The Senate is set this afternoon to pass a massive bill that will set farm policy for this country for the next five years. What's in it? Oh, pretty much what was in it last time around, when it established nearly $300 billion in subsidies, most of which go to big corporate farms. Got a post on the topic over at Huffington Post. Here's how it begins:

On the soundtrack of the documentary Life and Debt, about the impact of the World Bank and the IMF in Jamaica, there's a song by Jamaican dub poet Mutabaruka that contains this line: "American farmers get the upper hand/while our farmers [are] going one to one." Watch the movie, and it's easy to see what Mutabaruka is upset about -- Jamaicans standing in line to buy cheap Idaho potatoes while more pricey spuds grown in the island soil sit and rot.

American produce in Jamaican markets is cheaper, of course, in part because of the enormous subsidies that prop up American agriculture. Jamaica is in incredible debt to global lenders like the IMF and World Bank. And in an effort to dig themselves out, they embraced the neo-liberal open-market approach that the IMF likes best. And the effect, naturally, is that the Jamaican tuber has to compete head to head with the American spud given a leg up by its government. To some extent, a potato is a potato. And so Jamaicans buy the cheaper ones.

But U.S. ag subsidies are in some ways the worst of both worlds. They send American products out into the world with a distinct advantage. That no doubts weaken the ability of Caribbean farmers, for example, to compete in the new world order. But it's not like they're really all that helpful for their American counterparts.

The profound cynicism I've been feeling of late isn't really helped by the fact that we seem intent on perpetuating these sort of mistakes of the past. That's not surprising, but frustrating no doubt.