Huge Farm Bill Offers More of Same for Agribusiness
WASHINGTON - A prominent San Francisco patron of the arts, Constance Bowles — heiress of an early California cattle baron, widow of a former director of UC Berkeley’s Bancroft library and a resident of Pacific Heights — was the largest recipient of federal cotton subsidies in the state of California between 2003 and 2005, collecting more than $1.2 million, according to the latest available data.
That is the way U.S. farm programs are designed to work. Five crops — cotton, corn, wheat, rice and soybeans — received 92 percent of the $21 billion in federal farm payments last year. The biggest payments go to the biggest farms. 
That also is pretty much the way farm programs will continue to work for the next five years under mammoth legislation scheduled today for a House vote.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco has endorsed the new farm bill, produced by the House Agriculture Committee to run programs for the next five years, as a major reform because it limits annual payments to farmers who earn $1 million a year.
The income limit for a couple would actually be $2 million, because a husband and wife each could collect.
If the bill becomes law, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the cap will affect just 3,100 farmers, assuming they do not use accounting tactics to reduce their taxable income. Actual payments to farmers would rise over the five years authorized by the bill. The bill is over budget, so Democratic leaders propose a $4 billion tax increase on U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies to pay for it.
This year’s farm bill has drawn extraordinary attention in the Bay Area and across the country, where a back-to-the-farm food movement has attracted such high-profile supporters as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York Democrat running for president.
The aim of the advocates is to link farmers directly with consumers to provide fresher food, including more fruits and vegetables in federal nutrition programs such as food stamps and school lunches. They contend that crop subsidies have fueled the industrialization and concentration of agriculture into giant agribusinesses and contribute to the nation’s obesity epidemic by encouraging the use of corn sweeteners and vegetable oils in processed foods.
Pelosi is pushing for a quick House vote this week on the Agriculture Committee’s bill to give rural Democrats — especially those who won seats in GOP-dominated districts last year — something to tout when they return home for the August congressional recess.
Pelosi owes her speakership to those new members. But most California farmers — and most U.S. farmers — do not grow the five subsidized crops and do not receive direct payments from the federal government. California fruit, nut and vegetable growers, who would get research and marketing aid under the new bill, mostly oppose crop subsidies and did not seek them.
Economists say the subsidies harm most farmers. That’s because they lower crop prices, raise land prices and rents, and give subsidized farmers a financial advantage that has helped drive their neighbors out of business and keep young farmers from getting started.
Many farmers, and farm state politicians of both parties, oppose large payments. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, all want to limit payments to one-quarter the size Pelosi has endorsed in the House bill.
“When you say to the biggest farms in the country, ‘The bigger you get, the more money you get from the government,’ then the farm program effectively subsidizes the destruction of family farming,” said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska. “Most people in rural America think that is bad policy.”
The big payments would continue while prices of subsidized crops are at or near record highs, fueled by the ethanol boom. The value of this year’s giant corn crop — which would almost cover the state of California in acreage — is expected to reach $40 billion.
California’s top subsidy recipient from 2003 to 2005, Bowles, 88, of San Francisco, collected the $1.2 million in mostly cotton payments through her family’s 6,000-acre farm, the Bowles Farming Co., in Los Banos (Merced County). She could not be reached for comment.
Another family member, George “Corky” Bowles, who died in 2005, collected $1.19 million over the same period. George Bowles once ran the farm but lived on Telegraph Hill. A collector of rare books and 18th century English porcelain, he served as a director of the San Francisco Opera and a trustee of the Fine Arts Museums.
The farm is run by Phillip Bowles in San Francisco. Phillip Bowles was on vacation Tuesday and could not be reached. He told KGO television last week that he’s no fan of subsidies, but if big cotton growers in Texas get them, so should he.
“Many of these businesses are getting 20 to 30 to sometimes 40 percent of their gross revenues directly from the government,” Phillip Bowles told KGO. “I don’t have a good explanation for that. Somebody else might, but it beats me.”
