Web site reveals farmers' subsidies

It's tough enough growing crops in today's market, but now anyone can find out exactly how much of a handout farmers get from the government.

Since it became public last month, a Web site that lists how much each individual farmer in the nation has received in federal crop subsidies over the last five years has registered millions of hits.

Farmers are fuming over the invasion of their privacy, and they're surfing to see just how much their neighbor gets from the government.

"When it comes to stuff like that, I wish it wasn't on there because we get grief on it," said John Walsh Jr., who farms with his father, three brothers and two sisters in the Mauston area.

John E. Walsh and Sons received subsidies of $1,246,876 between 1996 and 2000 - fourth highest on the list of Wisconsin farms getting federal money.

"For some reason, everybody has the idea that these farm subsidies are going to the wrong people," said Walsh, 46. "There's five people in on (our) farm, and if you divide it down it's not too bad."

Overall, Wisconsin farmers received $1.7 billion in subsidies in the last five years, with the top 12 farms getting $1 million or more. Nationally, more than $71 billion was handed out by the federal government to prop up grain prices and keep farmers afloat during the same period.

The Environmental Working Group gathered the information through the Freedom of Information Act and put it on the Web site www.ewg.org. The non-profit group hopes the information will lead to limits on subsidies and more funding for conservation programs for farmers.

The U.S. Agriculture Department had long refused to release information about individual subsidy payments, citing privacy concerns. But a federal judge ruled that it was a matter of public interest.

That means everyone - farmer and city dweller alike - now knows exactly how dependent farmers have become on the government since the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996.

Since it went public on Nov. 6, the Web site has gotten more than 11 million hits and inspired rural newspapers to publish lists of the top, and in some cases the bottom, recipients, causing initial embarrassment and then a wave of curiosity as farmers log on to find their names.

"To see my subsidies on that site was just like me being seen totally naked at a school reunion," one farmer wrote recently in an online forum maintained by Agriculture.com, the Web site of Successful Farming magazine. "Something has to be done about that site because it is very embarrassing."

Subsidy recipients that have turned up on the database include Fortune 500 companies, colleges and universities, at least a dozen members of Congress, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, wealthy city dwellers, lobbyists for major farm organizations, a former Miss America, media mogul Ted Turner, former Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller and former Washington Post executive editor Benjamin Bradlee.

Though hardly typical, the proliferation of such tales has buttressed charges by lawmakers and others that subsidies intended to help struggling family farmers instead flow disproportionately to the wealthiest growers, most of whom are in the Midwest and South.

"It makes the debate real," Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said of the Web site. "The only way these (subsidies) are going to become an important policy debate is if farmers understand them more than abstractly, in a really up-close, grounded way."

But others say the average person looking at the Web site probably doesn't understand how crop subsidies work and will assume the statistics simply illustrate just how much farmers are holding out their hands.

"They're trying to make the farmer look like they're pigs at the pig trough, and that's not the case," said Tom Thieding, communications director for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. "They're just making it easy for people to go in and look at it, and very likely misinterpret the information."

The purpose of the Web site is to "raise the ire of the taxpayer about the amount of subsidies being paid out there, (and) the farmer is going to be bothered by that kind of effort," Thieding said. "But they're going to say, 'Until you change things, this is the way we're going to farm.' "

Since the subsidies are based on production, it's only natural that the biggest producers would get a larger share than smaller farms that don't produce as much corn, wheat and soybeans, Thieding said.

In Wisconsin, as in many other states, a growing number of farm families are entering into partnerships to save money and streamline their businesses. So while it may seem as if large farms are getting the lion's share of subsidies, the farms actually support several families.

"Ninety-nine percent of the farms in Wisconsin are family-run farms," said Wisconsin Agriculture Secretary Jim Harsdorf. "They may vary in size, but that's only because they might have multiple members who joined together for efficiency reasons."

Small family farmers are being driven out by flat grain prices, kept artificially low in part by government subsidies that encourage overproduction. The more acres of grain or cotton a farmer owns, the bigger the subsidy. The subsidy programs also help ensure that when prices are low, the government will help make up the difference.

"Producers would love to see the marketplace drive their prices, not the government programs," Harsdorf said. "They unfortunately haven't had a chance to do that."

At current prices, it costs a farmer as much as 50 cents more to grow a bushel of corn than he receives on the market. The biggest winners, according to many farmers, are the huge grain companies that buy inexpensive corn subsidized by the taxpayer and then process and sell it at a profit.

For Walsh, whose family has purchased smaller farms from producers who decided to get out of the business, the subsidies are keeping the farm afloat. The Walshes farm 4,500 acres, half corn and half soybeans.

"I wish we didn't have to have the subsidies, but if they weren't there, a lot of people would be growing nothing, I can tell you that," Walsh said.

Farm subsidies are a national security necessity. To let the domestic food production fall prey to foreign producers who use $1 a day labor, can apply any and all chemicals they want and ignore food safety, will cost America dearly.

Granted mohair supports need to go, but staple food-stock must be supported.

What happened to the marketplace? What happened to the Freedom to Farm Act? I have been raising food animals for 12 years but get nothing from the subsidy program because I am such a small operation. What a joke the subsidy program makes of the critics of welfare and the opponents of a managed economy. Let's just admit it now, there is litttle to no chance for individuals to really participate in the free enterprise adventure in this country. With rare exception more and more of us in this country are born into a caste system from which there is little hope of escape or as we used to say upward mobility.

