It’s a living: dead farmers receive more than $1 billion in government subsidies
Dan Brawner
August 08, 2007
“It’s unconscionable that the Department of Agriculture would think that a dead person was actively engaged in the business of farming.”
What Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is trying to say here is that the D of A ought to be able to tell the difference between a dead farmer and a live one and pay them according to the amount of work they do. The famously penny-pinching legislator and part-time farmer had the General Accounting Office look into farm subsidy payments and discovered that, over the past seven years, the federal government has paid out $1.1 billion to farmers who were not only no longer planting crops, but had been, themselves, planted. That is, dead. Deceased. Pushing up daisies (or Roundup Ready soybeans).
Grassley’s audit showed that the heirs of an Alabama farmer who died in 1981 continued to receive subsidy payments for seven years to the tune of $567,000. In another case, a corporation received $400,000 in subsidies after the death of one of its shareholders because they somehow neglected to inform the government that he was no longer actively engaged in the business of farming.
Subsidy programs were created in the 1930's to help farmers survive during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. This was during a time when one fourth of the U.S. population were farmers. Today, less than one percent of Americans are farmers (unless, of course, you count the dead ones.)
Grassley told the Washington Post, “Farm payments are meant for those who need some help getting through the tough times.”
Well, if being dead isn’t tough, I don’t know what is. But I see Grassley’s point. According to a recent study by the Heritage Foundation, the average American pays $320 a year in farm subsidies through higher taxes and food prices. Nearly two-thirds of farm subsidies go to the biggest and richest farmers, while 60 percent of farmers receive no subsidies at all.
The GAO audit reported that 40 percent of the payments made to deceased farmers were sent to individuals who had been dead for three years or more, while 19 percent was paid to farmers who had been dead seven years or more. This would suggest that the longer farmers have been dead, the less their earning potential will be. If a person is dead long enough, it might not hardly be worth them farming at all.
Still, the audit leads to the conclusion–and I believe Mr. Grassley would agree with me–that giving our hard-earned tax dollars to farmers who are dead only encourages them. It would be a sad state of affairs if American agriculture grew lazy and dependent on government handouts for the deceased. On the contrary, there ought to be incentives for farmers to live and, you know, grow things.
Even for those well-paid extinct farmers, agriculture has always been a pretty tough row to hoe. But, hey, it’s a living.
What Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is trying to say here is that the D of A ought to be able to tell the difference between a dead farmer and a live one and pay them according to the amount of work they do. The famously penny-pinching legislator and part-time farmer had the General Accounting Office look into farm subsidy payments and discovered that, over the past seven years, the federal government has paid out $1.1 billion to farmers who were not only no longer planting crops, but had been, themselves, planted. That is, dead. Deceased. Pushing up daisies (or Roundup Ready soybeans).
Grassley’s audit showed that the heirs of an Alabama farmer who died in 1981 continued to receive subsidy payments for seven years to the tune of $567,000. In another case, a corporation received $400,000 in subsidies after the death of one of its shareholders because they somehow neglected to inform the government that he was no longer actively engaged in the business of farming.
Subsidy programs were created in the 1930's to help farmers survive during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. This was during a time when one fourth of the U.S. population were farmers. Today, less than one percent of Americans are farmers (unless, of course, you count the dead ones.)
Grassley told the Washington Post, “Farm payments are meant for those who need some help getting through the tough times.”
Well, if being dead isn’t tough, I don’t know what is. But I see Grassley’s point. According to a recent study by the Heritage Foundation, the average American pays $320 a year in farm subsidies through higher taxes and food prices. Nearly two-thirds of farm subsidies go to the biggest and richest farmers, while 60 percent of farmers receive no subsidies at all.
The GAO audit reported that 40 percent of the payments made to deceased farmers were sent to individuals who had been dead for three years or more, while 19 percent was paid to farmers who had been dead seven years or more. This would suggest that the longer farmers have been dead, the less their earning potential will be. If a person is dead long enough, it might not hardly be worth them farming at all.
Still, the audit leads to the conclusion–and I believe Mr. Grassley would agree with me–that giving our hard-earned tax dollars to farmers who are dead only encourages them. It would be a sad state of affairs if American agriculture grew lazy and dependent on government handouts for the deceased. On the contrary, there ought to be incentives for farmers to live and, you know, grow things.
Even for those well-paid extinct farmers, agriculture has always been a pretty tough row to hoe. But, hey, it’s a living.
Print
Email