Economists say they can find no rationale for the subsidies, which started in 1933 as temporary aid for small farmers devastated by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Then, a quarter of Americans lived on farms. Today, less than 1 percent do — so few that the Census Bureau quit counting.
“The programs are just outdated,” said Daniel Sumner, director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center and a leading farm economist. “No one can think of a legitimate reason why we have these farm programs for a handful of crops in the United States.
“If the best the committee could do is say these payments are to help people in need, and we’re going to define for farm legislation that somebody’s in need if the family makes $2 million a year — a million for the husband and a million for the wife — that’s a little strange. If these are really welfare programs for the needy, we don’t normally cut those off at $1 million. It’s more like $20,000.”
Cotton ranks as the No. 1 subsidized crop in California. Federal data compiled by Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization, shows that the state’s cotton, rice and dairy farmers received more than $1 billion in federal support from 2003 to 2005. During the same period, about $62 million went to farm conservation and environmental projects in California.
Environmentalists have taken aim at farm subsidies this year because the farm programs are where the money — and the land — is.
About half of the continental United States is farmland. More than 150 million acres were enrolled in federal farm conservation programs in 2005, according to report by Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
“The environmental implications of U.S agricultural conservation policy … are enormous,” Craig Cox, director of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, wrote in the Stanford report.
Farm environmental programs now total $4 billion a year, far outstripping any other federal funding for private conservation. Environmentalists would like to see the crop subsidies also go to “green payments” to induce environmental protection for wildlife habitat, watersheds and the like.
© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
Our leaders hate welfare for poor people and absolutely love welfare for rich people.
Who owns our political process?
Kinda like the American people paying the Bush family $400,000 a year to lead our country while the Saudi Royal Family pays the Bush family with over a billion dollars worth of investments and contacts.
Who owns our political process?
Subsidies=bad. If we’d quit importing so much food from other countries, put bigger taxes on junk food and other crap that’s making us obscenely obese, and give better funding to local farmers’ markets, maybe we could save the small-time American farmer and be able to see our feet when we look down.
We have to take cash out of politics. We must have public finacing of canidates. The public airwaves should be kept public and used for important and free political campaigning. They will still have room to chase down Paris Hilton or have us watch people put worms up their nose.
Gosh, I don’t know about you guys, but I sure am glad Democrats are controlling Congress. Everything’s different now.
I guess we shouldn’t expect too much from them, though. Their focus is on ‘08. As soon as there’s a Democrat in the oval office, the transition of our government from Insane and Hopelessly Corrupt to merely Hopelessly Corrupt will be complete.
Corporations + Government = Facism
http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html
Pelosi voted for the farm pork to help Dems running in ag counties. With a public referendum, she wouldn’t have to make unpopular decisions like this one, or decisions favoring Big Money instead of the public. Let the people decide: http://www.vote.org/
Subsidies cause more problems than most people even know- it creates an imbalance all over the world- while rich US farmers who receive them are out having a grand time, enjoying that vast, unearned wealth, their exhibits of conspicuous consumption particularly galling, considering an entire way of life- the family farm- is gone, with vast tracks of old farms gobbled up by the agri-monsters that have also polluted the environemt so much- an immense DEAD ZONE in the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to agricultural run-off. Sh!t!
Wow, how many US citizens could the Bowles’ subsidies benefit? We really could take that money, to create programs where we educate NEW farmers, and help them finance farmlands, their produce accessible to local markets.
Welfare for the well to do, plain and simple.
Pelosi is playing politics for the vote on this issue and selling the citizens of California out.
These guys are at war with the environment: www.fb.org. Lobbyists like these put a friendly spin on their destructive role. A heinous corporate front, like many others, at war, with you.
If we’re not willing to step up and make sure Monsanto and the rest of the agrimafia earn as much profits as possible as they introduce alien species into our food chain while shoving ethanol up our asses, then the terrorists have won.
