Editorials: Farm bill extended

Congress extended the farm bill for another year as part of a spending deal approved last weekend that avoided a government shutdown. The five-year farm bill should have been approved in 2023 but has been held up by House conservatives trying to reduce nutrition and conservation spending. Extending it a year, plus providing up to $30 billion in disaster and economic aid to farmers, takes the heat off lawmakers who have been dragging their feet.

Farmers could use the money, no doubt, with crop prices waning. Congress could not afford to let the farm bill expire or to let the government shut down. This used to be a bipartisan process that lined up more along regional lines than Democrat or Republican. That political balance has been undone in the past decade — the 2018 farm bill was two years late.

Many of the same tensions will remain when Congress convenes. The Republican majorities are so narrow that they cannot just ram through spending cuts to food stamps or conservation programs. There is no mandate. The public expects compromise. That suggests a safety net for producers, strong funding for research and conservation, and healthy nutrition programs that help lift families out of poverty. Children learn on a full stomach.

Compromise is how the short-term spending package kept the Social Security checks coming through March. Republicans had to call in Democrats for support when President-elect Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk blew up a previous bipartisan deal. They wanted to get rid of the debt ceiling to help with a tax cut for the wealthy. House Speaker Mike Johnson could not have done this without Democrats. Trump was testing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York to found out how far he could push. Trump found a worthy adversary with whom he could cut a deal.

Rep. Randy Feenstra should establish himself as a bridge builder as negotiations resume on the farm bill. The Hull Republican will get strong crop insurance and biofuels programs by helping along conservation and food funding. The problem has never been in the Senate. The House has become almost ungovernable in recent years. Passing a moderate farm bill quickly would show that Speaker Johnson, Rep. Feenstra and the House Republicans are capable of governing.

Mexico acknowledges reality

Mexico took an important step by accepting a tribunal’s finding that it cannot prevent planting or use of genetically modified crops, specifically corn. A three-member panel of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s trade dispute regime ruled Friday that Mexico could not ban GMOs by the end of 2024.

Mexico long has claimed that GMOs threaten native landrace maize lines and the economies of indigenous people, particularly in the southern regions of Chiapas and Oaxaca where maize was bred some 10,000 years ago. So-called free trade destroyed the maize culture when No. 2 yellow corn flooded Mexico from the fields of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. When you lose the campesino, the original maize lines are threatened.

While the Mexican government said it disagreed with the ruling, it would comply. Its reaction acknowledges the important relationship that the trade treaty regulates. Mexico is, after all, our biggest corn-buying customer and is a vital market for pork. The acknowledgement also is a nod to the Trump Administration, which has threatened to slap tariffs on Mexico over immigration and drug smuggling. The Mexican reaction also recognizes the reality that GMO crops are here to stay. What is not mentioned yet is what President Claudia Scheinbaum will do to protect indigenous producers and those landrace maize varieties. Those people have preserved these unique genetic lines for millennia, and you would hate to just trust it all to the cropaganda regime that drives peasants to Iowa when we drive them off our land. Our homecoming queen in Storm Lake is from that Oaxacan maize culture which we, of all people, should somehow respect before it is destroyed.