Farm "subsidy" data base

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

The NY Times reports that a detailed list of all farm "subsidy" payments
made over the last five years is up on a web site.  The site is by
the Environmental Working Group.  The site is WWW.EWG.ORG.

    I put "subsidy" in quotation marks because I think of farm payments as covering the overhead costs, while proceeds from crop sales cover the out-of-pocket costs of getting a crop.  This is not to say that the system is totally abused and unfair.  The story below tells of some of that.  I intent to have a look at the data as soon as I have time.  You can sort by state, county, etc., so it might be useful in local fights.

Gene Coyle
 
 
 
 

>  December 27, 2001
>
>  NATIONAL
>
>  Farmers Abashed, or Irate, Over Subsidy List
>
>  By ELIZABETH BECKER
>
>  [P]ERU, Ill., Dec. 21 Ñ With their fields resting under a thin layer of
>     frost and their tractors put away for the winter, farmers have time to
>  sit around coffee shops and fume over having their most private secrets
>  spread across the newspaper for everyone to talk about.
>
>  "It was like being outed," said Keith R. Bolin, a grain and hog farmer
>  from Sheffield, who received $130,343 in farm subsidy payments from the
>  federal government over five years. "But to be honest with you, I don't
>  mind. It was a wake-up call, making us look like we're not all that
>  different from the welfare mothers in Chicago."
>
>  The newly published secrets fueling the farmers' talk of rage and
>  recrimination here and across rural America come from a Web site that has
>  made public for the first time every farm subsidy payment received by
>  every farmer since 1996.
>
>  That means everyone Ñ farmer and city dweller alike Ñ now knows exactly
>  how dependent on the government farmers have become since the Freedom to
>  Farm Act of 1996 and how the most dependent are the top 10 percent or 20
>  percent who receive a disproportionately large share of the subsidies.
>  Nationally, farm subsidies total about $20 billion a year.
>
>  For rural communities, the list has caused embarrassment and some
>  jealousy.
>
>  "This Web site isn't going to help us much," said Randy Michelini, a Grand
>  Ridge corn farmer who received $28,890 over five years. "It will be used
>  as ammunition against farmers. Now a lot of farmers feel violated, and
>  some just feel plain jealous."
>
>  The men here and at other coffee stops on Interstate 80 said it was one
>  thing for them to know that the government checks were often the only
>  thing keeping them from having to give up and move off the land. It was
>  another to see the awkwardly large subsidies printed in the community
>  newspaper.
>
>  "I don't like people knowing my business, but to be a viable farmer you
>  have to have government support Ñ especially since crop prices went so
>  flat," said John Dollinger, a fifth-generation Minooka farmer whose family
>  came from Germany in the early 19th century and has raised corn on the
>  same land ever since.
>
>  Mr. Dollinger, who received $362,068 over five years, said, "If you're not
>  a farmer, you don't understand our business and how bad prices have been
>  the last five years."
>
>  After the anger comes the inevitable reflection about how farming has
>  changed during those five years. Small family farmers are being driven out
>  by flat grain prices, kept artificially low in part by government
>  subsidies that encourage overproduction. The more acres of grain or cotton
>  a farmer owns, the bigger the subsidy. The subsidy programs also help
>  ensure that when prices are low, the government will help make up the
>  difference.
>
>  At current prices, it costs a farmer as much as 50 cents more to raise a
>  bushel of corn than he receives on the market. The biggest winners, many
>  farmers say, are the huge grain companies that buy inexpensive corn
>  subsidized by the taxpayer and then process and sell it at a profit.
>
>  Michael Veit of La Salle, another farmer drinking coffee with Mr.
>  Dollinger at the RPlace restaurant outside Morris, Ill., said he felt
>  strange talking about how much he received from the government Ñ more than
>  $210,000 over five years. But Mr. Veit said that if he had to talk about
>  the subsidies, he also wanted the taxpayer to know that corn prices had
>  been so low that he had to take a second job driving a truck.
>
>  "I sure wish I had that $210,000 in my bank account, but it all went to
>  pay my bills," Mr. Veit said. "These farm programs are driving a lot of
>  smaller farmers right out of business, pushing the crop prices down and
>  the rents for land up."
>
>  Should anyone doubt those claims, all they need do is read local
>  newspapers like The Ottawa Daily Times, The Bureau County Republican or
>  The Morris Daily Herald to see how their big neighbors have expanded their
>  farms, thanks to subsidy payments that are often 10 times what they have
>  been receiving.
>
>  "It explains a lot," said Rod Thorson, a Republican candidate for the
>  Illinois Senate and a local farm radio broadcaster. "You can see from the
>  payment lists how the rich farmers can afford to buy up the small ones
>  like cannibals, all subsidized by the government."
>
>  Here in La Salle County, that disparity means that while more than 4,000
>  farmers received a total of $136 million in subsidies, the top two farms
>  got more than $1 million apiece and everyone else in the top 20 received
>  at least $300,000, leaving very little for the bottom of the list.
>
>  The data for the country was retrieved by the Environmental Working Group
>  through the Freedom of Information Act and then put on a Web site,
>  www.ewg.org. The nonprofit group hopes the information will lead to limits
>  on subsidies and more financing for conservation programs for farmers.
>
>  Since it became public, the Web site has received more than 11 million
>  hits and inspired rural newspapers to publish lists of the top Ñ and in
>  some cases the bottom Ñ recipients, causing initial embarrassment and then
>  a wave of curiosity as farmers log on to find their names.
>
>  "We've had farmers call and tell us they didn't know how much their
>  tenants were receiving in subsidies until they saw the Web site, and now
>  they want to renegotiate their contracts," said Ken Cook, the head of
>  Environmental Working Group.
>
>  It has also touched off a debate in Congress, where lawmakers are
>  deadlocked over how to change farm policy. Farm-state lawmakers said they
>  would canvass their constituents over the holiday recess to see whether
>  the knowledge of who gets what size of subsidy has fueled support for
>  greater changes to farm policy, like limiting subsidies or restructuring
>  the program entirely.
>
>  Mr. Thorson, the host of two daily farm radio programs, said he took a
>  telephone poll to gauge farmer sentiment before he went on the air a few
>  weeks ago and read the names of the top recipients.
>
>  "I got about 40 phone calls, and only one of them said he didn't want to
>  hear his name read," Mr. Thorson said.
>
>  Since then, farmers have taped the newspaper lists to the dashboards of
>  their trucks and stuck them on their refrigerator doors as a reminder of
>  who is profiting from the dismal state of agriculture.
>
>  Don J. Schiff, an officer of the Union Bank in Princeton, Ill., said the
>  public list had made farmers jumpy.
>
>  "This Web site has had a furious impact," Mr. Schiff said. "Now the public
>  knows what we bankers have known for a long time: that farmers have lost
>  their freedom. It's as plain as the nose on the end of your face."
>
>  Everyone around the cafe table agreed that the only question was how much
>  longer the taxpayer would subsidize a system that was helping everyone but
>  the small family farmer it was intended to save.
>
>  "Not more than 10 years is my guess," Mr. Schiff said. "Then I wonder what
>  will be left out here."