Posted on Jul 31, 2019
Study: More than half of Trump farm aid went to biggest farms
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This is the sort of thing that bothers me with this administration. There have been similar reports about huge Brazilian owned farms receiving aid while farmer owned farms in the Midwest continue to struggle without any aid.
Study: More than half of Trump farm aid went to biggest farms
Posted from thehill.comPosted in these groups: 
Farming
Farming
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 4
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Lt Col John Christensen: The bottom 80% of those receiving aid received less than $5,000.00 per farmer. That bottom 80% is almost all small farmers and not corporate farmers. Then the regulations promulgated by the Trump Administration allowed payments to go to relatives, whether or not they actually did any work on the farm. So the top 20% were able to avoid the $125,000.00 cap by simply adding in all those relatives.
And the next roll out of farm aid will go mostly to the top 10% as it will be based on the number of acres planted, not the actual volume produced. A lot of land was not planted this year by mega corporate farmers. So the mega corporate farms will once again scoop up the majority of the funding as they have the majority of the acreage. Sad.
And the next roll out of farm aid will go mostly to the top 10% as it will be based on the number of acres planted, not the actual volume produced. A lot of land was not planted this year by mega corporate farmers. So the mega corporate farms will once again scoop up the majority of the funding as they have the majority of the acreage. Sad.
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Patricia Overmeyer
Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen - Ok, I have to borrow that one! It really explains it well. With trickle down economics, we don't even rate a bottle of Two Buck Chucks....sad.
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Patricia Overmeyer
Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen - Looks like a few of the smaller farmers are starting to worry. Didn't Trump say that these trade wars were easy things to win? So small farmers are losing about $70.00 per acre grown, yet if they want the second round of subsidies they are going to have to own more acreage to even get a subsidy worth less than $5,000.00.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trade-war-farmers-trump-markets-154935903.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trade-war-farmers-trump-markets-154935903.html
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Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen
Patricia Overmeyer Hopefully they'll worry all the way to the ballot box. I think you can still vote even after bankruptcy, but the GOP could change that in the case of farmers I suppose.
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This has been happening for decades. Trump didn't invent farm subsidies. True conservatives including the tea party are anti-subsidy. RINO's are not, but remember, all spending bills originate in congress.
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Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen
Correct, farm subsidies in general are a whole different conversation.
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Is the issue big farms or huge agribusinesses. The article states 97% USA farms owned by Americans. The payouts are based on losses, big farms, big losses. I could agree foreign agribusiness should not be protected as much as our farmers, but remember many huge privately owned farms are leased by huge corporate businesses.
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Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen
The issue is big agri-business farms receiving any subsidies over small family owned farms IMO. Look I understand a bit about the business side of farming. My wife and her brothers inherited 3 family farms in Iowa. They held on to them for about 10 years but ultimately sold them to corporate farms because the tenant farmers could no longer compete with the big farms that were often on the other side of the road. Capital investments for equipment became harder and harder to come by and even co-ops for things like harvesting started disappearing as more and more small family owned farms sold out to agri-business. Those family farms are still there and to all appearances are a small farm but now they're part of coperations that have many thousands of acres planted. The trade war has eliminated markets and Congress implemented subsidies to offset losses to farmers, but by allowing the vast percentage of that money to go to agri-business over small family farms it is actually hurting the people it was supposedly intended to help. Subsidy money should be awarded in reverse size of acres planted so that small farmers get a higher and agri-business get a lower percentage of the subsidies IMO.
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