Food and Ag Bites
President Obama Takes Aim at Farm Subsidies and Farmers Get Less and Less of Food Dollar
Fruit and vegetable farmer takes President to task on food system reform at town hall meeting.By Courtney Lowery Cowgill, 5-19-11
Matt Harsh, a fruit and vegetable farmer in Northern Virginia, asked the President last week during a CBS News town hall meeting about his plan for farm subsides.
President Barack Obama came out against subsidies to agribusiness this week, saying in a CBS News town hall meeting that the whole system “needs revamping.”
The President was answering a question from a fruit and vegetable farmer, Matt Harsh of Chesley Vegetable Farms, who said:
“Mr. Presdient, I’m a farmer and I’m probably one of the only farmers you’ll ever meet who feels that federal farm subsidy payments and programs are misguided are and not the way we should be supporting the American farmer. They’re antiquated. It’s just the wrong approach in my opinion. I really think we need to back up from that and create a more robust and entrepreneurial economy for our farmers. So what’s your plan for weaning ag off of federal farm support?”
The President started off by reminding Harsh and the audience about his wife’s initiatives on fresh food and nutrition and then addressed the question, saying, among other things:
“Part of what we want to do is to make sure that help is going to family farms in crisis situations. Drought, disaster and so forth,” Obama said. “That we’re not just giving ongoing subsidies to big agribusiness. Which is the way that a lot of our farm programs work right now.”
He didn’t get into specifics, as this post on the Obama Foodorama blog notes, but the comments—particularly those promising an income cap—may be enough to rile big agriculture and encourage those working for food system reform.
Here’s what he said in regard to income caps and family farms:
“It may start just modestly by, for example, limiting those subsidies to what is a genuine family farm,” President Obama said. “You know, which would put some sort of income cap on whether or not you qualify for this kind of subsidy.”
Here’s a link to the CBS News story and the aforementioned post on Obama Foodorama has the full transcript. And, here’s the video of his remarks:
A few more links on subsidies from the week:
Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Missouri, says (in the wake of the Environmental Working Group releasing the list of lawmakers who get subsidies) in this profile on The Hill: “We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do. People who aren’t familiar with the agriculture industry, you know, try and make that look like something exceptional.”
Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos takes aim at subsides.
South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson applauded Obama’s remarks, saying in a release, “Targeting these payments to family farmers at a limit of $250,000 is not only good policy, it would save the government billions of dollars at a time when we are looking to cut wasteful spending and get our deficit under control.”
Baylen Linnekin, the executive director of the nonprofit Keep Food Legal, writes in an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun that cutting subsidies would mean a more sustainable future for agriculture.
In other food and ag news this week:
The Des Moines Register reports that the ag boom is missing small-town America.
Amber Waves, a publication of the USDA’s Economic Research Service released a new set of data that shows in more detail where our food dollars go. The answer is, basically,: not to farmers.
Eating Liberally posts about saving the economy by changing what you eat.
GOOD magazine rounds up the best food writing from the James Beard Awards.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the legal wrangling over urban agriculture.
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Courtney Lowery Cowgill is a writer and editor (formerly of these pages) who also runs Prairie Heritage Farm, a small farm in Central Montana. She and her husband grow vegetables, turkeys, ancient and heritage grains and sometimes a little ruckus. As a farmer and writer, she works on and follows food and agriculture issues closely and each week, rounds up the top stories on the web in this arena for New West. Have an ag story you think should be included in next week’s roundup? You can reach Courtney at courtney@newwest.net.
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So if bugs, or birds, or hail or wind or scorching sun destroy our crop, we are paying money to the Feds to have income protection. The average farm income for the prior five years to your application year is the income benchmark against which a payment will be made about 9 months down the road. We have yet to have a claim. And insurance is an expense. However, calling it a "subsidy" is hardly fair. One farm is 22 crop acres, and the other 66 crop acres. Not a big time deal but we grow labor intensive, capital intensive, specialty berry crops, and employ seasonal pickers and year around crews for our horticultural needs. We think we contribute to the American economy. That our government does help us in a small way with farm revenue insurance is not asking a lot. In turn, they regulate our water, our farming practices, our labor supply, what we pay in wages and benefits, what we spray for pests, what we use for fertilizer, how we can harass birds or other animal pests, what kinds of building we may build and where. The public asks a lot of farmers, and mandates a lot, and has just flooded hundreds of thousands of acres behind levees paid for by farmers, in order to protect towns and cities built lower than 100 year flood levels. Where is the free ride in that deal??
