WHAT HEELS!: Fed Up With Farmers: Part II
Since the Great Depression, Washington, DC has been paying farmers subsidies to grow – or not to grow – certain food crops, like corn. Congress seems disinclined to stop doling out the dough even though ethanol has pushed the price of a bushel of corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, an’ it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky. And the corn farmers sure aren’t complaining about receiving this unearned income courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers, reports The Washington Post:
Corn farmer Jim Handsaker has found a slew of ways to ride the heartland boom in biofuels that is reshaping the economy of rural
He sold some of his 2006 crop this year for more than $4 a bushel, the highest price in a decade. His stake in two nearby ethanol plants brought in several thousand dollars more in dividends. Meanwhile, soaring farmland prices have pushed the value of the 400 acres he owns to around $2 million.
Even so, come October he will get a subsidy check from the government, part of a $1.6 billion installment that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will send to corn farmers.
Those annual automatic payments to Handsaker and thousands of other prospering corn growers have long been controversial. But coming at a time when taxpayers are already subsidizing the ethanol industry to the tune of $3 billion a year, the double-barreled support system for those who grow corn and those who turn it into fuel has begun to draw fire in Congress. …
A House-passed farm bill would give corn growers $10.5 billion over the next five years, even if prices stay high. These "direct payments," a kind of annual allowance, are set by formula and go out automatically, regardless of prices, profits, yields or weather.
At the same time, a Senate-approved energy bill would double the federal requirement for the use of ethanol from corn - a move that should further buttress corn prices.
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