I have to admit, I was surprised to find out that the USDA introduced a Know your Farmer, Know your Food program. They are making all kinds of resources available to small farmers. So what’s wrong with this picture?

On a practical level, the USDA’s policies and regulations are skewed towards the industrial producers. It is difficult and often impossible for a small farm to take advantage of their opportunities or to comply with many of the regulations.

Among the many stories in USDA’s Small Farm Focus Gets Mixed Review, this is an example of just how inane some of the regulations are:

The Crains have also run into snags interpreting requirements of the EQIP program. After a new fence was built, they were told it didn’t qualify because they had used the wrong wire and it would have to be torn down and rebuilt if they wanted to collect a cost share. “I could see it if he used baling twine to cut cost, or something like that, but my husband knows how to build a fence,” she said.

A frequent complaint is that the USDA imposes a one-size-fits-all culture and the one size is huge. From USDA Red Tape Stands in the Way of Humane Slaughter Techniques and Local, Sustainable Meat Production:

Many of the problems forcing small operations out of business (and preventing would-be investors from building new plants) can be traced back to red tape imposed by the USDA. According to the Food and Water Watch report, the USDA’s regulations favor huge facilities that can spread the costs over hundreds of thousands of animals. Complying with policies is too onerous for many small operators. Extensive record-keeping and ever-fluctuating safety criteria add additional burdens. And Food and Water Watch reports that there have even been accusations of USDA inspectors singling out small facilities for harsh treatment because they make easier targets than national corporations with their staff scientists, legal experts, and well-paid government lobbyists.

There aer similar sentiments in this article: Will USDA Food Safety Plan Squeeze Out the Little Guy?

So, frankly, I don’t know what to make of the USDA’s Know Your Farmer Know Your Food program.

But meanwhile in Washington:

Three Republican senators have complained that a USDA effort to educate the public about where food comes from slights “conventional farmers who produce the vast majority of our nation’s food supply.”

Sens. Pat Roberts of Kansas, John McCain of Arizona and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia complained in a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that his agency spent $65 million last year on a program “aimed at small, hobbyist and organic producers whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets.”

To make their point, they try to scare people by threatening starvation:

Roberts is a former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and currently sits on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee along with Chambliss, the panel’s ranking member.

He said this week that they never meant to sound dismissive of small farmers and niche producers, or their customers.

“The more people that go to the farmers markets, the more people understand agriculture and they eat a better diet,” Roberts said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, it ought to be encouraged. . . . But you can’t go back to Walden Pond agriculture and expect to feed America.”

Contrary to popular perception, there is plenty of evidence that small farms are more productive than large ones. In agricultural economics, this is known as the “inverse size-productivity relationship,” first pointed out by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. If you stop to think about it, it makes perfect sense. A farmer who has only five acres of land knows every square foot of that land. She knows the best spots for the corn, the tomatoes, and the beans. She also plants a diversity of crops that are adapted to the various microclimatic and soil conditions; by doing that, she optimizes the use of her land. On a large farm, frequently only one crop is planted in a field regardless of the variation in soil conditions, and wide swaths of land can be wasted every time the large tractor turns a corner.

On the other hand, mega-farms are simply successful at feeding themselves. The largest 10% get 70% of the subsidy money (that’s our tax dollars, going to help really rich people). By the way, ever wonder why everything in your supermarket seems to come from California? Ever wonder why California cows are happy cows? California leads the nation in farm subsidies.

Anyway, it’s still good advice to know your farmer and know your food, even if the USDA is supporting it. As the saying goes, a stopped watch is still right twice a day.