Gothic Farming

[One Eyed Cat]

One can also keep voting (in Chicago anyways)

Dead Men Farming
By John Stossel
Wednesday, August 15, 2007


By now you've probably heard that a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states:

From 1999 through 2005, the USDA "paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years." One dead farmer got more than $400,000 during those years.

And they say you can't take it with you.

Defending the USDA, the GAO adds, "The complex nature of some farming operations -- such as entities embedded within other entities -- can make it difficult for USDA to avoid making payments to deceased individuals."

Exactly. The agricultural section of the U.S. code is nearly 1,800 pages.

There's an easy way to avoid such absurdities: Abolish all farm subsidies.

Why are taxpayers forced to pay farmers $25 billion a year? Sure, farmers face droughts and floods, but that's been true since Moses' day. They can't say they weren't put on notice that farming has risks. Running a restaurant or a software company entails risks, too, but we don't guarantee their continued operation. Those businesses and America are stronger for it.
Farm subsidies are popular with politicians because Big Agriculture lobbies hard, and many people believe that without subsidies, we wouldn't have a reliable food supply.

But what an insane myth that is. As I wrote in "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity", most crops are not subsidized. Yet we have no shortages of fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry. America has plenty of peaches, plums, peas, green beans, etc., and farmers who grow those crops do fine. What makes wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice different?

Last week, the New York Times reported that dairy farmers in New Zealand get along perfectly well without subsidies : "[E]ver since a liberal but free-market government swept to power in 1984 and essentially canceled handouts to farmers -- something that just about every other government in an advanced industrial nation has considered both politically and economically impossible. ... [O]utput has soared."

Yet in America, our congressmen enact a 742-page farm bill that, among other things, includes 10 times more money than in 2002 for "specialty crops," including citrus, tomatoes and melons, and an amendment to include goat meat in the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling Program.
An amendment that would have withheld subsidies from farmers with incomes of $250,000 or more was rejected by the House.

The farm program is repulsive welfare for the rich. The average farmer earns much more than the average American.

And even rich nonfarmers have received subsidies -- among them the late Ken Lay of Enron; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; my ABC colleague Sam Donaldson; and banker David Rockefeller.
And how absurd is this? "After handing out commodity subsidies that pay farmers to plant more crops," Heritage Foundation senior fellow Bruce Riedl notes, "Washington then turns around and pays other farmers not to farm 40 million acres of cropland each year -- the equivalent of idling every farm in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio".

It's time we got over the myth that the government helps the heroic family farm. Riedl points out that "federal farm policies specifically bypass family farmers. Subsidies are paid per acre, so the largest (and most profitable) agribusinesses automatically receive the biggest checks."

Besides all the obvious ones, there's another reason to end farm subsidies. They show us to be hypocrites. How can we preach free trade in talks with developing nations when we subsidize farmers who then dump their crop surpluses in poor countries and wreck their domestic farms?

Give me a break.

[Layla Von Tear]

interesting read

[Velvet-Tongue]

Lets not mess with the food makers please.

[Mr Karl]

hey, it costs money for that air conditioned tractor with the cup holder

[Donald Rilea]

Oooh, that's a tricky issue for me to tackle.

On one hand, would agree that the agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland need those subsidies about as much as I need a 9mm bullet in my cerebellum.

On the other hand, and a lot of this is rooted in my absolute dis-taste and dis-trust of John Stossel and his reporting, am not entirely sure that agricultural subsidies should be abolished.

Just don't know about this, Kiddies.

[One Eyed Cat]

Oooh, that's a tricky issue for me to tackle.

On one hand, would agree that the agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland need those subsidies about as much as I need a 9mm bullet in my cerebellum.

On the other hand, and a lot of this is rooted in my absolute dis-taste and dis-trust of John Stossel and his reporting, am not entirely sure that agricultural subsidies should be abolished.

Just don't know about this, Kiddies.

If the majority of payments went to family farmers, I'd have no problem with it.

They are reducing them as we speak http://www.ewg.org/node/22404

It isn't just Stossel, there is an odd alliance of environmentalists and free marketers like Stossel going against the subsidies for different reasons. I see it as harming local agriculture by subsidizing large agribusiness corps.

Jackie T

[One Eyed Cat]

Lets not mess with the food makers please.

We have been for years. Still are: http://www.ewg.org/node/22404

Jackie T

[Tinman]

U make very good point try tellin the french all our EU money goes to there bloody farmers in there airconditioned tractors, lol cheers Mr Karl, over here the farming industry has taken a beating and we didnt pay out any were near those numbers ur talkin, sounds barmy! Should put the money to better use like teachin ur agriculture guy not to be a fuck wit X
Infact give u the job - go Jackie T