Posted on 06/04/2012 4:06:45 PM PDT by chessplayer
Oh please, most farmers are some of the biggest welfare queens of the USA. Why do you think we have so many democratic senators and reps in the farm states? They vote for pork and they get it!
Parents need to provide kids with a reality based foundation and the assurance that they will back the kid, when he stands up.
My college transcript is littered with downgrades for taking on the prof’s sacred cows.
Once, pointing out that the prof wasn’t exactly going to pass muster on the “master race” policies he was endorsing, via his pro-euthenasia, pro-abort stance.
He didn’t appreciate it when I suggested that his policies wouldn’t be limited to third world eugenics.
Well,I told you the truth and when people begin to go hungry or pay the prices that Europeans pay for food some of the posters here will wake up. Farmers have never been ‘Welfare Queens’ that is just nonsense, and yes, representatives from rural areas do pander to farmers. Farming is one of the hardest physical jobs there are, and they gamble on whether the weather will be favorable or if their labor will be in vain if the crops fail. Food is a national security issue. Just try to run an army without it. Some Republican bias here [and I am a Republican] makes for stupidity. Bias, and calling everything ‘socialist’ one does not agree with is part of what is wrong with the party. Try a little independent thinking. Starving is a hard way to learn anything.
I grew up in the country so I actually do KNOW what I am talking about. Big and medium farms are some of the biggest government whores in the country. To deny reality doesn’t mean it stops being true.
Now the smaller family farms is a different story. Almost none of them get any kind of government dollars.
That’s silly. Grow your own if you have access to dirt. If you don’t, find a friend who does. $2.50 for a pepper is criminal.
I have 39 bell pepper plants growing in my garden now, and will soon plant 6 more.
I use many every summer in salads and grilled, and freeze several pounds of diced peppers in the fall and stuff and freeze 3 dozen peppers to eat over the winter.
I do have to buy several over the winter for salads, however, as frozen peppers are terrible in salads. Fine, however, in omelets and scrambled eggs.
Subtotal, Farming Subsidies in United States, 1995-2010
Subsidy Recipients 1 to 20 of 2,852,063
Recipients of Subtotal, Farming Subsidies from farms in United States totaled $167,331,000,000 in from 1995-2010.
(* ownership information available) Location Subtotal, Farming Subsidies
1995-2010
1 Riceland Foods Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $554,343,039
2 Producers Rice Mill Inc Stuttgart, AR 72160 $314,028,012
3 Farmers Rice Coop Sacramento, CA 95851 $146,174,314
4 Harvest States Cooperatives Saint Paul, MN 55164 $48,259,465
5 Tyler Farms Helena, AR 72342 $34,611,595
6 Missouri Delta Farms Sikeston, MO 63801 $25,280,578
7 Due West Glendora, MS 38928 $21,319,485
8 Dublin Farms Corcoran, CA 93212 $20,017,036
9 Dnrc Trust Land Management - Exem Helena, MT 59620 $19,794,841
10 Balmoral Farming Partnership Newellton, LA 71357 $19,706,445
11 Kelley Enterprises Burlison, TN 38015 $19,688,705
12 Gila River Farms Sacaton, AZ 85147 $19,038,126
13 Colorado River Indian Tribes Farm Parker, AZ 85344 $17,916,374
14 Perthshire Farms , MS 38746 $17,456,519
15 Bruton Farms Partnership , MS 38748 $17,130,031
16 Morgan Farms Cleveland, MS 38732 $16,726,985
17 New Hope Farms Schlater, MS 38952 $15,951,384
18 Soudan Farming Co Marianna, AR 72360 $15,739,779
19 Hansen Ranches Corcoran, CA 93212 $15,640,472
20 Tohono O’odham Farming Authority Eloy, AZ 85131 $15,526,042
* USDA data are not “transparent” for many payments made to recipients through most cooperatives. Recipients of payments made through most cooperatives, and the amounts, have not been made public. To see ownership information, click on the name, then click on the link that is titled Ownership Information.
City Slickers Continue To Rake In Farm Payments
Remember the last time you were smack in the middle of downtown Chicago or walking down a bustling street of Manhattan? Did you notice the sweeping farm vistas, the rich fields of corn and wheat?
Oh, wait a minute. There are none within the city limits of the Windy City or the Big Apple.
So why is the U.S. government sending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in farm subsidy payments to people who live in some of America’s wealthiest and decidedly urban neighborhoods?
The fact is, you can be a city slicker in Miami Beach or Beverly Hills and collect farm subsidy payments. All you have to do is have an ownership interest in some Iowa farmland. While 60 percent of American farmers must get along without a dime in federal subsidies, the so-called farm “safety net” benefits a narrow band of the wealthiest agri-businesses and absentee land owners and the lobbyists who ensure that the subsidies keep flowing.
http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2011/06/city-slickers-continue-to-rake-in-farm-payments/
$1.3 Billion to People
Who Don’t Farm
The largest annual subsidy, called direct and countercyclical payments, is given to farmers regardless of what crops they grow — or whether they grow anything at all. The Post found that, since 2001, at least $1.3 billion was paid to landowners who had planted nothing since 2000. Among the beneficiaries were homeowners in new developments whose backyards used to be rice fields. (July 2, 2006)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
Years ago I Hunted on a farm near Gettysburg, PA. Told the farmer one day that he had a nice farm, how comes not all of it was in production? He grinned said, pointing “ Over there is 60 acres I get paid to not plant tobacco. Over there is 80 acres I get paid not to plant wheat. Over there is X acres I get paid not to plant buckwheat. Over there is 90 acres I DO plant corn in, but the National Parks pay me for crop damage if there is, or isn’t, any from their deer which can’t be hunted.”
