‘America’s farm safety-net is broken. Instead of helping small farmers that have been hurt by the Trump administration’s trade war, Trump’s Agriculture Department is wantonly distributing billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest and wealthiest farms.’
It’s the “fat cats” who are benefiting most from President Trump’s taxpayer bailout to farmers hurt by his trade war, according to Anne Weir Schechinger, a senior analyst with Environmental Working Group (EWG).
Three of these farming fat cats got more than $1 million each. Forty-five got more than $500,000 each, and 514 got more than $250,000, which under the program’s rules is supposed to be the limit any single recipient can get.
According to a recent study from the EWG, “the richest of the rich” — the top 1% — received 13% of the federal payments, or more than $177,000 each. The bottom 80%, on the other hand, go an average payment of $5,136.
This, Schechinger suggests, doesn’t line up with this promise:
Our great Farmers will recieve another major round of “cash,” compliments of China Tariffs, prior to Thanksgiving. The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries. In the meantime, and as you may have noticed, China is starting to buy big again. Japan deal DONE. Enjoy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2019
The EWG pointed out that the top 10% of recipients — the biggest, most profitable industrial-scale farms — have received half of the $6 billion in aid given since August.
“The administration’s MFP policies stack the deck against small farmers in favor of the big guys,” Schechinger and her colleagues wrote, adding that, “laughably lax eligibility rules allow cousins, nieces and nephews and far-flung relatives living in cities, with no real connection to farming, to cash government bailout checks. Even Trump 2016 campaign advisors and billionaires are cashing in.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a statement cited by Bloomberg last month, defended the program, saying that the Trump administration “is committed to helping all farmers, regardless of their size, deal with the economic impacts of retaliatory tariffs and unfair trading practices.”
The USDA estimates that the $14.5 million will help U.S. net farm income climb to its highest total since the commodity boom in 2013.
Meanwhile, on the trade front, Trump on Tuesday again turned up the heat.
“A China trade deal is dependent on one thing — do I want to make it,” he said. “I have no deadline, no. In some ways, I think it’s better to wait until after the election if you want to know the truth. But I’m not going to say that, I just think that.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects farm income in 2019 to reach $88 billion – the highest net farm income since 2014’s $92 billion, but still 29% below 2013’s record high.
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There aren’t any small, commercially viable farmers. There are plenty of people that have a hobby they like, which may give them some nice tax advantages, and provide for some capital (land) accumulation, but not really a living. If you think about the 80/20 rule, that is 20% of the ag producers in any given commodity produce 80% of the commodity. Probaly more like 10$ make 90, but it is hard to say because farmers lie.
The question is why the Federal Govt. is subsidizing an ag production, or any production of anything, for that matter. All a scam, designed to separate the working man from the fruit of his labor. Break out the torches and pitchforks. On to DC to burn down the USDA!! It will be a good start.
That’s not true. Small farms are extremely viable economically if they are able to diversify and produce multiple products and services. If you mean someone with ten to twenty acres can’t compete with a soybean combine by raising only soybeans you’d have a point, but small farmer aren’t doing that.
Is it a good way to get rich? Of course not, but it also offers a lifestyle that would cost a fortune for anyone else in terms of healthful conditions, physical and mental fitness, personal freedom, close relations with family, community building, views, activities, etc. All of those things have value but none of those things are ever added to the balance sheet.
There’s a lot more to life than a bottom line.
Of course I agree with your conclusion 100%, just wanted to make sure that the rest wasn’t overlooked.
I have hobby farming neighbors getting thousands of dollars every year for ‘losses” and planting wheat every year just to turn it under for taxpayer cash.
My wife’s cousin, when I asked why he was getting farm subsidies, claimed it was because he lost hay, yet this same guy incessantly harps on poor people getting welfare. They didn’t lose any hay on their inherited hobby farm.
Several years back during the Bush vs Gore election there was a farmer with a painted billboard on a truck trailer decrying welfare. Turned out that this poor farmer collected over a million dollars in farm subsidies. Some of US are more entitled than others.
