When George W. Bush signed a farm bill in 2002, he said it would preserve the "farm way of life" for generations. The bill increased direct payments to farmers by $83 billion, redistributing wealth to agricultural communities and helping fund the farm way of life for people living at Crown Center and in Mission Hills.
Newly tabulated information from the Environmental Working Group, which is critical of U.S. farm policy, shows that absentee landowners and investors receive subsidies that, in the public's mind, go to struggling family farms. The U.S. Department of Agriculture last year sent nearly $100 million to cities with more than 500,000 residents.
Not very farmy communities in this area got in on the action. In Kansas City, Missouri, 1,611 recipients collected nearly $5 million in 2010. The city's boundaries reach into four counties, so it stands to reason that the receivers include people who drive actual tractors and combines for a living. But zip code searches indicate that the subsidies are also being mailed to downtown addresses and people who live around the Plaza.
Kansas City is one of four cities in the metropolitan area with at least 100,000 residents, and the municipalities are all benefiting from a program that began after the Depression. Overland Park received $2.4 million in farm subsidies in 2010. Independence's take was close to $865,000. The USDA sent $349,296 to Kansas City, Kansas.
Farm subsidies find their way into even the toniest parts of town. The 66208 zip code, which includes Mission Hills, has 54 recipients who collected $50,000 or more in total subsidies from 1995 to 2010.
Even members of Congress are cashing in. Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler lives on a farm in Cass County with her husband, Lowell. Hartzler Farms has received nearly $800,000 in farm subsidies since 1995. "We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do," Hartzler told The Hill in a recent interview. In fact, only 38 percent of farmers receive payments, according to the Environmental Working Group's data. (The program favors the production of five crops: corn, soybeans, rice, cotton and wheat.)
Hartzler's perceptions are wrong. But unlike some beneficiaries, she can at least see from her house the corn she's being paid to grow.
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OR we could just do away with Hartzler and her corn. You KNOW there are gay incestuous pedophiles hiding in the rows!
Doubt there are alot of those kids. Sound more like the children of businessmen who own farms where there are tenant farmers. Kinda like the children of slave owners in our previous "Free Market" system. I agree that these people don't need Aid. Tenant farmer children do.
Yes, the set-aside program. It's great because they pay you to *not* use the land that was so poor you wouldn't have used it anyway. ;)
Yes, the subsidies are not actually evil, and they do serve to buoy the economies of rural states. They do not, however, help small family farmers to the extent that the public seems to believe they do.
So, it's not just poor minorities sucking at the government teat. As a part of deficit reduction let's do away with ALL agricultural subsidies and let the free market work.
Farm subsidies in this country are like a Lewis Carroll rabbit hole.
Fun fact: for FASFA Federal Student Aid, all farm assets are exempt from the "need analysis" formula (as assets or even investment). Therefore, children of farmers with net worth of tens of millions are at the front of the line for Pell Grants and subsided student loans.
Subsidies merely ensure an even playing field for all producers, but that playing field is determined by our government. If "corporate farming" gets a greater share of this, we must regulate so that money cannot go to agri-business. The conservation land is another way to regulate prices earned year to year, so there are not huge swings in the market. Only market speculators win there - and there are very few farmers who also speculate. And my guess is that some of the money sent to cities as a payment for farm work does go back to the maintenance of land, and actual farming. Mine does. But I'm small potatoes, and I don't own enough to profit. And I might never profit from it.
I think it's interesting that the Teabaggers complain about socialism but never mention farm subsidies, one of the biggest types of socialist-style spending around.
There's a corn-and-soybean ghetto in the Heartland
And some Big Time Operator's gonna farm it all
He's got new pain disease
Losing money planting seeds
Making it up on LDP, puts and calls
Only corn, soybeans, rice and cotton receive farm subsidies.
Only 34% of farmer's take the welfare payments.
The myth of the family farmer keeps these subsidies in play.
Don't forget they also receive money for nothing also known as conservation or idle land.
I don't think the subsidies themselves are bad. What's bad is seeing so many Tea Party types bashing big government/socialism/other evil things and then taking farm subsidies.
For downtown and other urban areas however, do you supppose any of the $ is going to support urban farmers? It is a valid question as that trend is rising in order to bring veggies to areas where there are not available. Many are supported by grants but perhaps some of these (and community gardens) are being funded by these programs. A few bad apples, yes, but maybe not all?
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