The 2007 Farm Bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee last week contains more of the same - large government subsidies to successful farms that encourage the idea that bigger is always better in crop production.

Should the federal government provide bigger subsidies to the nation's biggest farms to drive their neighbors out of business?

No, it shouldn't, says Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs and the National Rural Action Network, who campaigns for better farm and rural policies.

In recent years, the federal government has spent more subsidizing the 20 biggest South Dakota farms than it spent to support rural development in the 20 South Dakota counties suffering the worst population declines, counties comprised of 66 towns and nearly 80,000 people, according to the NRAN.

The ag committee version of the farm bill, supported by Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, raised the true limit on direct payments made, regardless of farm prices, by $40,000.

Herseth Sandlin defends this Farm Bill as a "strong, smart and fair" safety net for agricultural producers and a good first step toward tightening payment limits. The proposed bill does end eligibility for farmers with adjusted gross incomes over $1 million and places other income conditions on farmers who make $500,000 or more. Under the 2002 Farm Bill, farm corporations could have an AGI of $2.5 million before subsidies ended. We support those changes as obvious and long past due. But we think the 2007 Farm Bill could and should do even more to limit subsidies.

To Herseth Sandlin's credit, she authored or supported many good provisions in the Farm Bill, including protecting its country-of-origin-labeling provisions that insure only animals born, raised and slaughtered in this country receive a USA label. She also helped save the "sodsaver amendment," which enhances soil conservation by discouraging landowners from breaking native sod and grassland for cropland.

The 2007 bill also improves transparency of payments and ends the three-entity rule that allowed some producers to collect as much as double the subsidy limits.

But the absence of more stringent payment limitations leads us to believe that rural politicians still believe that the key to their political success lies in delivering more taxpayer money quickly to farmers.

In truth, continuing federal payments to mega farmers while the small rural towns they live near shrivel and die is destroying the credibility of farm programs.

As the full House of Representatives takes up the 2007 Farm Bill today, we urge it to strengthen the legislation so that small family farms and rural communities are strengthened, too.