You should apply for your pound of TP flesh too . Hard Scrabble. I’m sure you lost something to bad luck or misfortune.
See which hobby farm neighbors are consuming the seed corn here:
https://farm.ewg.org/
Hardscrabble, Kinda-sorta on the economic viability of small ag producers in the US today. If a high level of (non cash) trade/barter is an acceptable, or even desirable you are half way there. One still needs to generate enough cash to purchase the land, pay taxes, buy vehicles and equipment, fuel, medical care, yadda yadda. You know all about that, you are doing it. We can all get by with much less of these things than the average American is suing, but the minimum is still way above zero, and the equivalent of (wild guess here) 30-40K$ a year. So unless one is into an off grid, horse drawn plow paradigm, cash has to be generated. The off farm job is what keeps the VAST majority of small producers on the land, and nothing else. Mama teaches school, or Dad wrenches at the garage over in Fairview, maybe he hires out the 5 cy dump and backhoe to odd jobs (cash only, please).
So no, in some important ways small ag is a hobby, a calling, a boutique creamery, an Amish family thing, but it is not economically viable as a way to live in the US today. Of course if someone with a lot of assets wants to take up the gentleman’s life and can afford to write the checks that are needed, that is fine, but then he doesn’t really need or care about farming money, so economic viability is irrelevant.
I knew a few of the last of the dirty shirt farmers. Men who drove horses as boys, and lived on small diverse farms. Sheep, pigs (pigs pay the mortgage!), a dozen dairy cows, rabbits, chickens (eggs and meat), apples, pears, hay, wheat, corn, HUGE green gardens, homemade wine, and wearing pants that Mom made from feedsacks. Most of those old boys said that was the best living they ever did. They got older and richer, and bought more dirt and bigger tractors and some got pretty wealthy, but they never lived better than when they were poor, dirty shirt farmers.
So the farms that produce the most, get the most money ?
That’s just nuts I tell ya, just nuts.
S/
Folks, don’t worry about the Chinese. They are bluffing. And they are trying to use the issues in the ag sector against us (hint, those have little to do with tariffs). There are 7 billion mouths that need food, so it will be sold to someone…. assuming we actually end up with enough surplus to sell this year….
I agree that if you don’t drive a tractor per se, you aren’t a farmer producer and you should not get a check from the Dept of Agriculture. Whoever is sending Dept of Ag checks to non-farmers should be fired, just like the VA employees that lose paperwork so the VA doesn’t have to treat Vets, or the IRS employees that harass Conservatives, the FBI employees that frame innocent people, the DoJ employees that give weapons to drug dealers that are used to kill ICE Agents, or State Dept employees that take Quid Pro Quo bribes, police that shoot people that are not a physical threat, Voting Officers who register illegals and dead people, and Social Security employees that give handicapped status to able bodied Maggots.
only on bizarro world
Well at least he isn’t sending pallets of money or is he?
Carry on….
Same as it ever was:
The USDA “gives” money to big ag operations in order to artificially suppress food prices. Period. No small farmers receive any of these so-called distributions because small farms aren’t capable of producing enough output to justify the expenditure. A local supermarket was selling frozen turkeys for under sixty cents a pound- less than 1/2 of the feed cost to raise a mature bird to slaughter. Add to that the cost to hatch, distribute, raise them, slaughter, package, freeze, store, ship, deliver and stock them on shelves. We’ve done turkeys for ten years now and I know the cost down to the penny and we do it on the cheap- no big shelters, everything done here on site, no additional people or services between us and the customer, no extra costs for shipping and storage, distribution and stocking or advertising and we cannot get it down to less than $4 per pound and that’s without accounting for our labor and time.
So you explain it to me how big ag is able to produce the same bird for 1/10th the cost. They can’t, it isn’t possible unless it is being subsidized, i.e. they are receiving the extra $3.50 per pound, or more, from somewhere else.
