# farm program cuts



## indsport (Aug 29, 2003)

Just a note for all sportsmen and farmers to be aware of for the 2006 federal budget, Associated press reported this morning the following:

The new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said he and other fiscal conservatives wanted to establish "enforcement mechanisms" to "put the brakes on the growth of entitlements," which pay benefits to millions of Americans according to formulas set by law.

As chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Gregg said, he will also scrutinize farm programs.

"Agricultural entitlements are crying out to be reformed," Mr. Gregg said. "Farmers are being paid a huge amount not to produce certain crops. Then they get paid a lot to produce other crops. It's a little beyond the obscene."

Note also in the same article, the administration now says that the budget shortfalls are due to the tax cuts and security spending. 2004 revenue was $5.6B below what was expected.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

can you post a link to the article? Farm programs need to be cut drastically.


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## seabass (Sep 26, 2002)

Bobm said:


> can you post a link to the article? Farm programs need to be cut drastically.


Which farm programs?


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## Anas Strepera (Nov 10, 2004)

I think farmers are being paid too much to produce crops in general and too little when it comes to idling land.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Many of us that disagree in this political form agree on this point. Perhaps we can keep the partisan part out, stay in agreement, and who knows , call our congressmen and have a positive effect. I'll do my best to stay politically neutral on this one because it is far to important to goof up. Ouch, I'm having political withdraws.


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## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

> Farm programs need to be cut drastically.


I completly DISAGREE. Now let me say I have never farmed. My Dad never farmed. However I have always admired the American Farmer. Now most of you know me to be very conservative and not to believe in big Government. However in order for our farmers to compete globally with all of the socialized nations in the world we need farm programs.
Not that many years ago we had severval meat packers now we have under 10 in the US. Get rid of the farm programs and we will have about a dozen farmers ,ADM, Conagra, Cargill and the like............Wher will that put us hunters???? Watching reruns on OLN.
Bob you hipshootin, backwoods southern cowboy is that what you want???? :eyeroll: I don't think so!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Good evening zogman

I think most of us simply would like to get rid of the waste. Example: I know a fellow who keeps planting, I think it's navy beans. Up where he is at he has never got a crop for six or seven years. He keeps planting them because the disaster payment makes him more money than wheat, corn, sunflowers, anything that he can plant. This is farming the taxpayer, not the land. I don't want to hurt the honest farmer either, but this is such a waste. It's a waste of taxpayer money, it's a waste of Dept. of Agriculture budget that could be used to support the honest farmer. It's a waste of natural resources (the lands ability to produce). I'm guessing that as a fellow conservative you don't have a problem with this aspect of reform.

I don't want to curtail some of the current practices that benefit the good land steward, the friend, the relative, the neighbor. Not many of us in North Dakota are removed from the land more than a generation. I think if we will remove the waste we will benefit the real farmer.

When a farmer plants something he hopes is a failure it upsets the local economy. It reduces income to the elevator, the implement dealer, the local gas/oil station, and the fertilizer and other chemical dealers. You do not need to fertilize or reduce pests on a crop that is doomed to failure. Opinion please. Thanks


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Farmers ( not all but more and more) have sold out to comercialized hunting, leasing ect. They are no longer the friend of the hunter. They do not deserve our support anymore. There is a lot of waste in the current farm programs and I actually think that the big corporate farmers might be more likely to be image conscious and let hunters on there land as well as set aside some lands like crp. They might be less likely to view the few bucks from guides as income source because it would represent a small percentage of their bottom line, big corporations are always concerned about their image. In the south many of the large paper companies allow hunting some require a pemit but its cheap like 10 bucks. Farmers have been taking advantage of the romantic image of the family farm while dipping into the taxpayers pockets and the thanks the taxpayers get is they have now decided to sell the taxpayers game animals the taxpayers already own! Like most welfare recipients there is no end to their greed. I used to feel differently but since the farmers have had a change of heart I have also.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Zogman read this its a little complicated but it really summarizes that farm programs pretty well. You might want to print it, it is easier to read.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp70.pdf


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## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

Plainsman and BobM,

I agree with what you are saying when you can point out the specifics, However Billy Bobs blanket short statement raised the hair on my neck. Heck no he made me :******: :******: :******: :******: 
Lets not sho0t from the hip on this one.



> I actually think that the big corporate farmers might be more likely to be image conscious and let hunters on there land as well as set aside some lands like crp.


You really believe you are going to talk to some three piece suit at the top of the Pillsbery building in downtown Minneapolis as apposed to Harvey J. Mudflap in rual America and have better luck getting on land.

Dorthy go back to Kansas :eyeroll:


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Yes I do for the reason stated above, corportions care about their image and some three piece suit will be working in their public relations department for exactly these functions. Most of your Harvey J mudflap"s have already sold us out. And why all the anger symbols?? 
The paper companies dowm in the south have department specifically for these purposes and it opens up lots of land to deer and turkey hunters.
They are much more sensitive to image issues than individual landowners.

Did you read the link I gave you, does it bother you as a taxpayer that the system is so wasteful??


