Posted on 10/28/2007 8:35:18 AM PDT by shrinkermd
But what about farmers and ranchers who plant grain where unfavorable weather is the norm rather than an exception? Not much rain falls on Oklahoma, the Dakotas or the Texas panhandle. That's just the way it is. Between 1985 and 2005, more than 12,000 purportedly drought-stricken agricultural producers in those states claimed federal disaster payments at least every other year. This group collected $1.4 billion in all, about 60 percent of total federal farm disaster relief aid during those two decades, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
You'd think that Congress would have concluded that there are better uses for federal tax money than propping up the same relative handful of semi-arid farms year after year. Perhaps Washington could provide some modest assistance to convert marginal cropland to environmentally sustainable grassland. Instead, the Senate Finance Committee has voted to create a five-year, $5.1 billion permanent disaster relief trust fund. The logic of the bill, championed by Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Max Baucus of Montana -- a state that is also one of the top 10 recipients of disaster payments -- is that farmers are entitled to a secure source of disaster relief, rather than having to ask Congress for it every year.
The program does offer some advantages over current law. To be eligible for disaster relief, farmers would have to purchase crop insurance; those who repeatedly experience crop failure might find themselves facing rising premiums, an incentive to reduce planting on the most marginal lands. Yet crop insurance itself is heavily subsidized by the federal government, so this requirement hardly takes the taxpayer off the hook.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You mean like using immense amounts of water to grow rice in the most arid parts of California?
I guess if the land goes idle, the government will gobble it up as part of the UN heritage area and make it a park unaccessable to most Americans for exploitation of whatever resources are available?
Whoa! What is a Steynian headline doing in the WaPo?
...the Washington Post hates farmers....they think food comes from the supermarket....the paper was an early supporter of Stalin, a man whose agricultural policies hurt the Russian people.
Uhm... California rice is grown in the Sacramento River flood plains and generally irrigated by annual water overflow diversion.
Nobody is growing rice in the Mojave.
What about sending all that Northern California water
south to enable huge subdivisions built in Southern California fire zones.
When these two entities start calling for an immediate end to every farm subsidy I'll start listening.
Until then.....
L
Montana? I wonder if farmer Tester cashed in at all?
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