It’s not just votes Pelosi is playing for (and don’t forget she’s another millionaire as well). So how much does Archer Daniels Midland contribute to the Democrats now?
This is a disgusting example of Democratic corruption.
It hurts to see that the Democratic members of Congress are just as capable of doing what is politically expedient at the expense of what is just, rational, and sound policy. Again, we the little people of the country lose big time. The system itself is broken and both parties are caught in the web of its brokenness. It takes a lot of courage to do what is right at the expense of perceived personal loss and there are too few in Congress who can go there.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/21/2676/
“Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, hailed as reform a bill that would grant subsidies to farmers earning up to $1 million — five times more than the cap sought by the Bush administration”
Using Campaign Spending Limits to Get America Better Politicians is the Only Way to Solve America’s Problems Enough
To end subsidies, not just cap or change them, and end dumping, to to http://www.nffc.net That gives most savings for conservation, food aid, nutrition
The story totally misses the big subsidies, not millions, but multi billion with a B, as Tyson and Smithfield got. These are from the same program but different misunderstood and missed by most progressive groups See info on some billions at http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/CompanyFeedSvgsFeb07.pdf
Worldwide farmers need a living wage. Hear black farmers for a change at http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/oct1006.HTM
The story gives a totally false history of the programs. There were no early subsidies, and no dumping. Subsidies started in 1973. See History of Agricultural Price Support and Adjustment programs on web page 29 at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AIB485/
Farm programs are totally different today. See especially “Crisis by Design” by IATP for an accurate history. http://www.iatp.org/iatp/publications.cfm?accountID=258&refID=48644
IATP, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is part of Common Dreams Progressive community. It’s one source that doesn’t let agribusiness billionaires off the hook, great info on dumping, farm bill, and what other sites totally miss.
This false info, if your progressive group gives it, must be corrected. Don’t let Cargill, ADM, (many billions) Tyson and Smithfield off.
Correct hunger falsehoods with: (http://www.iatp.org/iatp/publications.cfm?accountID=258&refID=98205) and APAC (short: http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/103.html) (long: http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html)Excellent source.
more of the same, no matter who is elected.
If there was ever a time to slash welfare payments to farmers, now is the time since commodity prices are up. Prices should stay relatively high with the food/energy battle for crop acres. I’m a farmer and I’ve received quite abit of fed money over the years (thank you very much Mr. Taxpayer) but why not just let the market place take care of things? As I’ve said in the past, subsidized crop insurance is a good program to help farmers through rough patches with weather (and at low cost to taxpayers). But trash the direct payments to farmers simply because program crops have historically been grown on specific property and dump the deficiency payments that kick in when prices are low (they just hurt third world farmers who have to compete with US subsidies).
“Welfare for the rich,
Free enterprise for the poor.”
Thanks for all the wise comments –
Why aren’t some of you people in Congress– ?
$$$$ — ???
Start community gardens;work to educate the people in particular the youth since we’re leaving such a mess for them to clean up and find another way!
It seems we don’t consider where food comes from, where garbage goes and all the consequenes of unconscious behaviour.
This is informative albeit a bit graphic even for a cartoon: http://www.themeatrix.com/
This is the government we have now; we must engage them, our systems and ourselves in positive transformation; be patient but persistent– major change happens one step at a time and because there are those of us foolhearty enough to work together to make it happen.
Peace.
Hey everyone,
I do not mean to switch subjects on you, but there are some new developments in the Pat Tillman case. According to the autopsy, he was shot three times in the head from point-blank range, and the army lawyers were high-fiving each other over the legal case (the media somehow caught obtained a copy of this on tape). The fallout from this getting worse by the hour. It could be one of the worst cover-ups in military history. Stay tuned. It should be circulating the media within the next couple of days.
I stand corrected, they think he was shot with an M-16 from less than 10 yards away. Three bulletholes to his forehead.
