The Family Farm
Farm state politicians (Republican and Democratic) love to justify Federal farm subsidies by waxing poetic about the family farmer as the backbone of the country who needs support to maintain a bucolic and economically necessary way of life. Hope this is not too shocking to mention, but once again what politicians say in public has no relation to the truth.
Large businesses and absentee owners increasingly dominate farming in the US. According to the 12/21/06 Washington Post, 7% of the total farms in the US produce 60% of total farm production. But that 7% gets 54% of the Federal subsidies. While there are still small family farms that need the subsidy to survive, most of the farm recipients are profitable before the subsidy checks show up in the mail. (Whether small family farmers, as opposed to other small business owners or workers struggling on small salaries, should be subsidized is another issue).
The impact of this distribution actually hurts small farmers rather than providing help. The business farms use their subsidies, not for farming, but to expand their holdings by purchasing small farms, thereby driving the family farmer out of business.
How this system remains sacrosanct is a mystery of present day politics. Sufficient money from agribusiness to their farm state politicians coupled with the selling of “values” as the main issue for people to vote on rather than on their economic well being may have something to do with voters not seeing reality.
Our system is set up in a way that fosters this outcome. The Senate gives disproportionate weight to farm and rural constituencies. If each Senator is presumed to represent half the population in the State he or she represents, it turns out that the Democrats represent 40 million more people than do the equal number of Republicans. Following the 2006 election Republican strength is primarily in the South and the Mid West. The House meanwhile was gerrymandered to make defeat of incumbents virtually impossible. That the Democrats won 32 more seats starting from that disadvantage magnifies the intensity of the Republican loss.
Bush has supported attempts to reduce the amount of subsidies but once the pressure from farm lobbyists intensified with threats to withdraw support for other parts of his agenda, he stopped saying or doing anything to support change.
Large businesses and absentee owners increasingly dominate farming in the US. According to the 12/21/06 Washington Post, 7% of the total farms in the US produce 60% of total farm production. But that 7% gets 54% of the Federal subsidies. While there are still small family farms that need the subsidy to survive, most of the farm recipients are profitable before the subsidy checks show up in the mail. (Whether small family farmers, as opposed to other small business owners or workers struggling on small salaries, should be subsidized is another issue).
The impact of this distribution actually hurts small farmers rather than providing help. The business farms use their subsidies, not for farming, but to expand their holdings by purchasing small farms, thereby driving the family farmer out of business.
How this system remains sacrosanct is a mystery of present day politics. Sufficient money from agribusiness to their farm state politicians coupled with the selling of “values” as the main issue for people to vote on rather than on their economic well being may have something to do with voters not seeing reality.
Our system is set up in a way that fosters this outcome. The Senate gives disproportionate weight to farm and rural constituencies. If each Senator is presumed to represent half the population in the State he or she represents, it turns out that the Democrats represent 40 million more people than do the equal number of Republicans. Following the 2006 election Republican strength is primarily in the South and the Mid West. The House meanwhile was gerrymandered to make defeat of incumbents virtually impossible. That the Democrats won 32 more seats starting from that disadvantage magnifies the intensity of the Republican loss.
Bush has supported attempts to reduce the amount of subsidies but once the pressure from farm lobbyists intensified with threats to withdraw support for other parts of his agenda, he stopped saying or doing anything to support change.
posted by John Weiss at 12:18 PM
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