The Daily Signal – by Daren Bakst
As Congress and the Trump administration develop their budget plans for the fiscal year 2018 budget and beyond, there’s one area that can provide them significant savings: the out-of-control farm handouts.
The current farm handout system, often referred to as the “safety net” for agricultural producers, consists of commodity programs such as two major new programs, the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs, and the federal crop insurance program.
This safety net costs taxpayers about $15 billion a year.
There are numerous reasons why farm handouts should be addressed in the budget process, but here are just five.
1. Oppose central planning and anti-market beliefs.
Most people would rightly expect any safety net to only protect farmers from major crop losses. Unfortunately, the safety net goes way beyond this. Under the current system, many agricultural producers don’t have to deal with most ordinary business risks. For example, agricultural producers can enjoy record production and perfect growing conditions and still receive massive government handouts.
If another industry came to Congress and asked the government for programs to protect it from the risks of doing business, it would be mocked.
Yet, the current safety net assumes that multimillion-dollar agribusinesses are less capable of operating their businesses than the smallest mom and pop shops.
2. Stop a massive and improper wealth transfer.
The myth behind the agricultural safety net is that it helps small, struggling farmers. In reality, it primarily helps the largest agricultural producers.
Regardless of size, no business should be insulated from market conditions, and this certainly includes these large producers.
The current system, though, taxes non-farm households in order to provide handouts for farm households that generally have far greater incomes and wealth. The discrepancy in income and wealth is particularly stark when looking at the farms that receive most of the subsidies.
Commercial farms—that is, midsize, large, and very large family farms, as well as non-family farms—represent only about 10 percent of all farms in the U.S., but account for 76 percent of the value of production.
In terms of subsidies, commercial farms received 70 percent of government commodity payments in 2015 and 78 percent of federal crop insurance indemnities.
Looking at midsize farm households only, in 2015, their median income was triple the median income of all U.S. households and their median wealth was 26 times greater.
3. Reduce cronyism.
Even though the safety net is often referred to as an “agricultural” safety net, in most instances, it is simply an excuse to provide handouts to a very small number of favored interests.
For example, 95 percent of the 2015 Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage payments went to just five crops (corn, peanuts, rice, soybeans, and wheat). There are also special, market-distorting programs just for sugar and dairy.
4. Reduce duplicative programs.
The commodities that get assistance with ordinary business risk through Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage can also get assistance from these types of risks through the federal crop insurance program.
Agricultural special interests usually argue that the federal crop insurance program is very successful. If that’s the case, why have so many programs?
There should be at most only one safety net program for a commodity, and it should focus on major crop losses only.
5. Protect taxpayers.
Congress is often criticized for delegating too much power to agencies and then not providing the necessary oversight. But the same delegation and oversight problems happen within Congress itself, and there’s no better example than with the agriculture committees.
These committees, as evidenced by their recent farm bill hearings and complaints about wanting more handouts, are effectively a means to funnel as many taxpayer dollars to agricultural special interests as possible. Who is protecting taxpayers, or for that matter, consumers? As has been seen in agricultural policy for decades, the rest of Congress has failed to provide the necessary oversight and protect taxpayers.
The budget is at least one way that Congress can try to protect taxpayers.
What, then, should a budget include? Here are two things for starters:
1. State clear principles.
Any budget should articulate that central planning and corporate welfare have no business in the farm handout system.
If any handouts are to be provided, they should be based on major crop losses due to natural disasters, not because agricultural producers can’t operate their businesses in the marketplace just like every other business.
2. Eliminate revenue and price-related handouts that ignore these principles.
This would include getting rid of the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs, the sugar and dairy programs, and revenue policies in the federal crop insurance program—and any other policies that are not directly connected to major crop losses.
The agricultural “safety net” is simply out of control. Congress and the Trump administration now have a unique opportunity to use the budget process as an important tool to move agricultural policy in a commonsense direction. They should seize this opportunity.
These farmers get paid NOT TO GROW CROPS. Total insanity.
APHIS, the govt. agency that “helps” bee keepers, has pulled the same thing in the past, and likely today as well. Interesting, since it is geoengineering and tech “upgrades” (such as 5G) that is killing bees left and right… 🙁
“…..If another industry came to Congress and asked the government for programs to protect it from the risks of doing business, it would be mocked……”
You mean like Chrysler, GM, and the Banks that create their own money, and still fail? None of them were mocked…. they were paid handsomely, and paid a lot more than the $15 billion spread out among a thousand farmers.
“…..The myth behind the agricultural safety net is that it helps small, struggling farmers. In reality, it primarily helps the largest agricultural producers……”
Well part of the problem is identifying what the myth is. I can’t believe a Zionist media outlet like “The Daily signal”, and they seem to be shoveling the dung right out the gate. I’m sure there are a lot of farm subsidies granted to people who shouldn’t get them, just as there are welfare cheats too, but do the Zionist purveyors of this “news” have an interest in seeing more American farms fail? Are they trying to assist the process of causing us to starve to death by publishing this article?
I don’t know exactly where these “farm handouts” are going, but if 700 billion can go to the Pentagon, I don’t see a problem with $15 billion being spent to make sure we’re still producing food in this country.