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## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

The waste and fraud here in NoDak is absolutley crazy, buying new vehicles because the tax man says you either pay uncle sam or get a new pickup. 10,000$ snowmobiles to check grain bins in the winter, yeh right, 30ft fifth wheel campers written off on the farm. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind giving them the money when they need it, but things have gotten way outa hand. I personally know of one farmer that paid his kids a wage from the farm when they were in grade/high school and they rarely set a foot on a tractor. The big joke he said is that this is there college money, one very, very wealthy farmer who's kids are on the subsidized lunch program at school, funny when he drops them off in a 48,000$ pickup.


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

> Most of your Harvey J mudflap"s have already sold us out. And why all the anger symbols??


Very few are selling out, they are leasing their land to big farmers and keeping it till they die then giving it to their children. Another whole group are buying up marginal land in small tracts all over, the baby boomers are finding paradise on earth finially too. But then this is a local report.


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## Storm (Dec 8, 2004)

I work in the ag field, my grandfather and uncle are farmers so I have some knowledge of the farm subsidy programs. Farm subsidies didn't even come into existance until the early Reagan years (early 1980's). During the Reagan years the department of agriculture was one of the fastest growing departments in governement, and I am talking about federal dollars allocated to subsidize farmers. My grandfather, and am sure many other farmers became very weathly at this time. They were taking federal subsidies and buying new land, before the price of land really jumped up. But if you talk to my grandfather he is on the border of bankrupcy and he "just doesnt' know how he can make it next year." Does that sound familier. In the 2004 federal budget, Bush signed the largest farm subsidy program into law ever. In other words farmers are getting more tax than ever to not farm, or to subsidize land they are farming. The new thing in the farming world now is to plant a crop that they know won't make it, buy federally subsidized crop insurance at a ridiculously low price like 4.00 dollars an acre hoping the crop will die. Then they are paid the county average for that crop. A good example of this is corn in North dakota. Most farmers in ND have now business planting corn. Corn takes longer to ripen, and lots of water. ND is very dry in many areas and has a shorter growing season. So all that corn up there this years that was disced under due to crop faliure, had some farmer collecting insurance. And I'm sure he will plant again next year hoping to collect insurance. 
The bigger the farmer you are as in acres, the more money you get in subsidies. SO the little farmer doesn't benefit from this nearly as much as the big farmer does.
Farm subsidies are a little dirty secret to most farmers. If you want to pi$$ off a farmer ask him how much farm subsidies dollars he collected last year. He won't ever tell you the truth, but you can go down to the courthouse and find out. Since your tax money is being given out, you can find out who received what and how much. In fact the Omaha World Herald published a list of the farmers in a surrounding 3 county area and how much farm subsidies they collected. Boy did that ever upset the farmers. In fact in the county I live in we have a farmer who has his kids on the free lunch program at school and he received 300,000 dollars in federal farm subsidies over a three years period. And he to was dropping his child off a school in a new Chevy pickup. The bottom line is that the farm lobby in Washignton is huge. They are trying to get farmers as much tax money as they can.


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## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

Try this web site, www.ewg.org, gives a break down of who is getting what. Click on farm subsidy database, go to your state, county, this site really ticks off the farm boys.


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## Storm (Dec 8, 2004)

The website is www.ewg.org/ you had a comma after the org and that wouldn't come up. I have to laugh because I looked up the county where my uncle farms and he is listed, but so is his wife for just about the same amount of money. That's another little trick. Farmers will split up there farms and make their wife or children own a certain amount of acres so that they qualify for a check. This will double their pay out.

Why is a farmers bill on their hat curved....? It gets that way from sticking their heads in the mailbox looking for their government checks..


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## Storm (Dec 8, 2004)

Oh and I might add, my uncle took in 133,000 tax dollars in 2003. He is a big farmer, but by no means the biggest in the county. We wouldn't want him to have to drive the same pickup each year!


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## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

Bobby Mmmmm.............,

I printed it at work but forgot it there. I will however read it.   

XXXXX and OOOOO

Zoggy :biggrin:


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## Ron Gilmore (Jan 7, 2003)

Farm Program cuts. First thing to do is eliminate any new acres that can receive a subsidy. This would eliminate any new draining wetlands and prevent wetlands from being broken up when CRP come out of the program.

Put disasters in the bill as they said they did. get rid of the duplication of effort between agencies with in the agencies.

I have a whole bunch more specific things, but do not use this thread to take off the wall shots at farmers or point to isolated infractions. Many people read these posts that are non members. Might be next fall when you knock on that door your statement or mine might have set off that landowner and the answer becomes NO!


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

> Might be next fall when you knock on that door your statement or mine might have set off that landowner and the answer becomes NO!


or the other possibility might be if they read this thread and give it some serious soul searching that farmers will realize that the general public is willingly subsidizing them so maybe they should find it in their hearts not to sell our hunting heritage to the guide/outfitters commercial hunting crowd. The game animals on their land are the property of the public and selling them is unethical.


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