Our Govt. Pays Millions to City Slickers Who Don't Even Step Foot on a Farm

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/food/our-govt-pays-millions-city-slickers-who-dont-even-step-foot-farm



Some aspects of American agriculture are quite odd. For example, to meet a farmer these days, you don’t need to venture out to the hinterland. Thousands of our farmers are city slickers.

And they’re really slick, for many of them neither plant nor harvest wheat, cotton, peanuts, or any crops at all. While relaxing in their often-luxurious urban nests, they till the government’s ridiculous “direct payments” system, harvesting millions of dollars each year from taxpayers.

New York City, for example, has 152 of these “farmers,” San Francisco has 116, Chicago 393, Denver 821, Tampa 100, Tucson 328, and Houston 1,405. That’s because the program makes payments not only to real farmers, but also to people who merely hold an ownership interest in farmland, whether or not any crops are raised on it and even if the city-dwelling recipient has never visited the place.Earlier this year, the Environmental Working Group revealed that more than 18,000 people living in America’s 54 largest cities pocketed about $24 million last year from the USDA’s direct payment program.

Where did this cockamamie payment scheme come from? Congress slipped it into the 1996 Farm Bill as a transition measure to wean farmers off subsidies. But it hasn’t turned out to be very temporary.

Now, it looks like our gridlocked Congress is about to renew the direct payments program, even though it does nothing to help the majority of America’s farm families.

[B Calm]

1. 2013 Farm Subsidy Database

http://farm.ewg.org/

Kh Farms LLC Chicago, IL 60601 $ 651,256.09

[xchrom]

3. & .09 cents. oy. nt

[B Calm]

4. Society For Propogation Of Faith in New York City, Farm Subsidies Report

Society For Propogation Of Faith New York, NY 10001 $ 54,039.28

[RandiFan1290]

2. Bill Moyers- Cash Cows and Cowboy starter kits

Bill Moyers Journal teams up with the PBS series expose: America's Investigative Reports to follow the trail of Washington Post reporters who uncovered more than $15 billion in "wasteful, unnecessary, or redundant expenditures" that have flowed from Washington to America's farmers


http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04112008/watch2.html

[Fumesucker]

5. Q: How do you starve a farmer?

A: Weld his mailbox shut.

[newfie11]

6. We just sold our farm

That we lived on here in Nebraska.
It was bought by 2 business men that live in Maryland.
They bought it sight unseen and have hired a farmer to farm it.
This is what is happening. Young folks wanting to be farmers can't afford to get started. Priced out due to high land prices, cost of equipment, input costs, etc.

The oligarchs will own most of the farms in short order!

[onethatcares]

8. oh hell yeah,

then they buy the water and control where it flows. The roads so they can control where the produce goes.

Yep, the great experiment is heading to hell in a handbasket.

[newfie11]

9. Can't buy more water here

Irrigation rights are allotted only so much and it has been reduced several times in the last few years.
No new irrigation wells allowed. If you have one and it goes dry then you may drill another but you cannot use both.
Pivots are regulated as to how much goes on the ground, ditch riders control the flow from irrigation ditches, so no one, no matter how rich can increase the water their using.
You can lease water rights from someone not using them.

Have no idea how it works in other states.

[onethatcares]

10. I'm in sunny left coast floriduh

and we have city water and well water if we have wells. Agricultural and industrial companies are able to pump way more than we ever will. An example would be Mosaic Phosphate being able to pump 7 million gallons a day to dilute the poisons they dump into the rivers, Nestea water that bottles millions of gallons a day at no charge to them, and the sugar cane farmers around the everglades that need as much as possible due to over fertilization and ground water pollution dilution.

I work at a condo complex that waters every freaking day to keep the grass green. They use reclaimed water which the city has to much of due to a late season spate of rain.

I don't understand the words "ditch riders". Are they people that travel levees?

[newfie11]

13. Ditch riders are employed by irrigation companies

The control the flow of water allowed to the farmer. In this county we are down to 12 inches/acre/growing season. This year the irrigation company had to buy water from another irrigation company.
This water comes from snowpack in Wyoming mountains which was very light. The snow melts and runs into reservoirs built by the CCC. The CCC also built all the ditches. We pay $29. Per acre to the irrigation company for water and it has gone up every year for the last 5 years.

Then there are the irrigation wells that go down into the Oglala. In this county they also are limited to pumping 12 in/acre. They have monitors on them to prove how much they've used.

These pivots cost around $1500. Per month in electricity cost.
Each state/county controls how their water is used.

[bluestate10]

12. Have you tried trapping rainwater? Getting set up will cost some money, but you can also

to the work yourself. You can combine trapped and saved rainwater with water from a well to supply your needs. See what the regulations in your area are on trapping rainwater.

[newfie11]

14. First we need rain

Which has been nonexistent all summer. Now it's raining and blizzarding and of no value now. It would take a big area to collect enough water to irrigate the amount of crop land.
In this county you cannot put in an irrigation well!!

[bluestate10]

11. I am involved with farming partnerships. Not all people are out to take advantage of

government subsidies and are interested in pricing people out of land. My primary interest is in providing safe food at low cost to consumers while making a profit when doing so. The same goals go for partners. The two people in Maryland aren't necessarily bad people or keen eyed money grabbers.

[newfie11]

15. The people that bought our farm

Are speculators. They have hired a farmer to farm but they didn't buy it for that reason.
Hell I'm not complaining. Better to sell now than in the past when farms were hard to sell.

[Buns_of_Fire]

7. Two words: Stephen Fincher

Tennessee Teabagger extraordinaire, who pocketed $70,000 in direct-payment subsidies (2012) while pressing to cut SNAP benefits.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/05/22/gop-congressman-stephen-fincher-on-a-mission-from-god-starve-the-poor-while-personally-pocketing-millions-in-farm-subsidies/

[B Calm]

16. and 60 minutes does a show on SS disability fraud. . .