so that the guy who made the John Deere tractor, making union wages can keep his job; so that we can buy our chemicals that keep Monsanto, and the investors in Monsanto and those companies involved.  We basically take that money and put in back out in the economy.  And if you take the legs out from under agriculture, if we don’t have a safety net to operate with, and therefore we can’t stay in business, there is going to be a lot of the American industry and business that’s going to take a hit as well, because we add tremendously to manufacturing jobs and support jobs.
Rob:  Making the debate, this Fall over the farm bill, not just about the farm.
Rob:  If USDA projections are right, the actual cost of farm subsidies could decrease dramatically in the coming decade.  High oil prices have spurred demand for bio fuels, which in turn has raised crop prices to record highs, virtually eliminating the need for price support payments, and prompting opponents of farm subsidies to renew their call for their elimination.  Yet many in farm country say they know all too well the ups and downs of farming and are unwilling to, “bet the farm,” on an economic projection.