Proposed by President Obama in the not so far off past, cuts to farm subsidy programs, particular the Direct Payment program that seems to largely ignore market conditions would have cut payouts as proposed by the White-house by 9.7 billion dollars over the next ten years. Anyone that has read my stuff over on mephistos.com knows that despite having been a farmer and really being in tune with the rural lifestyle, I am very against the notion of farm subsidies of any kind and strongly felt that this cut effecting only farms with revenues over $500,000 seemed like a step in the right direction.
Never under estimate the power of money in such matters though. Obviously the huge almost factory farms were very against just such a measure as it would have meant they would had to have been profitable on the farmer operation itself. The $500,000 dollar mark of revenue however surprised me a good deal, as that apparently effects a lot of what are called medium sized farms as well. I have my doubts as to how many of those so called medium size farms are still small family farm affairs.
Anyway, add to that the power that certain legislative bodies members have, especially so it seems those that reperesents states with large numbers of grain farming operations. Ad to that a movement in recent years for other crops such as fruits and vegetables to be included in some similar programs and the support those representives will ad to the overturn of such a proposal for want of being next on the list if it did pass and you can well guess what happend.
Yes, in this initiative I fully supported President Obama. And in this initiative, as the budget effecting this was passed by both sides of Congress, fully gutted this propsosal out of it when it passed at the beginning of the month. I am not sure how to approach this process and effectively proceed.
It is not like the tobacco program of many years that was ended, where everyone paid in so much was limited on production as result of it – and hence there was a legitimate claim for value, even if somewhat misplaced that lead to a buyout of the subsidy to that program. That being said, perhaps the way to proceed is to actually get the program such that the median price fluctuates based on market conditions and those that are doing well have to pay into the program in good years to directly subsidize those in the same crops in the leaner years. And perhaps, if there is no other way, a buyout of some sort needs to be derived to move toward an end of all the subsidy farm programs. Of course that would be an increase in the first few years of what is spent, but at some point in the not far off future the teet would be turned off and go dry.
** Picture credit to Boston.com – National News