In dealing with government in the US, you had better belong to some organization to represent you and your issues for your benefit, or Congress and legislatures will pick your pocket, steal you land use, and not even give you a kiss for the screwing you got. The American public has no end to the NGOs willing to take their money to put farmers out of business, and will at the drop of a hat. He who protests the most about farm subsidies is most likely trying to get the money for another purpose. And not paying down the Federal debt. Buying votes, mostly. That less than 3% of the population now rural is not a big time voting block nationally, but those fly over states do have electoral votes and two senators, and thus can determine some public policy. With enough tenure, a lot of public policy. Thank God for the Senate.
Subsides are social engineering, and the most ambitious social engineer since FDR is in the White House. His party has used taxes and subsides to direct the social agenda and the social contract for their entire existence. Do you think Harry Reid will change? Obama? Barney Frank? Or any of the liberal corn belt farm vote Senators? The real issue with farming is land, and land values have risen above sustainable numbers if only because there is no place to park money and make a passive living. Less than one percent interest at the bank and the widow woman is getting a 5% return renting out the home place. Farms represent economic opportunity at a time when not much else does. The Farm Lobby has power right now. They produce cash flow and taxes. No interest paid by banks. A buck in the stock market in 2000 would return you a buck today. The huge chunk of the American economy that is paid as pension money to Public Employees, through their unions like SEIU, at all levels of government, have to go somewhere to earn a return which makes them the institutional buyers you read about. In my state, if they lose money in their investments, the taxpayers have to make it up. Go figure. In the meantime, Weyerhaeuser became a REIT, and is selling land, the last big sale in Oregon was to CalPERS, the California public retirement system. Oregon PERS has lost tons of money, and CalPERS is buying timberland in Oregon in expectation that they will sell logs someday and get a return. Of course Oregon is not buying that land with retirement money. Oregon public employees are all liberals, with NGO subscriptions and donations taken electronically from their pay checks. They sue to not allow timber to be cut. Catch 22. That is a contract with labor that will provide the unique experience the American car makers enjoyed to their end, and guess what??? The social engineers told us they couldn't let the car makers go tits up, so they got bailed out by tax dollars. Why?? The biggest health and welfare program in America would go bust for openers. So the left had to save Big Business. Oh!!! I forgot. Big Business supports the left with big time money so they have access to elected officials through the "money is free speech" channels. Every millionaire congressman and senator is subsidized by Big Business, and that is who and what pays for elections and campaigns. Buy your favorite congressman. Dude!! If the problems are all created by policies out of the Congress, and only they can solve them, why do we have them, anyway??? It is a scam worth trillions. Congress is in on it. Along with public employees. The "free market" bullshit is worth something on a garden. As fertilizer. Reach behind you and feel the strings that determine your every day life. And then look through the smoke at the mirrors. As God why? Ask the paper boy Why? The true capitalists are elected to Congress. Like missionaries to Hawaii, those elected to Congress go the Washington D.C. to do good, and they all do real well.
I knew a guy who live trapped pest animals for hire. The hippies, bohemians, and the Vegans all loved him. The live trapping was a sales enhancer. He killed them all, later, far from where he trapped those pests he collected. Not right away. He ate a lot of them. 'Coons, 'possums, squirrels, etc. But the line was that he got them all, but the smell of that animal would be there to attract others in time. Just call, and I will come and trap them. Uh, huh. He never trapped them all. He left some for seed. Congress is leaving some for seed in every law. A flaw that lawyers can litigate. And a need for a new law to correct the old one. On and on it goes, where it lands, nobody knows. Congressman or carney, they are all there to pick our pockets. The flim flam men and women. Redford and Paul Newman pulling their scams. Subsidies are important if you are getting one or more. And your vote and campaign dollars have importance. That is how this big capitalist carnival works. 'Tis a socialist wheel and skids greasing operation that gets grease on its hands every day. Palms and skids greased to make the world move. American capitalism. But so is bank robbery.