If Carolyn Lunkhead, sorry-Lochhead, would take a drive through the breadbasket of the country she would not make such inane statements as “most farmers do not grow the five subsidized crops”. Just by looking at the farm program database one can see there are hundreds of farmers drawing moderate payments for every one that is getting one of the large payments. Maybe we should just run a grand experiment and shut off all payments to farmers to see what would happen. Might be about like the grand experiment in Iraq. Then what do we do after it has the wrong or unexpected result? I guess we could get along without corn flakes, wheat bread, etc, but how about pork, ham, steak, chicken,as those products use the cereal grains. Maybe it might be wise to visit a few farms before talking about their rich,luxurious life style and see what actually is going on there. Unless you have been raised on a farm to appreciate producing something of value most people could not handle the hard work, tremendous expenses, and commitment required.
This is BushCo way of redistributing the land wealth to Monsanto and others as they collapse the economy and set us up fascism.
They’ve never tried fascism on a modern literate, armed, technologically advanced, and connected populace.
I say let them keep pushing. Push, push, push. Until Joe Sixpacks wakes up from his sleep. Then all hell will break loose.
Paul Bramscher July 26th, 2007 10:47 pm
Yea they will send the million man Mexican army into the 49 and that will be that!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xRTpCieQvo&mode=related&search=
At the rate our own corporations have sent our jobs to places like Mexico, I doubt it. If it weren’t for the Mexican army or the Chinese army, IBM and the big auto manufacturers wouldn’t have regional stability around their manufacturing facilities. In a weird way, their security is now tied to ours.
That is, if you even view these formerly American companies as still American…
Paul Bramscher July 26th, 2007 11:49 pm
Here read it and listen to it yourself…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document.shtml
IBM was part and party to the Nazis
Now consider battle tactics and realize the Mexicans will be able to kill us with ease and our military is training Iraqis to attack Iran. They want us all dead!
America will soon be gone. In August we will become the North American Union. Canada and Mexico will be annexed. The NAU will eventually become the NAE, North American Empire. Who will eat and who will starve will be decided by the Emperor.
“Stand and fight, we do consider, reminded of an inner pact between us”.
relayer@q.com
The agricultural subsidy system is practiced in the US cannot be justified on moral, humanitarian, economic or rational grounds. It makes sense only to politicians who are trying to get re-elected.
It likely falls somewhere between fraud and a criminal enterprise. And it has the full support of Nancy Pelosi.
It’s the fossil fuels industries, stupid; hempseed oil will replace petroleum and the industries have known it for more than a century. Oh, excuse me, I’m just a conspiracy theorist. We could be energy independent in two full growing seasons by planting industrial hemp on the ground that farmers are now paid not to plant. cobbnek
Brad Wilson, thanks for the links, though I haven’t got the time just right now to check them all out, I will when I do. I just recently came across the IATP and was so pleased to find a resource so sane and reasonable with the ability to get people to see the possibility in sustainability. Here is their home page: http://www.iatp.org/ and here is a really well written and simple to read overview of ag policy going back to ‘33 regarding financial supports as well as an overview of what is needed now: http://www.agobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=97623. Please read this as it does explain the situation in a way that very few understand (including the author of this story), and we all need to get for our own sake, whether we are farmers or not. This bill affects all of us, as well as all of the world.
And Greg R. especially as a farmer you need to read it. Their are reasons why the market place alone cannot support farmers, but their are ways to support them that does not distort the market.
Sh@dow: Let’s run some numbers.
America’s population in 1933: ~123 million.
America’s population in 2007: ~300 million.
Today’s Mexican army: 230,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Mexico#The_Army).
Number of American gun owners: perhaps 35% of households.
230,000 soldiers against easily 50+ million armed Americans? No chance.
150,000 American troops, maybe twice that when you add mercenaries, in a war-torn and bled (Clinton’s decade-long embargo) Iraq of only 27-28 million people and even that was woefully insufficient.
Numerically speaking, there’s no chance in hell of a Mexican invasion. Just right-wing fear mongering to incite wedge issues along race/nationalism. Anything, by God, to prevent a pan-American populist rising. Always better to make the poor fear & fight among themselves, eh?
