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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Farmers shaken by president's proposal to cut farm subsidies
  • Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 18:54:55 -0700

http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=103320

Farmers shaken by president's proposal to cut farm subsidies
02/12/2005


LIVE OAK, Calif. (AP) -- 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.

Among farmers, who make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, many
say such payments are critical to their businesses, where production costs
often outstrip commodity prices and the profit margin is perilously small
and can easily be wiped out by heat, by cold, by rain or by drought.

Terry Wanzek, a fourth-generation wheat farmer in Jamestown, N.D., said:
"My payment goes right into the checkbook and back out to pay local taxes
and farm equipment. It's not money that goes into my Swiss bank account or
goes on vacation."

Farmers say people who are not familiar with agriculture misunderstand
subsidies.

"In a town of 15,000 or 20,000 people, you can tell the difference when the
farms are doing good and farmers are more optimistic about things," said
Cruger, Miss., cotton grower Rob Farmer. "Everybody does better. All the
businesses do better."

Farmers plan to fight Bush's proposal, and Congress has traditionally
backed crop subsidies. Harry Zeeve of the Concord Coalition, a
balanced-budget organization that welcomed the Bush proposal, acknowledged:
"Given the resistance that the administration may face from both Democrats
and Republicans who would be affected by that, we're certainly not
confident that these cuts will survive."

North Dakota's farmers are, by one measure, the nation's most heavily
subsidized, with 78 percent of the state's farms receiving federal
payments, according to EWG data.

Over the eight-year period from 1995 to 2003, Texas received the most in
subsidies, $11.8 billion. A third of that went to cotton growers. Iowa
ranks second with $11.2 billion, three-fourths of that going to corn
growers. Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota were also top recipients, each
landing about $7 billion.

California's $27 billion-a-year farm economy, the nation's largest, ranked
ninth in federal payments, mostly for major export crops such as cotton and
rice. California's many fruit and nut crops do not qualify.

While some farmers say they are resigned to cuts because of the federal
deficit, most are fiercely protective of their own category of subsidies.
That could mean furious infighting among competing commodity groups as
Congress decides what to do.

"There's going to be a battle royale," promised Rehermann, who also heads
the California Rice Commission.

------

Associated Press Writers Adam Nossiter in Baton Rouge, La., Steve Karnowski
in Minneapolis and Michelle Spitzer in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to
this report.

------

On the Net:

Environmental Working Group: http://www.ewg.org





  • [Livingontheland] Farmers shaken by president's proposal to cut farm subsidies, Tradingpost, 02/12/2005

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