Wrangor
Go Deacs
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2011
- Messages
- 12,413
- Reaction score
- 1,376
923 - I don't support either bill really. Insurance programs are fine but they won't help good farmers because we beat the averages anyway.
I can tell you that there is no way that direct payments and counter cyclical survive. Obama won't sign it even if it did. Would be a political disaster. The insurance program basically provides a safety net for good farmers. I would obviously love more but it isn't going to happen. There are going to be farmers that game the system but that just means they need better enforcement. When you have a drought like Iowa is having you need a fallback. There is no other industry that can be decimated on a yearly basis simply because of lack of rain. And definitely not a single industry that is so key to our economical security.
Insurance option is a decent compromise between what farmers want and what is financially practical. By all means take away the small safety net farmers have and watch over half of the corn belt go belly up this year. That is not good for our economy because turnover in farming is bad. It takes years to learn a piece of land. Changing owners is not a zero sum game. You want consistency and the only way to provide that is through a safety net.
Again - we are talking about less than 5% of a bill and yet it gets 99% of the discussion. You also act like the money output is the same. It is not. I spoke directly with the president of the cotton council about 9 months ago when this was in the planning stages and he specifically said we were going to be dealing with a lot less money (don't have the numbers in front of me and wouldn't share if I did as it was confidential).
Farmers are already getting hammered. In 2009 about 1/4 of the farmers in my area went belly up because of bad harvest weather. Come work on a farm for a summer and see just how much fun we are having rolling around in government funded dollar bill mattresses. It is hot, volatile, difficult, and precise work.
If there is an industry that needs government support it is most certainly farming.
I can tell you that there is no way that direct payments and counter cyclical survive. Obama won't sign it even if it did. Would be a political disaster. The insurance program basically provides a safety net for good farmers. I would obviously love more but it isn't going to happen. There are going to be farmers that game the system but that just means they need better enforcement. When you have a drought like Iowa is having you need a fallback. There is no other industry that can be decimated on a yearly basis simply because of lack of rain. And definitely not a single industry that is so key to our economical security.
Insurance option is a decent compromise between what farmers want and what is financially practical. By all means take away the small safety net farmers have and watch over half of the corn belt go belly up this year. That is not good for our economy because turnover in farming is bad. It takes years to learn a piece of land. Changing owners is not a zero sum game. You want consistency and the only way to provide that is through a safety net.
Again - we are talking about less than 5% of a bill and yet it gets 99% of the discussion. You also act like the money output is the same. It is not. I spoke directly with the president of the cotton council about 9 months ago when this was in the planning stages and he specifically said we were going to be dealing with a lot less money (don't have the numbers in front of me and wouldn't share if I did as it was confidential).
Farmers are already getting hammered. In 2009 about 1/4 of the farmers in my area went belly up because of bad harvest weather. Come work on a farm for a summer and see just how much fun we are having rolling around in government funded dollar bill mattresses. It is hot, volatile, difficult, and precise work.
If there is an industry that needs government support it is most certainly farming.