One more time for the people in the cheap seats: the entire apparatus of government is a criminal enterprise. The USDA is a another NASA. Whatever you are buying at the grocery store- for the most part- is price controlled in order to give the impression that food is cheap. It is when it comes to quality difference- how the produce and animals are raised when they are alive, and how they taste when you get them. Any honest person who has sampled a 50 cent per pound frozen big ag turkeys versus a $5 per pound farm raised one can tell you, now imagine the other unseen factors like what was in the feed they gave that turkey, and what kinds of chemicals were sprayed on the crops that produced that feed, and whose hands touched it as it was being processed, and how long did it sit in some deep freeze, etc., etc. Most people never consider any of this ever, they just keep buying cheap eats hoping that their ignorance will protect them, pretty much like every other aspect of modern society.
When it all falls apart- and it will- the single most important concern for those who survive the first round of the collapse will be obtaining adequate nourishment to survive. That’s when people are going to finally come to some kind of understanding about the real cost of food, what goes into obtaining each calorie and exactly what the expenses are in getting something from seed or egg up to the point of harvest. I wish those people all the luck in the world because they are going to need it.
For what it is/was worth, my father officially “retired” from row crop farming when they started the farm subsidy program in the 70s. He went on strike.
You hit the nail on the head with the whole thing revolving around “cheap food”.
And it is true one gets what they paid for.
We buy our beef from the family over the valley from us. We pay market for grassfed PLUS ten cents a pound.
People do not realize the value of having the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker all within walking distance.
From this:
“When it all falls apart- and it will- the single most important concern for those who survive the first round of the collapse will be obtaining adequate nourishment to survive. That’s when people are going to finally come to some kind of understanding about the real cost of food, what goes into obtaining each calorie and exactly what the expenses are in getting something from seed or egg up to the point of harvest. I wish those people all the luck in the world because they are going to need it.”
That single piece of advice is what it is all about. That alone makes it worthwhile for the $50 I just sent Quinn. Thanks HSF. I am in the process of building a large greenhouse to fill our needs for greens. Am raising chickens, ducks and rabbits for meat. No room for large livestock but I do have a source for that.
“No small farmers receive any of these so-called distributions…”
Bullshit. Even hobby farms get the free shit handouts. See above comment. Then check this database for neighbors you might know. https://farm.ewg.org/
In my area it’s every POS with a hobby farm or a dairy barn . All “Conservatives ” I might add.
I have a hobby farm too! Where do I sign up for the free shit?
Call your local farm agent.
Just curious, did you go knock on everyone’s door and ask if they were “conservatives”.
Read my first comment shithead. They are people I know… even relatives.
It is important to keep certain things “cheap,” so there is more money to pay taxes and purchase the other shit from the folks who are contributing to the re-election funds of the government parasites. It also undermines the concept of “valuation” in which people are forced to actually decide for themselves what is valuable to them. When you can destroy the concept of “valuation,” you are well on your way to getting people to accept government control of everything as you truly are not able to access the real value of anything. This is why alternative energy is subsidized, why oil is subsidized, why food is subsidized, and so much more. Were people FORCED by the market to get their values in place, major sectors of the economy would collapse overnight.
I understand that there is a joke at the USDA that goes something like….”bad news Fred….your farmer died.” The bloated USDA and other government agencies, are beholden ONLY to the big guys (in every sector of the economy they infest). This should shock NOBODY. The “little guy” is put forth by BOTH useless major political parties as the guy they are “looking out for,” but when the rubber meets the road, only the big contributors, those who have set up the revolving doors of employment with the government, etc. ever benefit from the implemented policies. And when will the mainstream media cover these truths?
Saw a lot of small farms being bought out by bigger farms while growing up in the 50’s & 60’s.
I remember people saying you can’t make it on less than xxxx acres – listing a size ten times bigger than the one my dad ran.
Outside of a possible few holdouts, are there even any small farms left that create the standard crops?
So, who else would be getting the low food price gifts from the government?
Going down memory lane – I remember my dad saying that if things break down, you don’t want to live within three days walking distance of any large city.