U.S. farmers feel pressure with subsidies under siege

[NVMojo]

WASHINGTON - Preparing his Missouri Bootheel fields for a new cotton crop, farmer Charles Parker bemoaned the latest threat to a system that has protected rural America for decades: subsidies that pay farmers billions of dollars.

Reached on a cell phone in his field, Parker knew all about the World Trade Organization decision that gave Brazil a victory in its challenge of the fairness of American cotton subsidies and hastened the day of freer trade in farm commodities.

Like many large growers across Missouri's 400,000 acres of cotton fields, Parker and his family receive hundreds of thousands of dollars for each crop beyond the market price. But recently, they have become a target of gathering forces seeking a better deal for developing countries and American taxpayers.

"They make us sound like a bunch of greedy people not deserving of what we get," said Parker, 62, of Senath, Mo.

more...

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/DBAC9F86F579CBAA86256FBD0022691E?OpenDocument

[rogue_bandit]

1. Subsidies

When WalMart doesn't pay their workers enough and the workers get food stamps or other forms of welfare, the workers are accussed of "milking the system" but when a farmer gets a subsidy (or some giant corporation , for that matter) ... well, somehow they deserve it.

I never have understood farming in today's world. They don't make enough money growing it, they don't pay their farm workers a fair wage for the amount of hard labor they provide...and yet it is the basis for all secondary human production (i.e. if you don't eat your don't calculate). The real price of food must be astronomical.

Actually, I used a Community Supported Agriculture program last year and it wasn't cheap but it wasn't all that outrageous either. I guess if given a choice between good, clean, fresh and healthy food or some pesticide/chemical laced industrial food with money left over for some sugar candy the people have been convinced to choose the later.

[merwin]

10. These farmers are the Neocon's base. They have to subsidise them!

[w4rma]

14. Only until the big agrobuisnesses buy them out. (nt)

[Nay]

2. I have absolutely no sympathy for most farmers.

I used to live out West and saw what subsidies did -- these guys got paid to NOT produce food there for a while. You got paid by the acre, so what did these guys do? In order to have "more acreage" to take out of production, they cut down the few trees remaining on their property!!! Trees that were the only ones for miles around!

And don't get me started on how I had to slave away 51 weeks a year while most farmers in the area took 4 and 5 months off to go to Arizona in the winter.

All the while, of course, they complained about "welfare mothers" raking in the money. . .

They all vote Republican, too, so it really is good to see them get what they voted for.

[MadHound]

11. Oh really?!

Guess you haven't done much politics in rural areas, have you? Granted, the majority of people on farms voted for Bush, but there is a significan number of Democrats and liberal down on the farm. Many are struggling mightly against corporate farmers in order to bring you organic, non-GM crops, and being good stewards of the land. And getting paid to let some land lie fallow does help these people. Yet once again, the blanket condemnation of farmers rears its ugly head here at DU:eyes:

Don't you people get it? You need these people in rural areas. You need liberal farmers to start talking to their neighbors and friends and start pointing the way for another rural populist resurgance. Some of this country's most populist movements started in rural areas, yet here you are, ready to write them off with blanket condemnation. Talk about nose and face, sheesh.

Another thing you need farmers for is to battle back the corporate farms. Small family farmers have been trying to stem the tide for decades now, with little help from the Democrats or anyone else. Everybody is simply so damn happy to see what they consider these relics go the way of the dinosaur, simply because of the mistaken believe that they are radically conservative. Well, guess what, most family farmers, outside the issue of abortion, are pretty damn liberal. They have to be enviromentally minded, their livelyhood depends on it, they're anti-corporate, because they battle corporate America up close and personal on a daily basis, they're anti GM, because they are suffering on the front lines of the GM war. And yet, amazingly enough, the only support they get is the faux support given to them by the Republicans. Gee, maybe if we came down from our high horse and actually deigned to talk to these people we could find common cause with them and sweep the conservatives out of power. But no, it still seems to be the liberal fashion to bash the shit out of a group of people who they have more commonalities with than differences. No wonder the Democrats are losing ground so badly, they're giving it away.

Next time you want to bash a family farmer, please kindly take time to swallow that organic, non-GM food you're chewing on. Otherwise they hypocrisy would be absolutely overwhelming.

