Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

"Farming subsidies" is often the best paid or the only paying form of farming. In Ireland we had most of those grants seem to aim at getting bigger, more industrial farms by getting rid of smaller farms.

Grants were paid per head of sheep or cattle kept from a certain date till a certain date and many farms did not keep any animals beyond these dead lines. Logical, since if you kept cattle and or sheep year round you lost money.

A fairly small sum was paid per hectare farmed as well but this year we got notice that payments would no longer be made on lands that had shrubs or trees on it. Next you knew there were hundreds of fires going to get rid of all shrubs and trees.

Now it seems that all subsidies will be finished soon. That will finish many a farm here.

john

----- Original Message -----

From: Ken Hargesheimer

To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 2:17 AM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Farm subsidies database

Here in Lubbock TX one farm gets over $100,000 per year.  It is called government welfare.  Vegetables farmers are not eligible.

 

Ken H

--- On Sun, 8/22/10, Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org> wrote:

From: Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Farm subsidies database
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, August 22, 2010, 8:05 AM

Interesting. I looked through it for my county which is mostly developed in and around Kansas City. I was surprised at how many there were. I quit looking at about 500 recipients. What good can be made of the information?

I wonder what effect there would be if small scale organic no-till producers were able to apply for a subsidy. Would the price drop for organic vegetables? It should increase supply. How would it cut initiative and creativity for organic growers? The best course might be to stop all subsidies, except for disasters. The CSA seems like an alternative way to help the farmer with the risk.

Marty

On 8/21/10 7:10 PM, mdnagel@verizon.net wrote:
> Not sure if this had been mentioned here before.
>
> http://farm.ewg.org/
>
>
> Might be interesting to see what kind of handouts your local "farmers" are getting (and for what)...
>
>
> -Mark Nagel
> Everett, WA
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> Livingontheland mailing list
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