Farm payments to City Farmers will not stop!!

Those that think those that own farm land will be prevented from getting farm payments should know that it will not ever happen. Even if those owners have "City" addresses. There are several reasons this will be the case.

1) It is real hard to separate farmers into groups easily. Those sites like EWG's are pretty vague on the truth of their numbers. They include all money that is dispersed to an individual from the USDA. The trouble is that a lot of that is actually crop loans. Meaning that the money was paid back. So with the high crop prices we have had in the last several years it does not take that many bushels/acres to add up to some pretty large numbers. So just looking at these site really does not tell you much.

2) What does the term active farmer really mean??? IF I paid for my ground and it is farmable then who gets to be "GOD" an decides who is a framer or who is not???

3) How many of you on here have relatives/friends that rent you their ground??? I would bet a quite a few. So if they happen to live in some other place then they should not be able to benefit from programs that are tied to "THEIR" land"??

4) People that have the money to own land can easily afford to change what they need to an still get the value of the payments. This could be that they hire their farm custom farmed. It could also easily be that they just add the value of the payments to cash rent. So the "TRUE" farmer gets the check from the Federal government and then they pay the land owner cash rent that includes the value of the payments..

The farm payments of the 1980s raised the cash rents in this area $50 an acre this way.


I am really not concerned about the so called "rich" getting these payments. They have had to invest their MONEY in farm ground to get those payments.

The ones that upset me are the ones that are receiving FREE stuff for doing nothing when they really do not need it. You can have pretty good incomes and still e eligible for Food stamps and free school lunch these days. My son showed me the form that the school sent home on the free lunch program. A family with two kids can make up to around $40,000 and still get free lunches. That is not "POOR". The food stamp program is even worse. These two programs cost way more money than the payments to "rich city" people.

The higher earning people PAY the majority of taxes that are paid and yet many think that they still do not pay enough because they have earned more than the average person does. This country needs all of the high earning people we can get!!!! The non working, hand out receiving, people will never generate enough of anything to keep the country going.

I have to PAY more in taxes now than I made for over half my life. The system is flawed and many think it needs to be tipped even more. IF there is no incentive to earn more here than people will either quit trying or move elsewhere.

So look at what your condemning because it could easily be you next if you produce anything positive to the economy. I have never seen a government in the world that is good at picking the winners and losers in society. It usually just makes more losers.

Yer Mericans are lucky.
The last subsidy i got was when we had a province wide drought in 96, and that payment amounted to dick all,..something like $5 an acre
We never saw a single buck either when BSE hit in 2002 and bison were worth nothing.

Hey Bison , I got the same BSE payment as you. Sold my cull cows for .06 cents per pound

But we are told that Canada subsidizes all their
markets.
I too am all for no Government involvement, but we
all know that will never happen.

I too doubt that any substantive changes will be made.

I expect that any changes will be mere window dressing.

Dean

I know very little to nothing on how the farm subsidy payments really work. All I can go on is what I read/hear in the news and some contacts with friends.

Talking about food stamps and farm subsidies in the same conversation is wrong and just trying to cover up facts. Just because they are both in the farm bill does not make them two different dogs in the hunt.

Lots of people get welfare. We call it by different names but it is still welfare.
One of my kids gets earned income credit on their taxes.
Katrina blew some shingles off my roof as they were weak and would have needed replacing in two or three years anyway. FEMA gave me a check to replace my storm damaged roof anyway.
Many people that live in nice city neighborhoods in $500,000 houses and drive Mercedes cars got hundreds of dollars in food stamps to replace all their food because the electricity was off for 48 hours after a different storm.
While people know this is a form of welfare; and really do not need the money; they figure it is their piece of the pie. Your willing to give it to me; so I'm willing to take it.

But when you see a developer buy 200 acres of rice land; divide it into 10 acre tracks of horse owner lots; and then advertise to the potential buyers they could get the direct payments for the once rice land; and read that they are getting the payments even though they are no more a rice farmer than you are; just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The payments "MAY" have ended by now with the new farm bill but that does not make the news so we never hear about that.

Our government is one big money grubbing factory that they use to buy votes with handouts.
You ought to hear some of the things they are fighting over on ways to spend the BP fines.
Fine them and fine them hard. We need the money for bigger vote buying pork.
Farm Program Pays 1.3 Billion to People Who Dont Farm

Go and do something about it then,Im all for you.

I puchased my family farm 7 yrs.ago at the age of 67. Yes,I rent it out and I do have a big yearly payment and all that I am receiving is money for 3 acres of CRP plus cash rent money. What My renter gets from the gov. is not my buisness as long as he makes land lease payment.

Farm prices{other than cattle} are not good at the present time but the things that we buy has not went down to fluctuate the difference.

It seems that our current administration is getting all the blame,but what has hppened in the years before this administration?? Nothing has changed !!!

If you are a row crop farmer CRP is about the only subsidy that's left.

CRP is the only payment left if you row crop.

(quoted from post at 03:05:22 02/07/15) Hey Bison , I got the same BSE payment as you. Sold my cull cows for .06 cents per pound

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ou lucky duck! ,...that is 6 cents/lbs more than i got.

I could not even give them away, i would've had to pay some one to take them of my hands :shock:
So i kept them all and let them multiply for 5-6 years till the prices drifted back up.

David Rockefeller will be glad to hear they will continue payments, as if he needs them to go with all the millions he already has.

Earned income credit.
One of the guys that hauls fertilizer for the co-op was complaining about that.
The kid they hired last spring, because of his 3 kids and EIC, will be getting back twice what he paid in to the IRS last year.

