Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of the richest farmers would lose their government subsidies under a Bush administration plan to curb spending. Proposals released Wednesday would reduce agriculture spending by $18 billion over the next five years. They represent President Bush's vision of a new farm bill: a system of supports that would protect farm income and crop prices and keep food prices stable. Anyone making more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income would be cut off from farm payments under Bush's plan. At that level, "you're the richest guy in the county," Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner said. These producers, about...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Farmers, businesses and state officials are investing millions of dollars in ethanol and biofuel plants as renewable energy sources, but a new study says the alternative fuels burn more energy than they produce. Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce. But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm...

A new joint study from Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley says that fuels produced from biomass are uneconomical as they use much more energy in their creation than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates. "There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," said study author and Cornell researcher David Pimentel. "These strategies are not sustainable." The study, appearing in Natural Resources Research, entailed a detailed analysis of the energy input-yield ratios of producing ethanol from corn, switch grass and wood biomass as well as for producing biodiesel from soybean and sunflower plants. The researchers...

PETROVINA, Brazil - The six-seat Embraer airplane glides from a cloudless sky onto a red-dirt runway. Views of scrub-brush savanna stretching to the Amazon River give way to fields of 10-foot high corn and boll-bursting cotton. It's a farmer's wonderland, where the fecund soil can be had for as little as $200 a sun-drenched acre and a Maryland-sized chunk of land is cleared each year for cotton, corn, soybean and cattle farms. Agriculture is booming in Brazil, and U.S. farmers are taking notice. Buffeted by high production costs, low market prices and the World Trade Organization, Americans increasingly look to...

SAN FRANCISCO - Monsanto Co.'s "seed police" snared soy farmer Homan McFarling in 1999, and the company is demanding he pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars for alleged technology piracy. McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice. "My daddy saved seed. I saved seed," said McFarling, 62, who still grows soy on the 5,000 acre family farm in Shannon, Miss. and is fighting the agribusiness giant in court. Saving Monsanto's seeds, genetically engineered to kill bugs and resist weed sprays, violates provisions of the company's contracts...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Bill and Vickie Thomas find in Columbus, Ohio, what they never will see at their farm: a million potential customers a year at the North Market, a farmers' market. It's that traffic level that has allowed them to hold on to their family farm. "It gives us a so-called store where there's lots of people," said Thomas, who grows apples, peaches, plums and blueberries in Philo, about an hour east of Columbus. "When you sit ... at the farm and wait for them to come, it just doesn't happen," he said. "Farmers' markets are what's keeping small...

President Bush has "Lied to the American People" about his National Guard service during the Vietnam War, snarled U.S. Senator Tom Harkin at a September 9, 2004 press conference. Swift Boat veterans critical of John Kerry were also liars, Harkin claimed. Vice President Dick Cheney, said Harkin, was “a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War.” And those who brought up Kerry’s anti-war activities in the United States that encouraged the North Vietnamese Communists to continue fighting instead of negotiating peace, said Harkin, represent the “right-wing kooky fringe.” The hot-headed, gray-haired 65-year-old Harkin has lately become Democratic candidate...