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will always be an Alyson Hanniganite
Location: In the dust of the archives
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Farmers should know that you reap what you sow.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=492146
Quote:
LIVE OAK, Calif. Feb 11, 2005 — Rice grower Frank Rehermann contemplates his 33rd spring planting while worrying about the lowest crop prices he has ever seen. And not only that, he is hearing troubling things from the federal government, his silent partner on 900 acres about 60 miles north of Sacramento.
President Bush, in his budget plan released Monday, is proposing to cut farm subsidy spending 5 percent this year and cap subsidies at $250,000 per person.
"I expect when it's all said and done the rice industry will sustain cuts. The question is how much?" said Rehermann, who along with 5,300 other rice growers in Northern California received $260 million in federal crop subsidies in 2003.
From North Dakota wheat country through the Midwest Corn Belt to the South's cotton fields, farmers who considered their government payments guaranteed are worried.
"What do they want from us? Do they really want us to succeed out here and support our local communities? Or do they want us to quietly go away and sell out to an investor?" asked Eunice Biel, a dairy farmer with 860 acres near Harmony, Minn.
In many farm states that helped re-elect Bush in November after never hearing any campaign talk about cutting their payments, there is a sense of betrayal.
"I'm not happy. I voted for George Bush," said cotton grower John Rife of Ferriday, La.
Between 1995 and 2003, U.S. farmers received $131 billion in federal subsidies, with the largest share 28 percent steered to Midwest corn growers, according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonpartisan Washington advocacy group. In 2003, the first year after Bush signed the most recent farm bill, about one-third of U.S. farms received $16.4 billion in federal subsidies,
By proposing such cuts, Bush has reignited a long debate in farm communities and urban America about the government's Depression-era practice of subsidizing what are now the world's most productive farms.
Critics say the subsidies benefit mostly large agribusiness corporations rather than small family farms, contribute to excessive federal spending and act as a barrier to free trade. An EWG analysis found that 10 percent of recipients get 72 percent of the nation's farm aid.
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Ouch! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Literaly. Now we have thousands of Nebraska farmers, that have not voted for anyone without an "R" next to their name since Johnson, screaming that they're not going to survive. Sadly, many will not. They will be forced to sell off the family farm, many of which have been in the family for generations, to the agribusiness corporations. Part of me thinks that it will be a sad day when the last family farms is turned over to a corporation...but, another part of me thinks that, "Well...you did it to yourselves.". Oddly enough, it was FDR and Truman, that initiated the Farm Subsidies that farmers have grown so dependant upon.
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"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony
"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus
It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.
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