Free Republic

There’s an old saying that we should invest in land because there’s a limited amount of it, so it won’t lose its value. But when it comes to farmland in the United States, there could be a more pressing reason to invest these days – national security. China has become one of the biggest players in American agriculture. In the decade ending in January 2020, the Chinese snapped up 192,000 acres of America’s 900 million acres of farmland. That may not sound like much, but some experts say China’s influence is much larger but concealed by having American straw owners...

Farm subsidies are perhaps the ultimate, but secret, third rail of American politics. While entitlements are discussed out in the open, farm subsidies are rarely talked about – even though they are the most expensive subsidy Washington doles out. All told, the U.S. government spends $20 billion annually on farm subsidies, with approximately 39 percent of all farms receiving some sort of subsidy. For comparison, the oil industry gets about $4.6 billion annually and annual housing subsidies total another $15 billion. A significant portion of this $20 billion goes not to your local family farm, but to Big Aggie. (Note...

Wisconsin’s dairy industry is calling for federal help as farmers have begun dumping milk because of falling demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite empty grocery store shelves in recent weeks, widespread closures of schools and restaurants — coupled with falling exports — have led to a sharp drop in demand. This is without precedent,” said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. “Half the restaurants in the U.S. are closed or operating at a reduced level. That has never happened before.” With more than they can sell, processors are refusing to pick up milk from farmers, who...

WASHINGTON -- Forget all the tongue clucking about Washington being so divided and nasty that Democrats and Republicans cannot work together. As the Senate and House proved this week in passing the $867 billion farm bill, when it comes to spending money they don't have, party leaders really can reach across the aisle. With the national federal debt approaching $22 trillion, President Donald Trump has praised the bill, which provides food stamps for the poor, but also hands out subsidies to American farmers, even though it does not include needed reforms or even modest spending cuts. Conservative think tanks dismiss...

When pork prices collapsed amid a global trade war during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration in 1933 had an idea—slaughter six million piglets. Put a floor under prices by destroying supply. It didn’t work. Now the Trump Administration may try its own version of Depressionomics by using the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to support crop prices walloped by the Trump tariffs: Hurt farmers and then put them on the government dole. How about not hurting them in the first place? That’s the question as Mr. Trump escalates his trade war, on Wednesday proposing 10% tariffs on $200 billion in...

The Obama Administration tried to put the coal industry out of business, and in the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton proposed subsidies to ease the financial pain government had created. The question is why President Trump would adopt this economic method with an idea to increase subsidies to farmers hurt by the Trump tariffs. Mr. Trump has been getting an earful about the damage that his tariffs-first trade policy might do to U.S. farmers if countries like China retaliate. But instead of dropping the tariffs, Mr. Trump and some of his advisers are floating the idea of increasing farm subsidies...

The fortunes of the wonder fuel that promised to help clean the environment, secure America and save small family farms have steadily dwindled as environmentalists, food advocates and auto enthusiasts sour on its promise. Now that fuel, corn-based ethanol, finds itself threatened with a defection that was once unthinkable: Iowa voters. The electorate here in the early voting state often defined by its vast expanses of corn has long demanded that candidates pledge allegiance to government production mandates for millions of gallons of ethanol, the homegrown product. But as the 2016 White House hopefuls traverse the state, they are seeing...

Between 2010 and 2013, Germany’s market for organic foods increased by one-fourth to almost €8 billion. Still, switching to organic cultivation remains a difficult process for farmers. While revenue from organic products has enjoyed an annual increase of 5-9% since 2011, the parallel increase in surface area over the past four years has only been 1-3%. Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt hopes to change this. “We want a timetable for growth that allows domestic producers to benefit more from the boom,” he said on Tuesday (19 May) in Berlin. Organic must be strengthened, he said, with the help of the Future...

'Game The system’? Nonprofits, Including Farrakhan-Tied Group, Enjoy Windfall From Farm Subsidies Published March 09, 2014 FoxNews.com, Emily Boyd Walker Several nonprofits that have little to do with farming or are in poor standing with their local governments have been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies over the past decade, federal records show. They include an Islamic charity tied to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a Midwestern group devoted to waterfowl habitat, and a major conservation group with few farms to its name. The group tied to Farrakhan, called the Three Year Economic Saving Program, has...

