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There was a glimmer of good news in the global food price crisis when Japan announced it will release a portion of its imported rice stockpile and the High Level UN Food and Agriculture Organization secured financial commitments for short-term food aid and increased research and development into new seeds and the distribution of fertilizer to small farmers. Nonetheless, the dismal state of affairs in the global food situation underscores the need for US leadership in addressing a world agricultural system that is facing new challenges and a painful transition.

Fifteen years ago, a disastrous flood swept through the Midwest, causing an estimated $20 billion in flood damage, nearly 50 deaths and untold trauma to the hundreds of thousands whose homes were damaged or destroyed. Today we see the same kind of flooding in many of the same areas. Twenty-four deaths have been attributed to this year's floods, and economic damage is escalating into the billions of dollars. The sad truth is that while we learned a lot from the 1993 flood about how to prevent losses, we have not acted on those lessons (or those from Hurricane Katrina, for that matter). After the 1993 flood, President Bill Clinton ordered a White House study to determine what could be done to reduce future flood damage. The report recommended that those living behind levees be required to obtain flood insurance. Many of these residents, like those in New Orleans before Katrina, didn't understand the risks they faced: Levee conditions hadn't been adequately monitored, and even when problems were found, the needed funds hadn't been made available. Simply put, responsibility for dealing with floods had not been adequately defined.

While Christians continue to be drawn in public and media circles as preoccupied with the politics of abortion and gay “marriage,” Christians have also proven passionate on causes that include concern for the environment, and most recently, fair trade. Many companies, recognizing the potential business in catering to faith-based, fair trade minded churches, have moved in to fill the void and meet market demand. Equal Exchange, a Massachusetts-based organic coffee company, is just one of the many companies that has capitalized on the growing concerns of Christians to support fair trade causes.

A global summit over how to feed the hungry and pump up food stocks — tasks that could demand more than $20 billion a year in aid — magnified a debate over diverting grains to produce biofuels in the world's most developed countries. As hundreds of representatives gathered at a United Nations conference Tuesday to address the global food crisis, leading strategists took issue with the increasing interest in and use of ethanol, a cornerstone of an evolving U.S. policy on alternative fuel sources.

With lofty grain prices forcing an estimated 100 million people toward severe hunger, a food summit in Rome this week may help boost emergency relief. But the world faces a long-term crisis in supply, one that needs the same devotion – and results – of the Green Revolution four decades ago. Now the world again faces a food shortage, reflected in a nearly 70 percent price rise over the past two years. With US attention largely diverted to domestic concerns, the June 3-5 food summit is a critical test of whether a collective global leadership can push big reforms in how the world feeds itself.

The Farm Bill certainly should be better. It should include more reform on the commodity titles during this era of high prices for wheat, corn, and soybeans, and use savings from commodity reforms to provide additional support for nutrition, conservation, and healthy food, especially for America's 40 million poor. But there is no question that the bill is better than the veto option proposed by the president. By using his veto pen, President Bush wanted to extend the existing, flawed, and out-of-date 2002 farm bill into the future.

The House easily overrode President Bush's veto of a $307 billion farm bill last night in what appeared to be the most significant legislative rebuff of Bush's presidency. But a legislative glitch is likely to force embarrassed Democratic leaders to pass the bill all over again today -- and prompt a second showdown with Bush next month. The problem came when a House clerk mistakenly dropped a whole section dealing with trade policy from the 673-page bill before it was sent to the White House. Republican leaders argued last night that the House had overriden a veto on legislation that had never actually passed the House and Senate. For the sake of legislative integrity, Democratic aides said, Congress is likely to start the whole process again.

Few pieces of legislation generate the level of public scorn consistently heaped upon the farm bill. Presidents and agriculture secretaries denounce it. Editorial boards rail against it. Good-government groups mock it. Global trading partners formally protest it. Even farmers gripe about it. But as Congress proved again last week, few pieces of major legislation also get such overwhelming bipartisan support — enough, in the case of the current farm bill, to override the veto expected by President Bush any day now.

