Members of Congress patted themselves on their collective backs for saving taxpayers’ money by passing a farm bill that cuts spending by minus 49 percent. Of course, astute arithmeticians realize that a minus 49 percent cut is equal to a 49 percent increase. The 2008 farm bill had an average cost of $64.0 billion per year; this one has an average cost of $95.6 billion per year.
The New York Times reports that food stamps were cut, but in fact this was a cut only when compared with expected spending, not to recent actual spending. The $8 billion “cut” over ten years sounds big, but it is only 1.7 percent of what was expected under the old bill. Food stamp spending under the new bill will average $74.8 billion per year, which, even after adjusting for inflation, is more than the total annual cost of the 2008 bill.
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My mother, a social worker, always said that food stamps were more a subsidy to farmers than to poor people. But there are plenty of subsidies straight to farmers in the bill that Congress just passed. The new bill will cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year for a variety of crop insurance subsidies, payments to farmers if prices fall below specified floors, marketing subsidies, and more.
It’s not like farmers are poor. The average farm household has an income of more than $100,000 per year, which is at least 25 percent more than the average non-farm household. Moreover, a third of farm subsidies go to the wealthiest 4 percent of farmers. Early versions of the farm bill included a provision capping subsidies to a farmer and spouse at $250,000 per year, but this was deleted from the final bill.
With roughly 400 million acres of land in crop production, the $20 billion annual crop subsidies amount to $50 an acre. Meanwhile, the 600 million acres of federal lands get about $10 billion in annual subsidies, for an average of $16.67 per acre, or one-third of the crop subsidies. Some people wonder why I don’t support privatization of all national forests and other federal lands; one reason is that privatization is no guarantee that subsidies will end.
Europe is no different and they subsidize way more than we do. In particular their reluctance to accept genetically modified crops or seeds for their own use. European regulations for food quality are more ceremonial than productive. The French have enjoyed the dominance of the wine industry for centuries crafting the best spirits and anywhere else, it’s just cheap swill. So it must have seemed like a cruel joke in 1976 when a British wine merchant arranged The Paris Tasting, a one-of-its-kind competition that pitted mighty France versus lowly America in a blind taste test judged entirely by wine experts. America took home top honors for both red and white wine. So Jean-Noël Fourmeaux, an official government wine taster became a wine spy. He headed to California to discover how, in the span of a couple of decades, American winemakers progressed from Thunderbird to Grgich’s award-winning white. Fourmeaux encountered a freewheeling atmosphere of technological and cultural innovation. While France still enjoys 80% of the wine production globally, they’re slowly losing ground to American, South African and Australian wine producers. France’s wine industry was completely ruined by WW2. Starting in late 1945, cuttings from US and Chilean vineyards were sent to France to reestablish their plantings. So, technically, every wine produced in France today is a result of American and Chilean grapes.
Most crops don’t get subsidies, we got plenty of peaches and strawberries. Nearly two-thirds of America’s farms don’t receive subsidies, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Only five crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans receive 90% of subsidies, that means most farmers, including those that grow fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, grasses and natural fibers other than cotton, receive virtually nothing. Others claim farming and do nothing and big agricultural business. And the money does little to help small farms; consolidation drives up land costs and driving smaller farm operations out of business. Small main street businesses that once served those farms are disappearing. Farm subsidies go to millionaires like Bon Jovi, who pays property taxes of only $100 a year on his extensive real estate holdings in New Jersey — because he raises bees on the property. Fellow Jersey Guy Bruce Springsteen is in the same catbird seat, because he leases some of his real estate to an organic farm. America’s single biggest recipient of farm subsidies has been Maurice Wilder. The multi-millionaire owns some farm land, but he mostly builds homes and offices. Others who’ve collected farm subsidies are former basketball star Scottie Pippin, billionaire Ted Turner, even the family of anti-subsidy Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
A very informative post that details how DC views increases as cuts. Simply Orwellian.
My main problem with agricultural subsidies is the hypocrisy of farmers who receive them.
My classmates ridiculed the poor for receiving subsidies (welfare, food stamps) while demanding the federal government supply subsidized water in the arid West. One classmate’s farm received $600k in direct subsidies in just a few years. His farmland was secured by the US Army, which fought a very expensive war against the indigenous and shipped them to OK. The very land he farms and the irrigation ditches his farm uses were prepared by Japanese forcibly interned.
He has the gall to call a pregnant migrant worker lazy because she quit due to her pregnancy. He has the nerve to berate those receiving food stamps and welfare. Yet he traveled to DC to lobby for more corporate welfare for his farm.
Disgusting.