I mentioned two days ago the decision of schools to ban birthday cupcakes. Michelle Obama is essentially fighting with students to get them to change what they eat. But what is missing from this story is the proper context. The fact is that our bad eating habits are getting encouraged by taxpayer money. In fact, the government arguably changed our dietary habits to their present behavior. The Foundation for Economic Education came out with an article yesterday about dealing with “food deserts.”

A provision requiring members of Congress and the administration to disclose what crop insurance subsidies they receive was quietly dropped from the farm bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Section 11001 of the House-passed farm bill had a provision that “requires disclosure (by name) of the amount of crop insurance assistance received by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, and members of their immediate families.” That provision was taken out in closed-door conference negotiations before the bill was released on Monday. The bill cleared the House in less than 72 hours, before many lawmakers had a chance to review it,...

Would you rather sip on unpasteurized milk or a cold glass of soda? Do you prefer Saturday lunch at a fast food joint or a farmers market? Regardless of your choices, your food freedom -- your right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods you want -- is under attack. Here are ten food freedom issues to keep an eye on in 2014. 1: FDA May Ban or Restrict a Growing Number of Food Ingredients. The FDA has proposed banning oils containing trans fats, an ingredient found in foods like coffee creamers and muffins....

Your tax dollars at work… Millions of dollars in farm subsidies were given to city dwellers including over $100,000 to Louis Farrakhan in Hyde Park!

Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not. These euphemisms usually win temporary public support. After all, who wants to be against anything "affordable"? But on examination, such idealistically named legislation usually turns out to be aimed at special interests and the opposite of what voters were promised. The "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010," otherwise known as Obamacare, frontloaded for immediate enactment some popular freebies. Who would oppose keeping children on their parents' health coverage until age 26, or prohibiting denial of insurance for those with pre-existing illnesses? Then, three years...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture made farm subsidy payments to 28,613 dead farmers between 2011 and 2012, of which 1,799 were deemed “improper,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in June. The report, entitled “USDA Needs to Do More to Prevent Improper Payments to Deceased Individuals,” said USDA’s Farm Service Agency identified “thousands of deceased individuals who were paid $3.3 million in improper payments after their dates of death, of which FSA has recovered approximately $1 million.” … “Improper payments” are those sent to individuals who had not properly filed documentation and who had subsequently died, or...

The federal government has paid as much as $35.9 million in farm subsidies to dead people, a watchdog agency claims. The subsidies were part of the $20 billion a year effort to support farmers with crop insurance, conservation efforts and disaster assistance administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2008 to 2012. Two of the department’s agencies do “not have procedures in place consistent with federal internal control standards to prevent potentially improper subsidies on behalf of deceased individuals,” the Government Accountability Office said in a 25-page report released Monday.

This week, House Republicans passed a rather unusual farm bill. There was no money for food stamps for the poor, a program that typically makes up the bulk of these bills. But the House did manage to pass billions in subsidies for farmers and agribusinesses. Ideology probably can’t explain this vote — at least not entirely. Most outside conservative groups were aghast at the crop insurance and commodity supports, which will cost taxpayers some $195 billion over 10 years. Yet House Republicans actually made the farm aid more generous — by adding a new shallow loss income entitlement program, tossing...

THANKSGIVING IS behind us. The fiscal "cliff" looms ahead. And in less than six weeks, Massachusetts will have a new senator. Let's try to link them all in a single column. As a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren showed a livelier interest in raising federal revenues than in cutting government spending. But about one spending target the senator-elect has been admirably blunt. When asked to name some items in the federal budget she'd like to see slashed, the first program she cites is one of the most indefensible: agriculture subsidies. To be sure, it's easier to oppose welfare...

The Senate on Thursday completed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that cuts farm subsidies and land conservation spending by about $2 billion a year but largely protects sugar growers and some 46 million food stamp beneficiaries. The 64-35 vote for passage defied political odds. Many inside and outside of Congress had predicted that legislation so expensive and so complicated would have little chance of advancing in an election year. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called it "one of the finest moments in the Senate in recent times in terms of how you pass a bill."

When Gov. Rick Perry was the state's agriculture commissioner, the federal government paid farmer Rick Perry not to farm his 40 acres in Haskell County. The $9,624 that Perry was paid under the Conservation Reserve Program to leave his land fallow between 1991 and 1998 is tiny in comparison with the $15 billion the federal government pays every year in federal farm subsidies. In fact, it doesn't even put Perry near the top of the subsidy stack for farmers in his family ZIP code. But for Perry, a fiscal conservative who has called on the federal government to "stop spending...