Farmers Agree to Give Up Some Subsidies in Return for - Wait For It - More Subsidies

Like Every Other American, They Just Want to Do Their Part

In the 1930’s the Federal Government began a massive program to assist American farmers.  It was a good and decent and justifiable program, helping small farms that in those days were the huge majority of the Agricultural sector. But that is no longer the situation.  It is not 1935.

The Agriculture Department forecasts that farm profits this year, measured on a cash basis, will total $115 billion, 24 percent higher than last year, thanks to soaring crop prices. Adjusted for inflation, profits are expected to be at their highest level since 1974.

The average income for farm households has been higher than general household incomes every year since 1996. The average household income was $87,780 for all farms in 2010, and $201,465 for families living on large farms.



Seth Perlman/Associated Press

Garry Niemeyer of the National

Corn Growers Association says

farmers want to do their

“proportional part” to help with the deficit.



So like every other Federal program, the farm subsidies have persisted, even to the point where they primarily aid large operations that are doing quite well on their own.

With the budget deficit receiving full attention, those receiving farm subsidies know they will have to do their part.

It seems a rare act of civic sacrifice: in the name of deficit reduction, lawmakers from both parties are calling for the end of a longstanding agricultural subsidy that puts about $5 billion a year in the pockets of their farmer constituents. Even major farm groups are accepting the move, saying that with farmers poised to reap bumper profits, they must do their part.

But of course, the adage that "when something seems to good to be true, it’s not true" is definitely applicable here.

But in the same breath, the lawmakers and their farm lobby allies are seeking to send most of that money — under a new name — straight back to the same farmers, with most of the benefits going to large farms that grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. In essence, lawmakers would replace one subsidy with a new one.

The drive to introduce a new subsidy to replace an old subsidy is of course bi-partisan.  And those who want to maintain the subsidies say this

Representative Marlin A. Stutzman, an Indiana Republican, said that a shallow-loss plan would give farmers more flexibility in managing risk. “Farmers shouldn’t have to pay the brunt of the deficit problem,” he said.

Uh, Rep. Stutzman, the deficit reduction target is at least $1.2 trillion over ten years, your farmers are being asked to do at most about 2% to 4% of that, and pjobably less.  Not what the rest of us would call "bearing the brunt" (and what is a "brunt" anyway?)