Yes, I’m sure there are some farmers who are paid to grow nothing, but I can’t know what percentage of farmers that applies to, and I know better than to believe a Zionist newspaper’s account of anything.
So you dont believe any of Henry’s broadcast today. You had better re listen to today’s broadcast, then rethink your comment.
I disagree with your hypothesis, brother. The Zionist media dismissed from the equation, there is no such thing as the family farm in this country anymore. Farming is a multi-billion dollar industry, traded on the stock market daily. This $15 billion will be used to buy up stock dividends, just like the $3.2 trillion just given to the filthy rich industries that they were going to create jobs with, but instead bought up their own stocks and when the stocks went up, the stock holders got the dividends. I wager the majority who get the $15 billion are not even from this country.
As for American farmers growing food, it is true and it is the best and it goes to the wealthy in Japan, China, and Europe while we are fed the fecal infested slave fodder from South and Central America and Mexico.
Chrysler, GM, and banks that created international fraud have indeed received trillions, the $700 billion that went to the Pentagon, not to mention the $16 trillion they stole. I guess fifteen wrongs don’t make a right.
This is just another give away to the international corporate elite directly diverted from the poorest people in this country.
And it was the holier than thou family farmers who sold out to the international corporations twenty years ago and sold the rest of us out in the process.
Bottom line, it’s all socialism and the taking of our wealth to give to foreigners without the due process of the law.
I’m sorry brother, but there is nothing good to look at in this country anymore. It is an international shit hole and will remain so until we take it back and repair the damage.
Well like I said, “I don’t know where these farm handouts are going”, but I do know better than to believe anything in a Zionist news rag, and I do know their motives are to see us all starve.
and no, Mark. I didn’t hear the show yet. I’m here in the evening to download the archive and I listen to it at night.
You need to be able to decifier articles from all publications and apply their worth accordingly, this is what I did here to help not only to bolster Henry’s message in today’s show, but also add to the message.
You can find truth in any shit hole rag, you just need put forth the effort when you find it, as what was done here, I back up Henry any way possible, been doing it for years, I don’t give a damn where the info comes from.
“….I don’t give a damn where the info comes from…..”
Obviously not, because this article begins with a bold-faced lie, and you believe every other word of it.
When I see one lie, I lose all trust in the source, because it’s obviously not trustworthy.
I DO give a damn where the info comes from, and since there are far more people shoveling BS than telling the truth, it’s only wise to be skeptical of anything in print.
“…I back up Henry any way possible, been doing it for years….”
Once again, I didn’t hear the show (and still haven’t), but as knowledgeable as Henry is, he’s not infallible either.
“….You can find truth in any shit hole rag….”
Really? Thanks for the advice, but I disagree, and actually find very little of it in ANY rag.
Couldn’t disagree more Jolly, your all wet on this one. I liked you better when you smoked.
We take all opinions here, even if misguided, or misspelled. lmao.
Jolly,
Straight up, I never even read the article from the rag, just seen they were giving another $15 billion over to the elitists. And watching all the other billions Trump is handing out to billionaires being funneled into the pockets of the foreign stock holders, just figured it had to be.
Actually I saw it on the Fox rag in my living room.
As for you, Jolly, “as knowledgeable as Henry is, he’s not infallible either.” Now goddamn it, I admitted about that time back in 1972, when I thought I was wrong and I wasn’t. 🙂
The export to other countries would increase significantly, and here at home too, if American Farmers started to grow food that was not GMO poisoned and drenched with cancer causing Chemicals like roundup
IMO- The reason these incentives go out in the first place is was the destruction of the “small local” farmer.The beginning of “free trade” and “sustainable development”- both happy sounding phrases the dumb enviro lefty loves. But the purpose was to take away real local sustainability and replace that with the bullsh!t idea of sustaniable development. The enviros and the alphabet agencies busted ba!!s of small farmers with regs and fees, which only bigger farmers could weather, putting smaller players out. They use the industrial ag sector to unnaturally fill the huge gap real goods manufacturing left in the economy. This wears out soil, concentrates livestock unnaturally (humaneness and pollution).
The subsidies to big players are icing on the poison cake of sustainable development.
I’d be definitely for re establishing “small” farmers with incentives, but that not going to happen, only subsidies to big players to pruduce gluts of certain things, as the local availability of diverse food disappears and people get dog food. Vegetables better from wax fruit bowl. Feel like have flu after eating meat, all the crap. Can’t afford $20 steak and $7 broccoli crown at yuppie health store. All this just separate teeth of the blade that took America independence. Agenda 21 SD, killing people across the globe. Soft kill, keep them sick and dependent while transferring wealth to the “stakeholders”. And when we tried to tell the community and the county b-leeders, we were mocked, by them and their “facilitators”.
“….I liked you better when you smoked…..”
Well I’m not about to give myself a heart attack so you’ll like me better, Mark.
Right now my survival depends on avoiding stress and aggravation so I can stay away from the cigarettes. Nine days of cold-turkey nicotine withdrawal has definitely tried my patience, so I’m taking a break from the news.
I’ve got my own problems, one of which is insomnia, stress, body being torn apart from this job, old age.