It starts to make sense when you look a little deeper. Bill Harshaw, a retired USDA employee, remembers the 1985 Farm Bill, which first introduced the idea of “flex” acres, or the idea that farmers could plant other crops on acres supposedly subsidized for particular purposes (I believe they have to give up the subsidy if what they plant isn’t a base crop). “We were working away on the implementation when the fruit and vegetable people started calling to ask what could be planted ‘other than the program crop.’ The next thing you know there was a small little bill flying through Congress amending the 1985 act to exclude fruits and vegetables.”

Dan Owens, in the Blog for Rural America, notes that the fruit and vegetable industry-at-large really wants to keep the ban alive, as it stifles potential competition from big Midwestern farms who could, on a lark, grow fruit or veg if it seemed advantageous. The fruit and veg industry has plenty (and constantly increasing) of competition from produce grown in foreign countries without taking subsidized farms in the Midwest into account.

Of course, the troop of fruit and veg lobbyists gnawing at the Farm Bill is nothing compared to the Corn Battalion or the Soy Brigade. But they are a force, and they’ve made upholding the ban a top priority—so as a result, Hedin can’t grow more fruit or veg. (If he owned the land, he could reject the subsidy and plant whatever he wanted, but since the land is just rented—like more than half of the farmland in the Midwest, by the way—no dice).

This is just another one of the structural barriers keeping small farmers from getting even close to truly competing with the well-ensconced farms who’ve shaped the status quo. When does the small farmers’ army get to march into Washington?