Don’t forget that these subsidies are also largely responsible for our immigration woes. As the corporate giants reap the subsidies, they are able to dump crops on Mexico, putting many poor farmers who can’t compete out of work. Where do they wind up going?
50%-58% of the land in the USA is farmland bought off through this and other programs (going to less than 1% of the population.)
25%-35% of the land in the USA is parks/reserves/military/government owned.
How much of that leftover 25% is owned by rich people? Just about all of it.
This is about real estate.
Kernel is right to be angry about some important misconceptions in this mainstream media piece. The main storable commodities in the farm bill are grown on the lions share of agricultural land, 8 crops on 74% APAC report, p. 14 at http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html . True, they get 70-80% of subsidies, p. 8 but other parts of the programs have mostly dropped market prices, “about 40%” “since 1996” p. 8 so, for example! “…Market prices in 2001 were … BELOW the cost of production” by a lot
corn -23%,
Wheat -48%,
Soybeans -32%,
cotton -52%,
rice -45%. p. 10
This below cost grain gives enormous subsidization to Smithfield 2.5+ billion, Tyson 2.5+ billion, (see my references farther above) Cargill and ADM get even more. These programs reduce market prices, then give partial compensation subsidies. For 2000, Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, and Cotton net incomes were all negative. p. 10 For 2001, corn netted 1% above costs, but Wheat, Soybeans, and Cotton LOST EVEN MORE! p. 10. See the pdf ppt chart on this, especially slide 14, at: http://www.nffc.net/resources/reports/APACReport.pdf
By the percents above you could get a million in subsidies and net a huge loss, in the RED. But the Billionaire de facto subsidies require no such sacrifice!
Do California fruit and vegetable farmers want the same treatment, farmers to lose money, subsidize Del Monte and consumers, and get blamed?
The main commodity farmers worldwide are subsidizing consumers with half price raw materials, so consumers save even with paying the subsidies as taxes as shown above, including the ones blaming farmers based upon faulty information. And the whole system, all commodity subsidies, must be replaced with the Food from Family Farms Act. http://www.nffc.net
Sugar beets and cane are not storable long term, so their program is different and is not dumping or subsidy oriented. See “Sweet or Sour? The U.S. sugar program and the Threats Posed by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement,” (DR-CAFTA) R. Dennis Olsen, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, April 2005. http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=72784
Original farm bills had programs for fruits and vegetables, even though they aren’t storable.
Of course it wasn’t always this way. After the Homestead Act in 1862, huge numbers of poor immigrants could fairly easily get their 40 acres at a mere pittance across huge tracts of the US.
The past 150 years has been characterized by the booting of people off equity in the land, one way or the other. Get them to borrow way over their heads for farming machinery, foreclose, raise taxes on their land to the point that farming is no longer a sustainable living, etc. The distant banker middle-men have achieved the same problem that occured more than a century ago in Europe, but with regard to renting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absentee_landlord.
The only solution I really see is that communities somehow buy back their land, and any sale from individual to individual would occur through a locally-owned/administered/managed credit union. Distant banks need not apply.
Regarding farmer Greg R: To end the farm programs is Hooverism. It would maintain dumping. We had 7 cents per bushel corn here in the Depression. They returned to Hooverism in 1996, except they kept and increased subsidies to make up for some of the possible losses. There is no bottom on how low prices can go now, worldwide, and no top. We need a real farm bill like the old ones without subsidies, especially 1942-52, because the farm economy lacks price responsiveness on both supply and demand sides as the APAC report I cited previously shows. But we need supply management trade agreements. See these for short explanation of the problem of farm price responsiveness and why we still need real farm bills. They’re one page each. http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/248.html
and http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/325.html
The immigration problems are related to what I’ve been talking about, no price supports causing low market prices causing dumping. The immigration aspect is not really caused very significantly by subsidies. See http://www.agobservatory.org/issue_farmbill2007.cfm Read the whole Fair Farm Bill Series at http://www.agobservatory.org/issue_farmbill2007.cfm. The National Family Farm Coalition has the bill, the Food from Family Farms Act, which ends dumping and sets price floors and ceilings, which addresses the immigration aspect also.