My wife comes from a farming family and most of her family still farms. I am in constant trouble for saying “things” at family gathering about farm subsidies and farmers generally.
Little known fact: Farmers who grow crops for sale in North America are the laziest businessmen on the planet. They work long days in spring, to plant, and in fall, to harvest. The rest of the time they do sfa.
Up here in Canada they go snowbird or drink and play hockey from October to April.
Little known fact: Farmers who grow crops for sale in North America are the laziest businessmen on the planet. They work long days in spring, to plant, and in fall, to harvest. The rest of the time they do sf
First Fun Item: Article in NYT yesterday or today about industrial farmers looking to diversify by putting up high tunnels and growing something besides 3200 acres of commodity corn – these guys had to go to a class to learn how to grow truck crops and make marketable crops for CSAs, restaurants, etc.
Fascinating.
Second Fun Item: Farmers who actually know how to grow truck crops – the ones in Salinas Vly, Inperial Vly and in Central Vly in CA – have water issues this year. State Water Project not delivering water to ag this year. Our food prices will go up significantly. If Central Valley Project does same, our food prices may double this year.
Anyhoo, I hear ya. Driving a IH tractor at 35 mph by GPS and dumping chemicals 3-4x/yr isn’t hard at all.
DS
“Anyhoo, I hear ya. Driving a IH tractor at 35 mph by GPS and dumping chemicals 3-4x/yr isn’t hard at all.”
Except that there are about a million farm workers in America hired to do the dirty work.
According to an Iowa State University survey:
Yeah. Working just 43 hours per week in the off season (and nearly half of all farm workers put in six or seven days a week) doing backbreaking work for low wages “isn’t hard at all.”
“Driving a IH tractor at 35 mph by GPS and dumping chemicals”
See, here you just show yourself to be making shit up. Tractors don’t dump chemicals. Sprayers do. A Case IH Patriot sprayer tops out at 30 mph, which is the max under optimal conditions, including boom length, load, and terrain conditions. And when Case IH tractors, like the Magnum, pull fertilizer applicators, they certainly aren’t in top gear at a top speed of 25 mph.
But Dan knows everything.
Just ignore me. I’m obviously having a sad.
I doubt anyone with a white collar job works anywhere near as hard as a real farmer. Dairy cows don’t allow for holidays, sick days snow days or hangovers, things that white collar workers find so essential for life.
On the other hand, a lot of “farmers” nowadays hire highly skilled people with high-tech million dollar GPS guided seeders and harvesters to work their crops, but they do have to run a million dollar gross small business with small margins.
The water issue is a good debate. Water rights are complicated and necessarily involve government activity. Large scale water projects can only be done by the government and were essential to the national interest. Are the western water projects subsidies for the farms, or for urban areas, or are a national settlement concern? Good debate can be made on all sides. Too bad a water market can’t help with the transition through time instead of being locked in to old property rights schemes.
By the way, at the time of the major western water projects were undertaken, all the scientists in the world unanimously agreed that the world would soon be starving and that it was impossible to feed a growing population unless arid regions were “reclaimed” and brought into production of more food. Thus the work by the “Bureau of Reclamation”.
Of course, only “starvation deniers” opposed the dams and water projects.
Good—and funny—points Sandy. As for the Bureau of Wreck, it’s a prime example!e of how government degraded the environment on a scale unsurpassed by private industry. My adopted hometown was built on a lakebed reclaimed by the Bureau of Wreck, and decades later, the lakebed has been mined of nutrients, and the sandy soil is only productive with intensive chemical input.
And this year the water situation, as noted above, is indeed dire, with 2×4 vehicles easily able to make it to 7k summits that should be under 10 feet of snow.
What really complicates the water issue are treaties regarding fishing rights ratified prior to promises made to homesteaders. In the end, the indigenous end up getting screwed—again.
Frank – If reality followed the “vast majority of scientists” and today people were truly starving around the world, then the Bureau of Reclamation would be the “heroic IPCC” of today. Or in other words, the IPCC will be the BOR of today in 50 years.
I can’t understand why “liberal progressives” repeat the process of predicting the future, demanding to reorganize the world based on their prediction, and then be proven wrong, only to move on to the next fad and predict the future yet again.
I can’t understand why “liberal progressives” repeat the process of predicting the future, demanding to reorganize the world based on their prediction, and then be proven wrong, only to move on to the next fad and predict the future yet again.
Because a lot of people have short memories and/or attention spans. Many others just don’t care. Predicting untold harm or threatening some nightmare situation is the best way to rile them up. And because of the short attention span, most have already forgotten about the past predictions that failed to materialize.