Sadly, you are making the exact argument that anybody else getting a subsidy makes: It's a matter of national security." And there's just as much truth to it, i.e.: none at all. Government has NO BUSINESS subsidising one group or another at the expense of the taxpayer. PERIOD. Please cite the Constitutional authority for such programs, if you can.

Can you explain why farm subsidies are related to national security? Farmers produce "too much" food. That is why they are paid to not produce, or the government buys up "excess" product to prop up prices. I could understand it being a national security issue if world prices for farm commodities were so low that farmers did not have enough incentive to grow enough to feed American. But this is not true.

The fact of the matter is that farmers are really corporate welfare cases. I think it is absolutely hypocritical to cut off support for single mothers supporting children while paying out tens of thousands of dollars to people who's only problem is they can't adapt to a changing marketplace.

Before anyone jumps on me as being soft on welfare moms, I must say I supported welfare reform. I support ALL welfare reform, including welfare that goes under other names, like farm price supports, export subsidies, etc.

Farm subsidies make me spittin' mad. My father is and was a self-employed carpenter. His output supplies as basic human need: shelter. It is as basic as food (especially when you live in northwest Wisconsin). But no one has ever offered to pay him a subsidy when the market for homes dried up. No one offered to prop up his wages when "excess supply" (too many carpenters) entered the market. No one from the government stepped up to buy his spec houses that were not selling.

Why on earth are farmers any different? They ARE NOT. Farm subsidies continue because of a sentimental and emotional attachment people have to farming and farmers. It is completely irrational. My only consolation is that in Europe it is a lot worse. In Switzerland, farmers are basically props for tourists, as they get 80% (that is not a typo, eighty per cent) of their income from the government.

The tools your father needs to ply his trade are generally speaking, small and compact and reasonably-priced. A combine, needed for efficient harvest of wheat, can cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tractors, ploughs, irrigation systems, etc, all add up to enormous capital outlay that must be made up front before you can even dream of making a profit farming. And once you do all that, and a hailstorm wipes out your crop, what then?

The market has been acting in farming - there used to be millions of farmers and farms in the US, and now vast tracts of land in Kansas are uninhabited except when the few remaining farmers stop by to tend their thousand-acre plots. It's gotten so that the only way to be profitable is to farm dozens of square miles at a time.

It's gotten so that the only way to be profitable is to farm dozens of square miles at a time.

Why is "bad"? Name me one occupation that doesn't produce more, faster, better over time? You still drive a model T, fly in trimotor aircraft? Use faithhealers for doctors? What is so great about a 1 acre field of crops vs. 100 acre field?

Thanks for posting this! The site is so busy, that even after you get on, you can't make a search!

I just hope that someone creates a site showing how much of our tax dollars that the enviral organizations get above the table and below the table.

Then, I would like to see how much Opecker $'s flow into outfits like Club Sierra, Greenwar and other phoney enviral organizations which keep us dependent on Opecker oil!

How often the envirals become huge campaign money launders for the demonicRat candidates!

Seems like the above is only fair!

Oh good God girl, get a grip. We already put missles in their silos. Do we need to give them welfare too? None of these handouts go to national security.

I should have mentioned the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). This is the one that pays farmers to not grow anything. If the purpose behind these idiotic payments had anything to do with national defense, as opposed to corrupt vote buying, what sense would there be in paying landlords to leave their fields fallow?

Government has NO BUSINESS subsidising one group or another at the expense of the taxpayer.

I agree. Let the taxpayer subsidise by choice. Make a good product and I'll buy lots of it. If you can figure out how to grow a teriyaki steak, I'll sign up for payroll deduction!

Why on earth are farmers any different? They ARE NOT. Farm subsidies continue because of a sentimental and emotional attachment people have to farming and farmers. It is completely irrational.

You've heard that story of the D.C. Department of Agriculture employee who came home from work one day crying. His wife asked him what happened and he replied "My farmer died".

Land & development costs far outstrip the cost of tools to build houses. - But so what? Capital costs have always been the biggest risk in any business.

And once you do all that, and a hailstorm wipes out your crop, what then?

Yep, what then if your new house burns up? -- You start over, thats what.

You seem to be saying that government should guarantee markets to high risk, capital intensive business. Is that so?

Sorry, doesn't fly. Food is a basic commodity, making it one of the most valuable resources and hence it should be as separated as possible from government subsidies to remain healthy and strong as an economic sector. I certainly don't want a mainstay of my life dependent upon a farmer whose lifeline is named Uncle Sam.

As for farm subsidies to the "rich" fine by me. If they pay taxes, and they do,far out of proportion to their "fair share" they should be eligible for all these idiotic programs if they meet the idiotic requirements. My beef is with the idiotic programs in the first place. They should not exist. But as long as they do, like Social Security, my rule of thumb is every citizen who pays the taxes should be eligible for the benefits if they qualify.

I can tell you I would sign up in a heartbeat for farm subsidies if I were "rich" and owned a farm. Our socialist Congress takes far too much money from the "rich" to redistribute it as they see fit already.

In other words, if I were rich I would try to screw the government using its rules just like the government would screw me with its rules.

End farm subsidies. Now.

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