Posted on 04/28/2008 3:42:45 PM PDT by The_Republican
Retail food prices have climbed more than 4 percent in the last year, and a similar hike is projected for next year. Riots have broken out in developing countries over food shortages. Schools are being forced to change their lunch menus.
Some consumers, reacting to a rise in the price of rice, have made a run on stores – prompting Costco, Sam's Club and other retailers to limit how many bags they sell to individuals.
Consumers are hurting, yes, but growers of corn, wheat, rice, cotton and other crops are loving life these days. Corn has hit a record $6 per bushel. As University of California, Berkeley, economics professor David Zilberman recently noted in The Bee, these higher prices are the result of booming demand in Asia, higher oil prices and, to some extent, the impact of ethanol production on the markets of corn and other crops.
Given that big growers and commodity corporations are enjoying the windfall – and experts say these price spikes are not just a temporary "blip" – you might think that Congress would want to pass a farm bill that reflects current realities.
Nope.
Congress is close to approving another five-year farm bill that would cost the treasury about $300 billion. A good chunk of this funding – about $5.2 billion a year – will be in the form of "direct payment" subsidies to growers of corn and other crops, including some growers who are millionaires.
The farm bill is an outgrowth of the 1930s, when the nation wanted to protect farmers from the uncertainties of weather, markets and speculators. There's still a need for some form of agricultural security blanket, but one that advances 21st century goals – including fiscal sanity and environmental protection.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
ALL subsidies are BS. That being said, the set aside acres BS needs to stop, along with many other crappy farm programs. I come from the farm, I always thought a handout from the government was BS.
A buccaneer used to be a pretty darned high price for corn.
Now it is getting way too uncomfortably close to reality.
How can anyone talk about tax cuts when we are throwing around money like this. We just borrowed to pay out the stimulus package. Spending is far outpacing revenues. What is going on?
The vast majority of those $300 billion is for feeding “the poor”, thus continuing to make them the most obese poor in the history of the world.
>> How can anyone talk about tax cuts when we are throwing around money like this.
That’s a scary statement.
Congress is close to approving another five-year farm bill that would cost the treasury about $300 billion. A good chunk of this funding – about $5.2 billion a year – will be in the form of “direct payment” subsidies to growers of corn and other crops, including some growers who are millionaires.
I’m surprised they don’t raise the subsidies in view of the fact that crude oil/natural gas is rising so high. After all their cost for fuel, fertilizer, insecticides, electricity, parts for their equipment, etc are rising at a rapid rate all caused by the price of oil/gas.
I personally know a dairy farmer who’s collected just shy of $20,000, every year, for over a decade so he will NOT expand his dairy operation.
Partly?!
These are the best and brightest Bee brains who opined that we were partly to blame for 9/11 because we do not try to "understand" the rest of the world.
These same Bee brains praised and published MTBE advocates' literature to promote that abominable "Earth saving" chemical -- and at the same time the Bee brains denounced those of us who by the thousands protested MTBE at the state capitol building. We were stupid "dupes" of San Francisco radio station KSFO's self-promotion, said the Bee brains.
KSFO personnel were right and the feeeeeeeeel good liberals wound up trying to get us killed. Here they go again.
Agriculture used to be considered an industry critical for defense. We’ve gotten away from that, and I think that is unwise. A country that can’t feed itself, can’t feed an army during war.
You can send Uncle Sam as much as you like. : )
Nobody ever dreamed that whole swaths of American industries - textiles, electronics, etc, would be largely extirpated from the US 50 years ago, so why would agriculture be any different?
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