Farm welfare is a rare bi-partisan thing. Both Democrats and Republicans in the US congress get huge amounts of bucks from the farm lobby. Turns out that 10 percent farms get 70 percent of the farm subsidy money.
The 19 states currently represented on the Senate Agriculture Committee collected $105 billion in farm subsidies over the past 12 years (59 percent of the U.S. total). The 45 congressional districts currently represented on the House Agriculture Committee accounted for 74.6 billion in farm subsidies over that period (42 percent of the national total).
i often hog hunt on a friend's place. He has the place leased to a big time farmer. That farmer gets a cool $200,000 per year in the form of farm welfare. The guy refuses to tend his cattle. When a cow gets hoof rot the guy does nothing to help the animal. If a cow has trouble birthing she gets no help and dies. Quite often the cattle have little water and they are forced to drink from mud holes.
That place is sloping. The CCC bermed the place to control erosion in the 30s. The farmer discs the place up and down hill over the berms and causes a awful lot of erosion. Most of the berms are now gone.
I can understand why a small farmer would qualify for subsidies, but I'll never grasp why huge corporate farms get them. They have tax breaks galore, volume purchasing, yet somehow they still can't compete in the global market without subsidies? Yes, I know that most other countries subsidize their farmers too in some vain attempt to make their products more competitive, but hasn't this whole subsidizing thing gotten way out of control? Knock down the subsidies and tariffs and trade fairly, the market knows best and always has.
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Kevin Haendiges
NAHC Life Member
NRA Member
Wildlife Forever Member
GOA Member
Buckmasters Member
http://hunting-indiana.com
This is something I hear all the time, about how farmers are living large and getting rich off government subsidies. However, this is simply not true. One thing most people don't understand are the operating costs of a farm. Sure, large corporate farms get larger subsidies and after all is said and done, may clear a couple hundred grand a year. But what most seem to overlook is that a farm of that size usually puts about close to a million in running expenses. A smaller farm, such as the one I own, spends about two hundred grand a year in operating costs and pulls in fifty to sixty grand net profit. There are no guarantees in farming. You may do well one year, but could very well lose your a$$ the next. Farm prices went to hell when they forced us to compete at world market price. Heres an example: ten years ago, peanuts sold for up to 900 dollars a ton. At world market price:250 to 300 per ton. Hard to compete when we buy crops from places like China, who use cheap chemicals banned in the U.S. years ago, can hire labor for a dollar an hour, yet recieve 300 dollars for a ton of peanuts. U.S. farmers are forced by the FDA to use outrageously priced generic chemicals, buy seed with exorbitant technology fees, and good help can't be found anymore for any less than ten dollars an hour with overtime pay. Not to mention 4 dollar per gallon diesel fuel. Yet we recieve the same 300 dollars per ton. Sound fair? I didn't think so. Imagine if all jobs were paid due to world market. For example, a teacher in the U.S. may make fifteen dollars an hour. However, a teacher in China is paid 4 dollars per hour, so U.S. teachers take a paycut down to 6 bucks an hour, yet are expected to compete and make enough for living expenses. So yes, contrary to popular belief, subsidies are a needed thing, and help keep several U.S. farms running. Agriculture is the backbone of this country, and supplies food for the entire United States. Don't think thats important? Ok, let all the U.S. farmers go bust. Import all our crops for food and clothing from other countries. Yet wait until those countries have a problem with us and cut off the crop supply for the U.S. All they'd have to do is starve us out, and they could win that war without firing a shot. There’s a reason both Dems and Republicans support farm subsidies, and those reasons are listed in this post. I'm sorry for this long rambling post, but this is something I feel strongly about. No offense intended to anyone, just would like to get the facts out there. So I guess the whole point of this post is, don't judge that farmer you see until you have stood in his boots and seen things from his point of view.
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The gobbles are getting louder.....in my mind, anyway.
I'm not a farmer by any stretch of the imagination, so help me out if this is way out there.
Wouldn't it be better to not pay any subsidies and stop importing the crops we can grow ourselves?
You have to remember we also export huge amounts of food. If we stop buying their crops they would stop buying ours. Like it or not we cant just be an island to ourselves anymore. We have cheap food in this country and can get pretty much anything we want. If we do away with the farm subsisies you will see food prices go much higher.
Well, for one, our food prices would skyrocket if we stopped paying subsidies and didn't import food we could produce. You would be restricting those crops to a much smaller marketplace (the US), and therefore the suppliers (farmers) have much more power in this marketplace and would able to dictate price more easily. That price would rise b/c labor costs, equipment costs, etc are much higher than elsewhere in the world. The farmers would not price themselves below cost (unless to destroy competition), they would price their goods above their cost, which would be higher w/ out subsidies. Also, with no cheap food imported, there would be no other option that to pay their price.
Secondly, farmers would suffer greatly as they would have trouble exporting their crops. If the amount of these crops consumed by Americans remained constant (which I doubt, considering that prices would be higher but income would remain the same, therefore people couldn't be as much- reduced buyer power), other countries couldn't afford to import US crops b/c the prices would too high.
So what you would have would be a population who would to drastically reduce the amount they eat, farmers would be stuck with huge piles of excess inventory that they would have to write off as a loss, land that would become useless since they wouldn't farm it anymore due to decreased demand, and people of other countries would possibly suffer due to lack of food unless China or other countries could suddenly produce more at the same cost.
Farm Welfare
