What is your opinon on corporate/large farming operations?

I do not for the life of me understand your complaint about a bigger farm getting a bigger subsidy than a smaller farm. If the payout is 10 cents a bushel that year, then it is 10 cents a bushel, if you chose to grow 1000 bu, your neighbor chose to grow 100,000 bu, so be it, you each get your fair share. Some sort of size limit makes no sense at all to me, I can't comprehend what you are trying to do. Or if it's $10 an acre, then to each what they should get.

I think I've mentioned there are 3 major parts to the farm program - two of them do exactly what you say, they _only_ pay out when crop prices are very low, well below povertly or breakeven levels, and they don't bring a farmer back up to breakeven. So, most of the subsidy money is doing exactly what you want - it only kicks in when there is a need, not all the time.

As well, there are income limits for you to qualify for the Farm Program payments, so again, there is some of what you want.

So - I'm left not understanding what you want - you already got it with the current Farm Program, mostly?

I m rather disappointed by your brush off of the whole 'welfare' conversation. That was a bit hurtful - you don't even try to understand a thing. Welfare is given to people that can't or don't. Subsidies are given to a business that if it fails, will hurt many more downstream and create _many_ people needing welfare through no fault of their own. Subsides are not money in the pocket of people - they are business helpers, to keep a business from sinking through weather, or international issues, or our own govt causing problems - like when the USA put a tire tax on any tires coming from China, so China cut back the import of pork from the USA in retaliation, which caused less corn and soybean meal to be used. I guess you'd like those farmers to suffer and to heck with them.

But I don't need to keep going back & forth with you - I appreciate the conversation, I've said my piece, others can sort through & pick out what they want to get from it all. At this point we just start saying our point more loudly, but the other side doesn't want to listen. If you just want to blindly call it welfare and not consider anything outside of what you believe, that's up to you.

Thanks,

--->Paul

That was somewhat true in the 1960's, into the 70's.

It seems you would wish we returned to the 1940s, in a way.

Instead, in 2000s, we have to deal with the whole world, as shipping and world wide needs become a bigger force in most anything we do. As well as worldwide ecconomies.

In so many ways, farming is like it was centuries ago - put a seed in the ground, help it survive & thrive, and harvest in the fall.

In so many ways, farming is so different than it ever was.

Somewhere down the middle of all that sameness and change, we are where we are at now. As with all businesses, we merge into bigger businesses over time, until they become inefficient and fail, and then small concerns pick up the pieces and start the cycle over again. The Govt might try to prevent the mergers, or it might try to prevent the failures, but eventually they will happen, and the cycle repeats.

We are in a merger and get bigger cycle right now, and if you are not, you are swimming against the stream.

There is _nothing_ wrong with that, but enjoy what you do, be what you want, and don't worry about the rest - they are on their path, and that path is pretty much pre-determined.

If a river is flowing, you can create a little eddie for yourself, but you can't stop the whole river. If you make a dam to do so, you are bigger than the river itself, and so you have failed at your mission to downsize....

It just doesn't work.

The pattern will continue, merge into bigger farms.

Some of us will remain small, some will remain micro, some will be hobbiests at it.

That's all good.

Enjoy what you do.

--->Paul

Most of what you say is correct rambler,

The biggest farm companies have a real addvantage over most farmers. The corporate bussiness can buy trators, trucks etc at fleet prices, ie for as little as 40% of the price that Jo Blogs farmer will pay. All of their fuel seed etc is lower than retail prices buy up to several percent. Also depending on the crop or animal they have a real say in how much they sell for. Yet these companies still make less an acre in yield and profit than Jo Blogs?

It is not even capitalistic as these companies ues what ever means they can to stop competition.

Martin, you're completely ignoring the fact that we GIVE MONEY TO FARMERS no matter what.
They don't have to be down on their luck.

Every year, they get the direct payment for whatever commodity they're growing.
Every year.
It's part of the budget.

It has nothing to do with getting rich. It's the fact that they DON'T have to run their business like a business--like everyone else does.

I don't have unemployment insurance, either. (Or health insurance, for that matter) That's pretty typical for anyone who is self-employed.
But I also don't have American tax dollars propping up my business(es).

And this also misses the fact that there ARE ag. producers out there who don't get subsidies at all.
Cattle producers, for example, are only bailed out when there's an actual declared disaster. And that's often in the form of low-interest LOANS! lol

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

My thought has always been back to grass. (Rancher... What can I say? My mind is always back on the grass. lol)
If land is so erodable that it qualifies for CRP, why on earth isn't it just put back in grass??
Here on the Plains, for example, most of the CRP ground never should have been dug up in the first place. Put it back in grass, put grazing bovines back on it, and you have the prairie starting to look/act like it's supposed to, habitat and all!

CRP is one of the biggest wastes there is...

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Nobody is forcng anybody to farm fencerow to fencerow, as a matter of fact the CRP program takes land out of commodity production.

direct payments are not paid to every farmer all the time. If farm income grosses over 750,000 you won't get any payments, or if you make more than 500,000 off farm...

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

Which means, if you have a non-farmer investor he can make a half million (net, btw, not gross) off farm AND three quarters of a million from the farm itself.
Ie, they can have a net, annual income of $1.25 million before they make too much money not to get their payments.

(and of course that's why you have people like this man: Maurice Wilder who has collected nearly $8 million in various farm program payments since 1995.)

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

The fact is that if you pay a subside to a farmer then the input costs go up, and it is the middle men that get the money, not the farmer.

The goverment would be better to give the cash to John Deere and Monsanto direct then goving it to them via the farmers pocket.

If the government is doing such an admirable job with their farm subsidies programs, why NOT give them a shot at universal healthcare ?

....and, while we're at it, let's start a government-funded meals-on-wheels to service every man, woman and child in the country.

Within weeks, life would be smooth and effort free for everyone.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

Thanks for the chuckle, Forerunner. The farm program could use a lot of improvements, including the 15% or so that actually goes towards farmers.

Our choice in life seems total chaos without govt, and totally lunicy with it.

--->Paul

wrong, the farm income is gross not net

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

I think you need to do some research on this.

It's AGI. Ie, adjusted gross income.
Which actually means net since that "adjusted" number comes from taking out expenditures, inputs, etc, etc.

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop