http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...AR2006070100962.html

Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm

By Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 2, 2006; Page A01

EL CAMPO, Tex. -- Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.
Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice.

Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

"I don't agree with the government's policy," said Matthews, who wanted to give the money back but was told it would just go to other landowners. "They give all of this money to landowners who don't even farm, while real farmers can't afford to get started. It's wrong."

The checks to Matthews and other landowners were intended 10 years ago as a first step toward eventually eliminating costly, decades-old farm subsidies. Instead, the payments have grown into an even larger subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers.

Most of the money goes to real farmers who grow crops on their land, but they are under no obligation to grow the crop being subsidized. They can switch to a different crop or raise cattle or even grow a stand of timber -- and still get the government payments. The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards.

The payments now account for nearly half of the nation's expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency. What began in the 1930s as a limited safety net for working farmers has swollen into a far-flung infrastructure of entitlements that has cost $172 billion over the past decade. In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare.
The Post's nine-month investigation found farm subsidy programs that have become so all-encompassing and generous that they have taken much of the risk out of farming for the increasingly wealthy individuals who dominate it.

The farm payments have also altered the landscape and culture of the Farm Belt, pushing up land prices and favoring large, wealthy operators.

The system pays farmers a subsidy to protect against low prices even when they sell their crops at higher prices. It makes "emergency disaster payments" for crops that fail even as it provides subsidized insurance to protect against those failures.

And it pays people such as Matthews for merely owning land that was once farmed.

I have to wonder how many people turn this payment down... does it say any where? We did here, and we can't be the only ones. It just didn't feel right to take money for nothing.

I haven't seen any figures on that, but I wondered about it too. The only thing the above article does say is that if you give this money back to the Feds, they just turn around and give it to another land owner.

I commend you for doing the right thing, and take my hat off to you. But perhaps if you don't want to accept the subsidy checks, a better alternative is to go ahead and cash the checks, and then donate that money to your local food bank. People are really in trouble right now, and the food banks all over America aren't keeping up with it.

And of course, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN and give him (or her) a piece of your mind about subsidies. Bush, much to my own surprise, has threatened to veto the currant proposed farm bill because he finds subsidies "a national embarassment." The Feds are getting flack about subsidies from governments and organizations all over the world. Some nations are even threatening to stop trade with America because of it.

The fact that the currant farm bill is just loaded to the hilt with subsidies for the fat cats certainly tells us that the people lobbying for the USDA have some very questionable motives.

Just give your congressman a piece of your mind!
You sound pretty smart and I'm sure you can write one humdinger of a letter to him.

I offer another alternative. Groups such as "Farm Aid" favor the smaller farmers. How about donating the money to one of those groups instead.

Okay, before everyone thinks we are nuts for not getting the "free" money. You do have to go in to sign up for this, and neither DH or I want it or have the time to run to sign up for it... Well, maybe we are a little nuts, who turns down free money? And DH did go and sign up for it one time, when we got the check for $99, we just looked at each other and thought it was wrong... then to explain to my brother why we got that check when it was time for him to do our taxes... it still was wrong.

Too bad the big fat cats who are getting all of that money for nothing don't have a conscience, it would leave more money for the farmers who are busting their butts trying to make ends meet and slowly or not so slowly losing their farms. Yep, there maybe farmers making a pile of money, but I don't see many of them around here... most of them work their tails off for not so much money.