I have always felt the farmer ( that rents) is only a filter for program payments that end up in the hands of the landowner. Example ,if land rents are going for $100 an acre and program payments are $50 an acre what would happen if program payments were abolished completely.

yes I know such has not been the case for afew years but what happens in the past somehow repeats itself and I know program payments is what drove rents for many years .( like until about ten years ago). Paul

I get a few hundred per year of cyclic redundancy, and really have no clue what it is for.

Crop insurance?

(quoted from post at 10:53:11 02/07/15) [b:2de66a1469]I have always felt the farmer ( that rents) is only a filter for program payments that end up in the hands of the landowner.[/b:2de66a1469] Example ,if land rents are going for $100 an acre and program payments are $50 an acre what would happen if program payments were abolished completely.

yes I know such has not been the case for afew years but what happens in the past somehow repeats itself and I know program payments is what drove rents for many years .( like until about ten years ago). Paul

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Sort of like what happened to the subsidies in the wake of BSE to beef producers that ended up in the hands of meat packers when they dropped their bids on market beef by the same amount the producers and feedlots got. :roll:

When farm prices are good there always seems to be a few who manage to bid up their input costs enough to put them back at breakeven levels. Land prices and rents are examples of this.

(quoted from post at 11:54:20 02/07/15) Crop insurance?

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rop insurance is just that,...crop insurance. It is not a subsidy.Producer pays premiums.

I don't carry no crop insurance either..nor any other farm product insurance be it plant or livestock.
I am on my own..period..

One could argue that if the co-op paid the guy a living wage then he could pay his own way without any help. What does the co-op pay him?

(quoted from post at 12:48:28 02/07/15) When farm prices are good there always seems to be a few who manage to bid up their input costs enough to put them back at breakeven levels. Land prices and rents are examples of this.

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obody forces anyone to rent.
If you think rent is to high then why not buy your own ground?

Don't know that. But I've heard he isn't worth what they do pay him.

What is a living wage anyhow? Most people if you doubled their pay would still be complaining they don't make enough.

I should add: Does the earned income credit actually subsidize the employee or does it subsidize the co-op that doesn't need to pay a living wage to attract good employees?

I do give you a lot of credit for being self reliant enough not to need crop insurance. Many farms are not able to do that and some would have gone under during the recent drought.

A few days ago someone here posted a pie chart of the farm bill costs showing $93 billion Federal money allocated to crop insurance over the next ten years. Producers do pay part of the premium, but not the full cost of the insurance. Per enrollee (spelling?), that's probably a larger subsidy in dollars per person than the maximum for someone on food stamps.

ss55; What do you call a living wage.

One of the tax guys on here may correct me;
BUT............

If you are married; have one kid; and make $44,000 a year or less (that's $21 a hour) you can get EIC and CTC.
It adds up to about $4300 ($358 a month) for 1 kid.

A average family with two kids; make less than $49,000 a year (that's $23.50 a hour) you can get $6500 ($540 a month) in credits.

With 3 kids it goes up to $52,500 ($25 a hour) and $7100 ($590 a month) in credits.

Every body thinks that their own welfare payments are good and the other guys welfare payment is bad. Why is that? Welfare for land speculators is good thing? All that does is drive up cost of production. The reality is that markets are so distorted by government and large bank manipulation that it is impossible to sort out what belongs to whom.

In the article John posted a link to it talks of a Houston, Tx heart surgeon receiving $490,000 for rice base subsidy payments . The surgeon said we haven't grown any rice for at least 10 years. Have raised a few cattle. Does a heart surgeon in Houston need gov't subsidy to raise cattle on his farm w/rice paymts. That article gives a good examples of why some are frustrated with how these paymts came about. And it is an example of why some in gov't are attempting to close loopholes as in who should qualify to get farm bill paymts. An interesting read if you have time.

I farm only my own

I read some of the article. Its hard to believe that a contractor or whoever can buy up a parcile of farm land and then split it up into lots and advertise that you can get money from the goverment because it used to be farm land . My question is, Is that even legal??.

So you don't take any government handouts? What about the premium for Cat coverage. $50. No crop insurance . USA picks up 30% of the premium! No CRP, No help building waterways, PTO terressus. ETC. Our local newspaper publishes the amount each person receives each year from USDA. Do I, you-all Need it. We may be worse than the family living in the rent subsidised high-rise, claiming the father doesn't live there. Vic

They've got a lot of good employees. You can't pay people too poorly when you have 3 to 4 per cent unemployment or you won't have any employees.

ditchwitch
Yes it is legal.
Let me try and explain it based on what I have read. This works for many crops but I will stick with rice.

The program is direct payments.
Lets say I own 200 acres of land that I farm rice on. I use to get disaster payments to help we threw bad years. In a effort to wean me off these disaster payments the government came up with the lower direct payments. I get this in good years and bad years.

Now rice has hit rock bottom. No problem. I will just start raising corn; or cattle; or pine trees. But since the land was once used to farm rice I can still get the rice direct payments.
So now I get payments from the government to farm rice and grow a crop that makes me more than rice did.

Now not only is rice hit rock bottom but farming has hit rock bottom. The city is moving closer so I can get a good price for my land so I sell out.
You buy 10 acres of my land once farmed in rice; build a house on 1 acre and call the other 9 acres farm land cause you have a horse.
So now you get the rice direct payment on the 9 acres. On top of that since you get federal payments on the 9 acres it is considered agriculture land and you pay lower property taxes on that 9 acres; and try as they may there is nothing the state can do to raise your property taxes to residential on that 9 acres.