EL CAMPO, Tex. — Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.
Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual “direct payments,” because years ago the land was used to grow rice.
Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
Mark F. Rockefeller, a
fourth-generation industrialist, probably had taxes on his mind when he
purchased roughly 5,000 acres of farmland in Swan Valley, Idaho, and
started receiving subsidy checks at his capitalist lair in the
Rockefeller Plaza. Starting in 2001, the federal government has been
giving him $54,500 a year to not farm his land.
But rich subsidy queens
don’t need to travel far to filch their fair share of taxpayer wealth;
they can do it right where they live and work. Failed dot-com
entrepreneur Craig Winn lives in Albemarle, Va., and paid $1,000 in
taxes on a $3.5 million estate by converting its 50 acres into conserved
farmland. All his rich neighbors, including pop culture hacks Dave
Matthews and John Grisham, enrolled their land in the tax saver program,
too. Hell, even Walt Disney World became a farmer by putting some cows
to pasture on its land in Orlando to shave millions off its tax bill.
Hewlett-Packard opened up a Christmas tree farm on its massive Houston
campus, which saved it (and cost Houston) half a million dollars a year
in taxes.
The very existence of government owned stockpiles have historically been used to keep commodity prices artificially depressed.
The government programs do not insure production or supply, they insure votes.
Farmers who believe the USDA and their subsidies exist for the benefit of farmers are fools.
Consumers who believe they exist to insure their food supply, are fools.
The free marketplace works just fine, thank you. Allow farmers to grow and sell what they will at a profit, and watch the abundance!
Slightly more than $10/acre is a pittance, and certainly not an incentive. I don’t agree with the program, but nobody could lease the land for such a paltry sum.
What did he pay for the land? more than $1000/acre I’d wager. How much are you willing to invest at less than 1% annual return? And there are still costs associated with the land, even if he is “not farming” his land.
The tax relief is NOT “filched” nor does it “cost” municipalities. A landowner does not steal when he determines ways to pay less taxes - the money is HIS in the first place. By the same token, cities and counties cannot lose what they never owned.
Every person should make it their moral duty to pay as little tax as possible, and put ALL governments on subsistence diets!
“Subsidized insurance programs for when the weather goes bad or prices go south” sound to me like the camel’s nose under a potentially even bigger, more senseless tent.
If what Europeans pay for the price of food were the cost of the food, that is what we should pay.
Well, some folks are being compensated for taking their land out of production. The problem is not the compensation itself, but the sort of mentality that could conceive of, fund and put into place such a weird machination.
I’m not advocating government intervention in a free market for food production. Government stockpiles should not be used to apply pricing pressures or pick winners. Government stockpiles built during times of abundance make sense as preparedness for war, national disasters, or major financial collapse.
Many true conservatives, such as Alan Keyes, support farming subsidies. My suggestion is to replace subsidies with a stockpiling program that rewards farmers even if they produce more than the markets demand. Never let any food go to waste. Never pay farmers not to produce. Never buy food to let it rot.
I suggest we should stockpile 5-10 years worth of food to feed the entire nation. Then buy enough to maintain the supply while rotating the old stores of food, using these in lieu of financial aid to foreign nations.
Not a bad idea - but unfortunately, the market always looks to reserves (stockpiles) when arriving at prices - and I don’t know of any way to keep that from happening.
Historically, the terms of participating in gov’t grain loan programs insures a large release of product into the system at a certain “strike” price, because the loans have to be repaid if that price is reached; this, in effect, puts a ceiling on the price most years.
Farmers have made their particular market bed by their undisciplined entry into the market. The market cares less about the price than it does about the supply - and twice as much product enters the market at $4 than it does at $8 because most farmers sell because of bills due, not because the price is right. (Of course, the price is never right, it is either too low, or it is going higher).
Here are some numbers from back in the day when I was in the grain game:
2/3 of all the wheat is sold in the bottom 1/3 of the market.
90% is sold in a down market
10% is sold in an up market
So when supply slows down, the way to get more grain into the market is to send it down, not up - in the industry it is called “milking” the market. When the market jumps up and down, it’s called “stripping” the market (anybody with any milking experience understands these terms).
Farmers, as a whole, could better their returns be doing 3 things:
1) Being disciplined in the marketplace - selling 1/12 of their crop for delivery each month
2) ALWAYS selling into an up market, this fuels the rise, just like selling into a down market fuels the drop.
3) Being willing to contract long-term for regular delivery of production - with adequate protection against rising production costs and crop failures.
Crawling down off of that soapbox and getting back to government programs: There are more votes to be won by a “cheap food” policy than by a “fair price” policy - since there are far more consumers of food than producers - which means that if the government is involved in any way, it will have a detrimental effect on the producer. Farmers should be screaming for the government to butt out - but, as shown by their lack of discipline and intelligence in the marketplace, they aren’t, as a group, smart enough to see the long term dollars they are sacrificing for the short term nickel.
PS - I am at least 4th generation - probably more - (on both sides) in farming. I am trying to build my farm to a point where it will support me and my family, and I can quit my high paying career. I know about the farmers’ mentality from observing it in my own family and in myself.
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