CARACAS - American family farmers are rallying support for a plan aimed at uprooting U.S. agricultural subsidies that they say are lavished upon agribusiness at the expense of smaller producers and consumers at home and abroad.

""The U.S. government spends billions of dollars each year on farm payments that are heavily concentrated in large-scale commercial operations, distorting international markets and causing controversy and unfairness in global trade,"" said Raymond Offenheiser, president of the charity Oxfam America.

[The proposed Food for Family Farms Act] would end U.S. farm subsidies for big business and replace them with Roosevelt-era programs that lend financial support to small farmers and reestablish a state sponsored system of food reserves.

National Family Farm Coalition
The longstanding subsidies are retained in President George W. Bush"s budget plan for fiscal 2007, which begins this October, according to the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC).

The association of U.S. and European farm groups sought to promote its alternative at an international jamboree of grassroots groups here last month and again at its annual winter meeting, under way in Washington, D.C.

Representatives of Central American farm groups and the international peasant movement Via Campesina traveled to Washington for the talks.

The NFFC plan calls for changes to the U.S. Farm Bill, which sets rules and policies for U.S. agriculture and is up for renewal in 2007. The coalition is pushing what it calls the Food for Family Farms Act. This legislation would end U.S. farm subsidies for big business and replace them with Roosevelt-era programs that lend financial support to small farmers and reestablish a state sponsored system of food reserves.

""We need to make a reserve for times of national flood and drought and devastation, and we can regulate the price of grain by having a farmer owned reserve,"" said coalition treasurer Bill Christison.

The NFFC proposes establishing three reserves: A strategic reserve that could be tapped during humanitarian crises, a food security reserve to ensure national food independence, and a farmer-owned reserve that would redirect excess production into storage and thus prevent gluts that cause prices to tumble below cost.

Christison said his organization also hopes to reinstate so-called ""non-recourse loans""--government loans to small farmers that can be paid back in food commodities if world prices crash.

Both reserves and non-recourse loans were U.S. policy before 1996, when they were eliminated under the Freedom to Farm Bill.

Bush"s budget proposal for fiscal 2007 would reduce agricultural subsidies--which have averaged about $20 billion a year--by 5 percent, but these changes would do little to alter the fact that most subsidies go to the largest producers, according to Oxfam America.

The nation"s small farmers oppose U.S. farm subsidies because some 70 percent of federal payments go to about 10 percent of the largest producers, with 50 percent of farmers receiving little or nothing, according to the NFFC.

In turn, U.S. farm subsidies contribute to the decline of world food prices because they enable farmers to sell goods at below the cost of production, the coalition said.

Low prices have forced small and large farms alike to rely heavily on artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and overproduction in order to maximize profits, it added. Excess goods are ""dumped"" at below-cost prices onto the world market, further depressing prices and making it difficult for small farmers to compete with large agribusiness firms.

In the United States, the consequences have included the withering of small-scale agriculture. The number of farms smaller than 200 acres in area fell from six million in 1945 to two million in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Similar consequences overseas have come to haunt the United States, according to some U.S. farmers.

Low prices supported by U.S. farm subsidies radiate around the world, not only shutting down farms abroad but also sparking immigration to the United States, for example from Mexico, said Christison, who has spent his life farming a plot of Missouri land his grandfather purchased in 1869.

""The forcing of Mexico to buy corn from the U.S. at these depressed prices has put farmers in Mexico out of business. Therefore, they try to get to the U.S. and other places. As this migration occurs the tax base disappears, the schools close, the stores, and the health care facilities also close,"" he said.

""And the same thing is happening around the world. There are tragic consequences with this migration,"" he added.

As the Farm Bill approaches renewal, small farmers like Christison are hoping to beat out the agribusiness lobby and pass anti-trust measures aimed at preventing corporate concentration in the food industry.

Ending farm subsidies, they say, is a central element in their hopes of reviving rural America.

""Family farms have been doing this [farming] for generations and are being pushed form their land. It"s hard to compete with corporations that are subsidized to the hilt,"" said Tim Gibbons of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.

Agribusiness executives countered that small farmers" and large firms" interests are not at odds.

""Farmers are our customers. Their success and our success go hand in hand,"" said Chris Horner, a spokesman for seed, fertilizer, and biotechnology major Monsanto. ""We want them to succeed in what they do 100 percent. What"s good for small farmers is good for business. It seems that this group [the NFFC] is just lashing out at us.""