thanks again for your work and advocacy…and i bet the heavy metals/industrial chemical waste in biosolids toxic sludge will really hit home…

good on the station owner

“the earth isn’t dying, she is being killed…and the people doing it have names and addresses”

- utah phillips

(Utah has severe medical problems and could use material support from those with the means – linky here). He deserves our help.

the station owner wanted to know a few things on the air today, like this, is anyone paid to not farm corn? been trying to find an answer to that one. i said with the price of corn so high, i can’t imagine them getting paid more to not grow it. said i would look into it….so, we raised the farm bill for the airwaves today….it’s already an interest of his. told him i’d bring up the sludge in a few days, it’s already on the fields, last week..
his daughter who dos the show during the week was the one who brought it up with me last week, along with the fact that the field it was on was owned by the highest paid not to farm farmer in the county…..

the station owner named him by name today..”just ask e– b—-..i didn’t say it, he can get away with it.

the ’racehorse’ part of the bill lit a fire…..there is a lady here, runs a rescue place called ’last chance corral’ she buys horses would be killed and skinned. slaughtered…some are colts that aren’t perfect, perfect….she rescues them and sells them to people…..there was an article about her in the paper this weekend…a guy misheard and thought SHE was skinning horses….so, she got a lot of airtime today too, she needs funds badly right now because of the price of feed….funny, she’s not included in the farm bill, huh, wonder why not?

you say-”FOr these reasons, using TFB to subsidize letting farmland go unused for a year – and then subsidizing crop rotation – could be a logical public policy for some prodcutive ag lands.”

some plant cover crops to lock in nitrogen and till under for further additives…there are many ways to enhance the nutrient levels in the soil, and reserve nutrients-crop rotation that you mention is one…many use manure spreaders, too…

i’m glad the fruit and veggie people are being considered in the bill, i know a few…

and i don’t think the farmers get to ’double dip’ when they convert back to regular subsidy, they would just get more now that the price they would get using it has gone up. were getting more to let it be conservation….
i think i read the contracts are for 10 years, and they want a thing in the bill that lets them break it, cuz of ’need for more food’….that’s what i meant in my 105 comment and link.

your ”reasons” paragraph, all of those things are familiar to me, but hadn’t been able to draw the picture in a concise manner, scattered information not yet formulated into a paragraph..thanks..i can expand on the things you mentioned…just trying to assimilate the new stuff with what i already knew, and keeping straight which is how it WAS done, and how they want it now, which is in the bill….so i can spit it back out without sounding lame…..

think that’s it for now…if you think of anything else, let me know…have an entire week of calls and letters, and people today were wanting to know the parts they can call dc about. cuz i did pass on that voting it down may not be the way to go, but to pick a few items and illustrate those.

take care

Here are a few points/answers:

(1) WSJ apparently opens their firewall for teh google. To read the article cited, searching for “the farm bill” brings it up. Article is:

Timber Firms Push Farm-Bill Tax Cuts
Tensions Abound As Lawmakers Try to Add Breaks
By GREG HITT
April 24, 2008; Page A4

(2) WRT to the cited startribune article:

The article seems to be referring to the fact that farmland used for commodity crops that is “grandfathered” (”earthmothered”) into recieving direct subsidies [payments that are based simply on whether the land was once used to grow commodity crops] loses eligiblity for such subsidies if the land is used to grow produce for even one year.

However, this is true of any farmland used for commodity crops – in California as well as Minnesota. So when MN’s Ag Commisioner sez:

Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson noted that the fruit and vegetable restrictions written into current law were intended to limit competition from large Midwest farms that grow subsidized commodity crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat.

I don’t really follow his data base or logic. (There was an Op-Ed from one MN farmer asserting the same – I’d love to know if the MN Ag commisoner is relying soley upon that, or upon other sources.) When I discussed this premise with CA organic growers, they found it bizzare. Their (and my) impression is that the whole subsidy program is skewed to favor a few commodity crops because that’s what the biggest players in Ag trading (Cargill, ADM, etc) want – not because of any intentional effor to squelch produce prodcution. Of course, BigAgTraders do want to keep all the subsidy riches for themselves – so they fight efforts to divert the funds for any purpose: Food Stamps, WIC, etc.

TFB negotiations on Friday included a new $1 billionish program to encourage produce (fruit/veggie) production. Thar program reflects the very active efforts of produce growers (and the organic ag community); this fact strongly suggests that fruit and veggie producers are not opposed to subsidies. [Whether subsidizing BigAg produce growers is logical public policy - or just more corporate socialism - is another question entirely.]

The broader picture is that the guaranteed “direct payment” subsidies make no sense in the vast majority of cases. This program would be like Medicare deciding to send checks to physicians baseed not on whether we see any Medicare patients this year, but whether we Medicare was paying us in some past year for seeing patients.

The question of retiring land from production raised upthread is a good one. What we call agriculture is actually mining finite resoures of topsoil and water for ag prodcution. Some land (like the arid upper Great Plains…including lands in Montana and the Dakotas) is simply too devoid of water and or topsoil to be sustainably worked. The “permanent disaster” scam pushed by the Montana and North Dakotac Senators takes what were transitional payments to farmers working suh lands (so the farmers cold transistion to other income sources) and makes the payment permanent.

Reasons to take other lands out of production have to do with local patterns of water/fertilizer use, runoff from same, and soil erosion associated with same. Industrial Ag currently uses petro-based chemical inputs (fertilizer) that allow the same parcels to be worked over and over…with the price of increased global warming gases (from making fertilizer…and from the nitrates released by the fertilizer) and an ever growing “dead zone” in the Gulf (nitrates screw with ocean ecology big time). INthe process, the topsoil becomes progressively more depleted and less productve, and the nutritive value of foods grown on the depleting soils appears to decline, as well.

FOr these reasons, using TFB to subsidize letting farmland go unused for a year – and then subsidizing crop rotation – could be a logical public policy for some prodcutive ag lands.

These are only examples – hope they help illustrate this complex matter.

Oh – and you raise a good poit about farmers wanting to take lands they promised to set aside under conservation programs and put the (often marginal) land back into prodcution of subsidized commodity crops. That sort of double dipping just sucks.

Still, the problem here lies with allowing ag prodcution to be the latest target of the speculative capital that gave uss the dot-com bubble and the mortgage bubble. The culprits aren’t the (vast majority) of farmers, who actually produce something useful. THe culprits are the non-productive speculators in Big Finance, who run up futures prices.

OF course, subidizing ethanol (insane for climate reasons, as well) iincreased gloabl demand for grains – and increased energy prices heavily impact our petro-dependent grain production.

FOr the global parasites in BigFinance, something like the TObin Tax (have to use teh Google for that one) would help deter the erratic capital flows that currently make our food into another speculative investment for the well-fed. Totally revoking ethanol subsidies/requirements are another big part of solving the problem. For most affluent people in First World nations, eating less meeat per week will also help decrease global grain demand.

Thanks to all for their interest. Everybody eats – if they are to live.

Bon appetit!

ok, part of it’s starting to make sense, farmers want to pull out of their conservation acres subsidies contracts (wildlife and erosion prevention land) cuz they can make more money planting cuz of the ’food shortage’ man oh man.
(and from link above, my reminder that they can only get subsidies from commodity crops…fruits and veggie growers have a lock on their industry (but are gonna hit a wall over workers-many tomato growers aren’t planting this year because of lack of ’workers’, can’t find out if they are going to get subsidy in the bill.)

if these agro/commidities guys aren’t clever i don’t know who is.

the second page is the meaty one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04…..VJ/G0HeYBw

(curse you kirk! : ) this is like pulling a thread in a sweater……..i’m not reading you any more….. : ) )

and i think the ’food shortage’ here is like the ’paper shortage’ scare in the 70’s 80’s….

a shortage was created when everyone filled every cupboard and basement with paper products….

create a need then fill it, corporate motto……..the more i read, the more i think that is what is going on….

to anyone who wants it-here’s the transcript from the april 11th bill moyers farm bill show.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…..ript4.html

here’s the main page for the show

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…..ofile.html

here’s the series by the wapo reporters he interviews during a segment of the show–kirk linked to this uptop, too

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..s/farmaid/

do any farmers get a subsidy for NOT growing corn?

now i know they can keep their eligibility for subsidy even if they don’t grow anything on the land, but do they get paid to not grow it?

and here’s an article about farmers not being allowed to grow a non-subsidized crop on subsidized land or pay penalties and permanently lose eligibility for subsidies……

it’s a great article..even mentions how large growers of non-subsidy crops don’t want subsidies because they don’t want other farmers to get subsidies…..
http://www.startribune.com/pol…..2&c=y

: P

nite

i’ll take your suggestions to heart

another excercise in futility, though, i suppose.

;~(