Posted on 11/10/2003 2:20:54 AM PST by shrinkermd
A great rift is opening in America's once-impregnable farm lobby. It is a gap between those forms of agriculture that can prosper on their own and the ones that must be perpetually propped up by huge subsidies. This is a critical development if this country is ever going to control the costs of its farm programs and deal fairly with poor countries that want their chance to prosper from global trade. The United States has to acknowledge that it can no longer continue to support hopelessly unprofitable agricultural enterprises, even if they are in states represented by powerful members of Congress.
This new schism shows up in the debate over proposals to cap the amounts individual farmers can receive in government aid. Right now, some of the nation's wealthiest welfare recipients are farmers "earning" taxpayer subsidies in the high six figures, or more. Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Finance Committee and an Iowa farmer, has long been eager to impose new limits. Unfortunately, he was unable to get the Senate to debate an amendment to the Department of Agriculture's annual funding legislation last week that would set a new cap on the overall amount farmers can obtain in federal subsidies. Many Southern senators were eager to avoid the issue.
Of course the senator is right in wanting to place tighter limits on farmers' checks, and it's important that a representative of a farm state is leading this charge. The wheat, corn and soybean farmers in Mr. Grassley's area get subsidies, but they tend to be smaller than those for capital-intensive crops like rice and cotton farming in the South (and California). Midwestern farmers also are more enthusiastic about genuine global fair trade. Southern farmers fear, rightly, that it would mean the end of the huge subsidies that allow them to export their product at prices below the cost of growing it. One West Texas cotton farmer jokingly accuses Mr. Grassley of triggering a new civil war.
The farm subsidies are fraudulently sold to the public as a way of propping up the small family farm, when in reality they only accelerate the concentration of farming in this country. Taxpayer handouts amount to almost half of the total net income for American farmers, but two-thirds get no subsidy. Among those who do, the top 10 percent receive 65 percent of all payments, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group.
It's astonishing that a program can continue to get Congressional support when it hurts virtually everybody our representatives are supposed to be concerned about — small farmers, other taxpayers and poorer nations struggling to join the global economy. According to a government report issued in September, the lack of realistic caps on individual subsidies only encourages more overproduction by large farms. Meanwhile, industrial-scale farms awash in subsidies have the incentive to accumulate more land, further inflating prices beyond the reach of modest farmers, many of whom are renters. Smaller farmers are also afflicted by depressed crop prices.
The 2002 farm bill set a $360,000 cap on an individual's subsidies, but that's widely abused as farmers create legal entities with interests in the same land, each entitled to a payment. Still, in opposing Senator Grassley's efforts to rein in the abuses and to limit payments, earlier this year the National Cotton Council shamelessly stated that such a move would drive farmers to "make cropping decisions based on program benefits rather than market signals."
Get it? The cotton lobby would like you to think that smaller payments distort market realities more than unlimited subsidies. This is the kind of nonsensical claim underlying the nation's absurd farm policies. Stringent payment limits would be a step toward some semblance of sanity. Senator Grassley should persevere.
Our family's ignorance baffled my great-uncle and amazed because he nearly begged us to jump aboard this cash cow for the kids, but the ones with master's degrees would mutter, "I don't know anything about farming???"
"YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT FARMING! UNCLE SAM WILL DO IT FOR YOU--JUST DO WHAT HE SAYS, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!"
What this is really about is the NYT wanting to help out poor contries. Of all the reasons to end Farm subsidies, this is the only bad one.
Yeah, let 'em rot...
{/sarcasm}
What have you got against people in other countries? You're saying we should distort our own markets (and harm everyone but the subsidized "farmers" in the process) just to spite some poor folks overseas? And thereby keep them in poverty and make it more likely they will end up here illegally?
Sorry, that doesn't make a lick of sense to me. I want to see those folks allowed to prosper, for both humanitarian and practical reasons.
Excellent points.
Good point.
Smaller farmers are also afflicted by depressed crop prices.
I don't get this. They could also get subsidies, I imagine.
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