[Nay]

16. I have talked and lived with plenty of these farmers, MadHound.

That's why I feel qualified to comment. My hubby grew up on a wheat farm in Montana. The actions and attitudes I alluded to in my first post were seen and heard by me and hubby during our years on farms, so it's not just some ignorant townies blowing off steam.

By the way, the farmers i referred to were not being paid to let land lie fallow so that it could renew itself -- they were being paid because they were producing too much and were causing prices to crash. Even so, my point was not that such payment is always wrong -- it isn't -- it was that these farmers, in the small town I lived in, cut down acres and acres of trees just so they could claim more land was "taken out of production" and thus get more money. This is stealing, plain and simple.

Farmers in Montana were perfectly happy to take their "welfare" payments while denying them to others. I actually heard farmers say that people who lost their jobs (like the steel workers were, back then) shouldn't get a dime -- they should retrain for other jobs. This idea, of course, was never to be applied to farmers, because farmers grew FOOD -- and everybody needs FOOD, thus they were a special class. The idea that we all work together to run a vibrant and varied economy and that we all contribute by our work to the health of the U.S. was not in evidence in Montana. Farmers do not produce food all by themselves -- without gas, farm machinery, seed companies, trains and trucks for quick transport, grocery stores with coolers, etc., there would be no such thing as one family running a 1600-acre farm. It is a communal effort and, 20 years ago, farmers refused to recognize this fact.

Until fairly recently, farmers didn't fight corporate farms -- they wanted to BECOME a corporate farm. Certainly there have been articles in certain magazines (Mother Earth News, etc.) about family farm preservation and diversification for about the past 25 years, but few farmers took it seriously. Only the hippie, leftist, organic farmers did, and they were in the minority and they were universally reviled. Your average Montana farmers wanted to grow their 1500 acres of GM wheat or corn with all the modern chemicals and $300,000 Big Bud tractors, just like corporate farms did, and without those pesky environmentalists asking why the farm help was covered with herbicide and pesticide residue. And they wanted a guaranteed living while they did it, too, even though no other vital industry (steel, coal, etc.) was so vain as to think they could not be replaced.

Having said all this, I also urge support of local agriculture by buying stuff from local farmers. I just bought knitting wool straight off a local sheep farm. They shear, card and spin right there on the farm. Like you, I think this is the way to go, especially for the future. I support fully those brave souls who want to do this kind of farming, especially because they are a far cry from the farmers I lived among.

Yes, we always will need farmers. But we also will always need mechanics, drivers, number crunchers, systems analysts, nurses, teachers, everybody. I just want farmers to realize that in this way they are simply not special. Not any more than any of us, anyway.

I agree that dems/liberals have more in commonality with farmers than the Repubs do. It's too bad that the farmers are the ones who don't recognize this. Dems never destroyed farm subsidies -- the repubs are just about to do that. Farmers are like most folks in the U.S. -- religion and 'values' trumps everything, so when the axe falls, they wonder what the fuck happened. I'm sorry if I get a bit irritated seeing this happen OVER AND OVER AGAIN with different sections of the population, even though the facts are pretty self-evident. For the record, I don't think farmers are any dumber than the rest of the repub voters, but I don't think they are any smarter, either.

[NVMojo]

19. Nay, I feel the same way having spent ten years in southern Idaho

and now I am surrounded by ranchers who want to graze their cattle on public lands for next to nothing and get drought subsidies even when they didn't have an issue with drought in that particular year. They get it cuz it was there.

And they voted Repuglican!

[bemildred]

3. "Agribusiness feels pressure as goverment welfare payments at risk."

A rough translation.

[Coventina]

4. The scary thing is, we rely on these people to feed us.

They're greedy, stupid and selfish....and yet we'd be hurting if the industry shut down as a whole.

[Tansy_Gold]

15. Nobody's eating COTTON

The subsidy they're griping about losing is a subsidy to COTTON farmers, not the ones who are growing organic carrots and musk melons.

We don't need all the cotton that's already being grown, and to get a few more people out of this water-intensive and unnecessary production shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings -- or menu.

Cotton farming produces lots of profits for a very, very few people, and no food.