I’m all for plenty of socialistic practices like social security and universal health care, but farming is a business like any other. I hate seeing welfare go to the rich. I believe helping small/medium size farmers with $s for conservation practices is wonderful, but let capitalism work in the ways it works best. If there’s a glut of food and low prices in our future, well it sure beats starvation. However, we will need wonderful weather world wide to avoid shortages and high prices with demand going up all the time.
Paul Bramscher July 27th, 2007 10:49 am
Yea lets run the ##s Paul. So you contend that entire US population of over 300,000,000 is combat ready. I didn’t know the 100,000,000 elderly or all those little children were combat ready? I didn’t know that the pop guns that they let some of us have were a match for trained soldiers? Common sense should tell you that if it can happen it will happen. They have already build 1000’s of camps for someones amusement.
Now beyond all of the the President is creating a North American Union and the Mexican soldiers are at Shrubs disposal! Smarten up!
“The big payments would continue while prices of subsidized crops are at or near record highs, fueled by the ethanol boom. The value of this year’s giant corn crop — which would almost cover the state of California in acreage — is expected to reach $40 billion.”
The subsidies are the huge multi billionaire agricultural corporation hog trough. In the meantime, families farmers are still on the endangered species list.
Of the big five crops being subsidized, corn will most likely soak up as much or more than the other four crops. And here is dirty truth about ethanol: they use more fossil fuel than what the equivalent ethanol they produce, making this a subsidy dependent crop. However, ethanol is now the mandatory replacement for MTBE for states meeting emission standards. In short, they have us by the gas pump nozzle and are twisting it for as much money they can squeeze out of us.
And the public generally doesn’t know that there is an alternative, making ethanol from crop wastes, lumber wastes, switchgrass and other sources of cellulose.
Switchgrass, unlike corn is a wild, native, perennial, disease-insect-drought resistent plant that does not require tractor and truck intensive methods of farming. It has very deep root systems that enrich the soil and can yeild more ethanol per ton, and more tonnage per acre than corn and other sources.
And switchgrass would be family farmer friendly setting up praire grass type plants up to 8 feet tall and creating real habitat. The contrasting picture is that of ethanol corn growing in rows from horizon to horizon covering thousands of square miles that will require a legion of huge corporate tractors making multiple passes of the soil for breaking up ground, tilling, row formation, planting and harvesting.
Reply to Greg R
Social Security and Universal Health Care are paid for out of taxes. What we’re proposing is not. It’s a way to do for farmers what GM or Dell would do. http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/154.html which is to get a price from the marketplace. The economics of farm markets are widely accepted as being what I have argued above, as my sources showed. It’s really like a minimum wage, to prevent exploitation worldwide. Jim Hightower called it “a people’s capitalism.”
Destroying farmer’s livelihoods world wide causes starvation. Low prices cause starvation, because it destroys the economies of poor countries, which are mostly rural. This is well covered in Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy: Changing Course TO SECURE FARMER LIVELIHOODS WORLDWIDE (emphasis added) http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html. Bread for the World and Oxfam have good research on this, they just don’t have proposals which really address it, by helping farmers get a good price from the marketplace. That’s why you have to go to http://www.nffc.net/resources/statements/FarmBillStatement.doc
So, you “hate seeing welfare going to the rich.” Are you with me in opposing the multibillion dollar subsidies, or not? I know that many progressives have not heard about this because their groups either haven’t mentioned it or have put out false information about it.
speedster July 27th, 2007 4:58 pm
Since the start there has been just one party and you are being played! All of it is BS theatrics. Pelosi extended the olive branch to Shrub. You don’t want to believe but eventually you will see that the government amounts to 535 lawyers that work for a few wealthy corporations and our government is considered a plutocracy!
