Sylvia Smith, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an interesting article on farm subsidies, particularly the disaster relief program. She reports that growers and ranchers in 10 disaster prone state got more than half of the disaster relief. For example, North Dakota farmers received $1.9 billion over the same period that a comparable number of Hoosier farmers received $340 million.
The Environmental Working Group argues:
When Congress provides money to growers in the same states year after year for the same weather-related reasons, the Environmental Working Group’s president said, it encourages people to farm or ranch in climates that don’t make sense for agriculture.
“You have the government sending signals encouraging people to take chances … where Mother Nature is saying, ‘You’re pushing things,’ †Ken Cook said Tuesday when his group released a report analyzing 21 years of disaster payments.
Senator Lugar has a plan:
Federal farm subsidies are already excessive, focused on only a handful of crops, and mostly go to farmers in a few states,†he said. “Over the past 10 years, farm subsidies have gone to just one out of three farmers with six percent of farms receiving more than 70 percent of that money – $120 billion.
“Adding ‘permanent disaster assistance’ only adds to this egregious system, targeting certain crops.â€
Lugar has proposed a different approach: a combination of federally backed insurance and tax deferred savings accounts for farmers.
“All farmers could participate regardless of crop or animal raised,†he said. “This would be a more than adequate safety net at much less taxpayer expense, particularly given the changes that are occurring from biofuels production and economies of scale.â€
We spend a ton of money on a pretty messed up farm system. Want smaller government? Farm welfare might be a rational first target, though politically it seems pretty impossible.
Thanks for this Doug! I appreciate any efforts made on this issue and any opportunity to plug EWG’s amazing data set.
With it, you can find out all sorts of things.
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farm/index.php?key=nosign
For example, I learned that there are 19 different Masson’s in the U.S. who have received subsidies over the past decade!
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farm/addrsearch.php?s=yup&stab=US&city=&c=See+Recipients&zip=&last=masson&first=&fullname=
Unfortunately, none of those Massons seem to belong to me.
I like to use the information when I’m pursuing agricultural debtors or farmers claiming loss of income. Mainly it doesn’t amount to much, but I think it unnerves them when I have this information and makes them more likely to tell the truth about their income and assets for fear of what else I might know.
Doug –
P.J. O’Rourke came to the same conclusion in his ‘Parliament of Whores’ some years back.
His take was that one of the few things in government that was NOT complicated was just how clearly bad farm subsidies are.
Entertaining and informative book, and light on the partisan ax grinding, I think.
There is a certain former senator, that is being used by the Gov. as an attack dog, who constantly preaches about how certain local units are misusing the taxpayers money and puttig a burden on poor farmers like himself.
He always fails to mention that fro 1995 to 2005 he was the 4th largst recipient of subsidies in the state. If you drop the first 2 who are recieving subsidies in multiple states, he is the second largest recipient.