As I said in another thread on this subject last week, there are bales and bales and bales of cotton ROTTING at the gin at 51st Avenue and Buckeye Road in Phoenix. I don't see any of the homeless folks in that neighborhood (and there are plenty of them) ripping open those bales to chow down on free food.

[Nightwing]

5. Just not in me to feel sorry for them

Nothing personal against farmers, but they should have known better than to trust a lame duck *. Wait till he gives it to the far right religious nuts; There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth once that happens.

[hatrack]

6. "Bush/Cheney Farm-Ranch Team members, please report to the Milking Barn"

How's it feel to be USED, folks? :evilgrin:

[jmcgowanjm]

7. Subsidies will not be cut

Or if they are, John Deere, Case, and Cat
are out of bidness.

And say goodbye to any rural town outside
of the county seat.

Oil will run out first.

[Toots]

8. Welfare

:shrug:

[jmcgowanjm]

9. The only difference between welfare and subsidies is the size of the check

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1290659#1290985

[davsand]

12. Unless you want YOUR food supply controlled by business keep subsidies.

Frankly, I am amazed at how many people just don't GET it when it comes to the food supply in this nation. You guys can bitch all you want to about farmers and how they suck up so much money, but unless you want the guys like MONSANTO providing and pricing your food you better support small farmers.

Right now, you are in a place where the majority of the poultry and poultry products on the market are provided by a handful of companies. Companies like Tyson control the market. That means you GET what they produce, end of story. You get the antibiotics in the feeds and the dead animals--and if you don't want to eat that crap you are just SOL or else meatless.

Pork is in that same boat with about five or six top producers running the markets. I'm not going to go into the environmental issues of hog farming corporate style but I'm sure you can imagine what it does to the local air and water quality. Plus, you may not realize it, but pork carries some pretty nasty pathogens unless you cook it well--and THAT is on the increase, I am told.

Cattle/beef production is rapidly headed that same way--to a few producers-- complete with Mad Cow disease and all the other fun things that come with the diet of antibiotics and pesticides they have to feed to reduce losses on the feed lot.

This is not family farmers doing it--it is the same corporate assholes that the current regime supports in every other way.

I know families that have been on the same acreage for generations--literally, it has been handed down for over a hundred years. Those farms are struggling. They don't GET those huge subsidies you want to kill off. Those guys are going out of business, and THEY were the ones producing beef that wasn't laden with chemicals and grains that were not genetic nightmares.

THEY are the competition for corporate America, and THEY are going away.

What happens if you corner the market on something? You control the price and the quality.

Do away with farm subsidies and you will be handing control of your food source over to the folks who have brought you $2.00 gas, environmental nightmares like the toxic dump in Nevada, and credit card interest rates that are double the prime lending rate.

I'm sorry to climb on a soapbox, but there is an appalling lack of understanding here.

The key to all this is to ask for REFORM of farm subsidies. Don't give all that payola to the corporate raiders--put it someplace where it can do some good as far as protecting your food sources and food prices--the small farms.


Laura

[bemildred]

13. The vastly greater part of subsidies go to agribusiness.

And agribusiness uses those subsidies to run small farmers out
of business, which is why we are losing all our small farms, and
even big family farms have trouble surviving. The government also
refuses to protect small farmers from foreign competition.

The great plains used to be covered with thriving small farm
communities, they are all gone now, and it was government farm
policy that drove the change. There is nothing but giant hog
farms and the like, where immigrants are employed in sub-stantdard
conditions at minimum wage. Independent small farmers do not make good
obedient citizens for the empire.

The organic farming sector does seem to be doing OK, which is a hint.

[davsand]

17. Absolutely--we have got to REFORM subsidies--not eliminate them.

I agree completely--agri-mega-business is the only group that benefits from the current farm subsidy system. We can change that--and if the Democrats took the lead on it, I really think that "GOP" heartland would be a thing of the past.

What scares me to death is the image of corporate raiders having control of supply (and prices) for foodstuffs. We can prevent that with a complete re-do of the farm program...


Laura

[bemildred]

18. You are probably right.

There was a time when the government actually helped small
family farmers. I come from farm people, so in that context
I would not mind "farm subsidies".

[Nay]

20. thank you, this is a point I failed to bring up in my first post.