With food prices and farm incomes soaring, this should be an historic moment to junk a gimmick-laden and wasteful system of agricultural subsidies. But both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have lined up behind a five-year, $300 billion farm bill that changes little. After months of work, the bill has done its job of dribbling reform across an expanse of subsidies and price props. The timing couldn't be more loony as a worldwide food shortage deepens and the same leaders debate wider aid programs to answer global hunger.

At the heart of the standoff between the White House and Congress over a $307 billion farm bill is the question: Should taxpayers subsidize rich farmers – and who counts as rich? With crop prices soaring, the prospect of billions in subsidies to farmers could have been a tough sell. But supporters bolstered chances of passing the bill by increasing the minimum monthly benefit for food stamps and indexing household asset limits. Nearly two-thirds of all spending in the bill is for nutrition programs, a move supported by lawmakers from urban areas.

Congress has approved a $307 billion farm bill that rewards rich farmers who do not need the help while doing virtually nothing to help the world’s hungry, who need all the help they can get. President Bush should keep his promise to veto it and demand better legislation. The bill is an inglorious piece of work tailored to the needs of big agriculture and championed by not only the usual bipartisan farm state legislators but also the Democratic leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Every five years we get a new farm bill, and each time we are reminded that even reformers like Ms. Pelosi cannot resist the blandishments and power of the farmers.

With only 15 dissenting votes, the Senate passed a $307 billion five-year farm bill that President Bush says he will veto. But with 81 senators supporting it and Wednesday's 318-106 vote for the final version of the bill, Congress has more than the two-thirds majority to override that veto. If the president vetoes the bill, as expected, it would be only the second override of the Bush presidency. Last December, Congress voted to override a presidential veto of a $23 billion water-projects bill. In the Senate, many Republicans said they had to part ways with the president. "I'm disgusted with aspects of this bill, but I had no choice. North Carolina is the third largest agricultural state in the country," said Sen. Richard Burr (R) of North Carolina after the vote.

Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51. But importers and economists warn that those supports are unsustainable and predict further unrest in this poorest country in the Americas when the subsidies run out in late summer and, based on current price trends, the same sack will cost $70. The answer, experts say, is revitalizing domestic production and returning to more traditional foods.

After weeks of wheeling and dealing, a House-Senate conference committee has finally produced a farm bill. And what an unlovely creation it is. The nearly $300 billion, five-year legislation brims with subsidies for everything from biofuels to historic-barn preservation. It includes a dubious sugar-to-ethanol program and billions of dollars for a permanent disaster relief fund that essentially pays farmers to grow crops on land too dry to sustain them.

How can the world's hungriest schoolchildren be denied meals while the farm bill being debated in a House-Senate conference provides millions in subsidies for wealthy farmers? That's what Congress proposes. In all fairness, it should not become law. We are puzzled that Congress wants to increase overall farm bill spending by billions of dollars yet reduce by more than 90 percent the mandatory funding to feed hungry children. The program at issue saves lives and has a proven ability to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness in poor countries.

As protests over rising food costs spread around the globe, experts warn that high prices are here to stay, and Catholic bishops are calling for governments to take emergency measures to keep their poorest citizens from going hungry. Already this year, demonstrations linked to spiraling food prices have struck more than a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Protests forced Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis out of office April 12, and demonstrators have been killed in Cameroon, Peru and Mozambique. The price increases are fueled by a variety of factors that "are all coming together at once," said Lisa Kuennen, director of the public resource group at Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency.

With high food prices prompting grocery-store apologies to customers and raising fears of starvation in impoverished countries, Congress suddenly faces renewed pressure to cut subsidies to the wealthiest farmers and incentives for ethanol production. The American farmer, long an untouchable political icon, has even become something of a political embarrassment on Capitol Hill, with President Bush earlier this week demanding an end to crop subsidies for "multimillionaire farmers."

Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs. Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

What's wrong with this picture? One of America's health problems is obesity; the world's, malnutrition. Congress and the White House are trying to craft a farm bill that continues the practice of government paying farmers not to grow crops on some of their land. Yet it's clear that one way for a world economy to reduce the food shortage is for farmers to grow more. Farm prices in the United States are up, and consumers know it all too well. At the same time, farmers want to retain their federal subsidies, sometimes even to support extraordinary products like tobacco.