I’m not a big fan of subsidies but the numbers they present are always ones that reflect gross income. People read these numbers as net income and they are not. What is the net return on a farm grossing one million?
WHO IS WINNING, THE REPUBS, DEMOS OR FARM AND RANCHERS. CAN BUSH VETO? THERE SEEMS TO BE PLENTY BORROWED MONEY FOR OIL AND WAR. HOW ABOUT PEOPLE AND FOOD? IS THIS THE WORSE ADMINISTRATION IN
AMERICAN HISTORY? WHAT’S WITH THE STOCK MARKET?
IS THIS ANOTHER ECONOMIC SCAM? WHEN WILL AMERICA
IMPEACH OUR CURRENT MISLEADERS?
More for Greg R’s most recent comments
Social Security and Universal Health Care are paid for out of taxes. What we’re proposing is not. It’s a way to do for farmers what GM or Dell would do. http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/154.html which is to get a price from the marketplace. The economics of farm markets are widely accepted as being what I have argued above regarding price responsiveness, as my sources showed. It’s really like a minimum wage, to prevent exploitation worldwide, as I also said above http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/oct1006.HTM
. Jim Hightower called it “a people’s capitalism” because it’s more fiscally conservative than Nixon, Reagan and Gingrich farm bills and most others.
Destroying farmer’s livelihoods world wide causes starvation. Low prices cause starvation, because it destroys the economies of poor countries, which are mostly rural. This is well covered in Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy: Changing Course TO SECURE FARMER LIVELIHOODS WORLDWIDE (emphasis added) http://www.agpolicy.org/blueprint.html. Bread for the World and Oxfam have good research on this, they just don’t have proposals which really address it, by helping farmers get a good price from the marketplace. That’s why you have to go to http://www.nffc.net/resources/statements/FarmBillStatement.doc
So, you “hate seeing welfare going to the rich.” Are you with me in opposing the multibillion dollar subsidies, or not? I know that many progressives have not heard about this because their groups either haven’t mentioned it.
RE: sbrownn, you’re correct that these are gross figures. As I show above, for some main commodities for 2001, the net was a negative number, on average. On a million dollars that could mean hundreds of thousands in the red, though larger farms have some advantages from economies of size. However, most economies of size have usually been captured on a 1-2 person sized farm, according to research studies documented in books like “The Myth of the Family Farm.” On the gross vs. net issue a great visual is slide 14, at: http://www.nffc.net/resources/reports/APACReport.pdf
Brad Wilson: I want to thank you very much for your informed contribution to this thread. You are dead on right, and back it up.
Thanks again
In the thirties every poor farmer dreamed of having a tractor. It took less than a century for the modern tractor to destroy the family farm.
Brad, I’m most definitly against multibillion dollar subsidies. The “wouldn’t it be nice link” was good for a laugh. The NFFC policy statement contained much good stuff. However, “commodity price floors” is policy alien to my way of thinking. I’ve always worked with the plan that I spend as little as necessary to achieve a maximum economic gain. When harvest and/or price allows, I upgrade equipment, maybe spread a bit more lime, or enjoy a luxury. The other 3 links didn’t work. I would also say the old farm program of reserves and commodity price floors was a comfortable way of farming. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I prefer to see government involvement in agriculture more limited to good environmental practices.
Greg R Perhaps you’re not familiar with the question of “price responsiveness.” (Both of those links, above, worked for me.)
My family remembers going to the elevator during the Great Depression and finding that the price of corn was 7 cents per bushel. That’s your risk.
Try this one page link about APAC’s larger report: “Rethinking US Ag Policy” http://apacweb.ag.utk.edu/weekcol/162.html
I got the African American Farmers article by googling “Ensure Living Wage for Farmers” and choosing cache, which gave http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:m5Mk8TBmaKEJ:www.federationsoutherncoop.com/oct1006.HTM+%22Ensure+Living+Wage+for+Farmers%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
What else doesn’t work?