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"Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who
Don't Farm
By Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen
The Washington Post
Sunday 02 July 2006
...In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were
at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government
handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50
percent more than the amount it pays to families
receiving welfare...
..."The farm policy we're pursuing now has no
rhyme or reason, and we're just sending big checks to
big farmers," said Gary Mitchell, now a family farmer
in Kansas who was once a top aide to then-Rep. Pat
Roberts (R-Kan.), the 1996 bill's House sponsor.
"They're living off their welfare checks."
Efforts to overhaul the farm subsidy network have
been repeatedly thwarted by powerful farm-state
lawmakers in Congress allied with agricultural
interests.
"The strength of the farm lobby in this town is
really unbelievable," Armey said. "I don't think
there's a smaller group of constituents that has a
bigger influence."
The payments were unrestricted - farmers got them
whether or not they grew any crops, or whether prices
were high or low....
Owners could do almost anything they wanted with
their land, as long as they did not develop it. They
could leave it fallow or rent it for pasture. They
could set up a hunting retreat. Or, as happened in
some Louisiana parishes, landowners could collect
payments while planting stands of commercial
timber....
Supporters said these annual payments gave farmers
the flexibility to switch from one crop to another as
market conditions changed, or even to sit it out in a
year of low prices. In addition, the payments fit with
international trade rules that frown on traditional
price supports....
The large landowners who control vast sections of the
once-sprawling rice fields outside Houston have been
some of the biggest beneficiaries of the 1996 law,
USDA records show....
Among the most fervent critics of the annual
payments are hundreds of Texas farmers who rent land
on which they grow rice. Under the rules, tenants
receive the money if they operate the farms. But
landlords can simply increase rents to capture those
payments.
Other landlords have evicted the tenants from land
they had farmed for years. Then the landowners can
collect the checks themselves, even if they do not
farm.
Congress "made slaves out of every farmer who was
a tenant," said Stephen J. Zapalac, a former Matagorda
County rice farmer who now runs a farm credit office
in Bay City.
In 1998, Zapalac was leasing 2,500 acres, most of
it for rice farming. One landlord canceled a lease for
1,400 acres in 1998, he said, and a second
cancellation followed for the rest in 2004.
"As soon as they figured they could take the
payments, they said, 'I don't need you anymore,' " he
said. "They were renting me land for $40 an acre, but
they could get $125 an acre from the government."
Some of the rice land he lost has been turned into
pasture for cattle, while the landlord continues to
receive the rice money...."
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