Biden Ends Popular Trump and Sonny Perdue Program to help Farmers

A statement that shows you didn't read anything about it or why it was cancelled.

 

Again, reading is not your strong point.

 

I have followed far to many blind links in my posting life and this is a discussion forum not a reading forum if there is something in your cite you want to say then say it.
dairyair posted this

“There was significant difference of administrative costs. In some cases, people were charged a tremendous amount just to fill the boxes,” Vilsack explained. “There was inadequate accounting of where the boxes were actually delivered. There was a lot of food waste and loss that we uncovered as a result of these listening sessions.”

And I commented.

Now try being a little less snarky.

 

It is being stopped because it is no longer needed. It was never meant to be a permanent thing, there are already lots of other programs that do the same basic thing, this was to deal with the large influx of food that was going to waste.

 

Farmers are too conservative. Their businesses must be shut down, their foreclosed land sold to more progressive interests, like Bill Gates or the CCP.

 

This is one of those spoof post, right?

The Ag industry gets more than 20 billion a year in subsides, I doubt there is an industry in the country that is more heavily subsidized than Ag. And during the Trump years they got upwards of 30 to 40 billion of redistributed wealth.

 

There also isn't an industry in the US more worthy of subsidizing than Ag. Literally nothing is (or should be) more important to a nation than food independence. The subsidies even now are weighted for Corporate Ag to most benefit from, and even Trump's didn't do a lot for the local farms. But just you watch, the subsidies for Ag will slowly be reduced a bit at a time, while also being more heavily stacked toward international firms to corporatize and 'globalize' our nations food production. You can expect organic to get more expensive too, as big corporate Ag prefers chemical pesticides, artificial preservation and synthetic fertilizers.

 

This is the thing about wealth redistribution....everyone is in favor of it in one form or another.

 

Subsidy is only redistribution when its improperly applied. Proper subsidization of Ag, for example, would merely ensure that farmers businesses remain profitable enough for them to continue farming. Its when we pay people for not producing that it becomes redistribution.

 

If you take money from me and give it to farmers ,that is redistribution, no matter the reason. It might be redistribution you agree with, but it is still redistribution.

And the paying them not to produce is part of keeping them profitable

 

erase the Trump legacy, if we need it later Biden can add it

 

By that logic, all taxation is redistribution. Is that your position?

That should never happen. Lazy bureaucrats that can't find a better usage for farmers than paying them not to work or to destroy their crop need to be fired and replaced. At least until there isn't anyone going hungry...

 

Costs were six times the regular emergency food budget and a lot of the products were spilled or spoiled. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...er-high-costs-delivery-problems-idUSKBN2C11CY

 

It appears that is the crux of it unless another poster here can postulate a different alternative, based on facts instead of proclamations from someone who politically benefited from the program by sucking up to Trump; I would be happy to entertain it.

That aside, the question is, why Sonny Perdue claimed it was based on "spite" and if any posters here will realize his blatant dishonesty and hold him accountable?

 

I haven't seen where Perdue made that claim. It was made by Austin Scott, a Georgia GOP Congressman who sits on the agriculture committee.

 

Thanks for the catch. I misread the article.

 

Of course, what else would you call it?

It has nothing to do with anyone being lazy. The purpose of what we give the Ag industry is all designed to keep prices more or less steady and avoid massive price swings. In 2012 there was a major drought over much of the nation that impacted farmers hard. Yields were terrible and production was very low, yet there was no corresponding jump in prices across the nation.

 

Sonny was a piece of work, pretty much loathed across all of the USDA.

 

https://www.capitalpress.com/nation...cle_15f405a8-9d81-11eb-8c0c-0f3962bd4c62.html

Herrick said the program had "significant challenges." Distribution was not based on need; rural counties were underserved; prices fluctuated from $28 to $105 per box; food varied in quality and quantity; perishable items often went unrefrigerated; and small businesses couldn't compete.

Herrick said the agency is "not going to replace the program."

However, USDA plans to combat hunger through other means, including a new dairy donation program, a fresh produce box program, school meal programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and more.

These programs will rely on existing infrastructure.
"We're going to continue to provide healthy food, but we're going to do it through the most efficient system that we have," Secretary Vilsack told the House Agriculture Appropriations Committee Wednesday.

April 9, USDA announced it will use pandemic relief funds from the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, to run a new produce-only food box program at least through Sept. 30.


If Biden wanted to do this out of spite, he would not be announcing a tactic exploiting preexisting structures to get food to the same people. Although as I have said, Dems have to learn the political lessons taught by Trump and his minions, and one of his strategies was to use the federal FEMA funds as a weapon to punish blue states like California and Puerto Rico and reward states that voted for him like Texas and Louisiana. If spite and crass politics is good enough for Trump, it should be good enough for Biden!

 

The program was never designed to be permanent, it was put into place to deal with a very specific problem.

One would think the "small government Conservatives" would be happy to see a program end when it was supposed to

 

They are too busy using the decision to rebrand Biden as 'mean' and calloused towards red state demographics. Its like everything else now. the real impact of governmental decisions is irrelevant, its the political image war that matters.

 

They difference today is that most “ag” is corporate “ag”. The era of the family farmer is almost gone. I live in Iowa and work with AG customers daily. The reason we are seeing AG subsidies going up has less to do with feeding the nation, than it does with feeding a hungry corporate structure.

While most subsides go to coops, and AG processors, a huge chunk of it goes to the actual “farmers”. We have seen a huge uptick size of the subsidies that start at the “farmer”, but only because the “farmer” is now a a corporate employee, and the subsidy is going to that corporation. Factory Farms make up more than 60% of the land in my state. So the corporations have found a way to not only get the subsidies on the raw products they produce, they now get subsidies on the tools they use to produce it, the chemicals they use to grow it, and in the ultimate irony they now get subsides on their final product. It used to be a subsidy on the final product, but their lobby is so strong now they get subsidies all the way thru the chain. And that is by design. And to keep the “industry” whole, they even get subsides on the insurance to protect their crops.

Read the farm bill sometime. Crop insurance companies are GUARANTEED a profit. Hell, crop reinsurance it the biggest boondoggle in American history. Hell, I know people who retired from a local crop insurance company that I used to work at that both never made more than $90,000 a year their entire careers. But when they retired one of them got a pension benefit of over $4 million, and the other was over $10 million. And they both retired at 55......and YOU and I paid for it.

 

I live in Illinois and all of my customers are Ag operations.

What is your definition of a "factory farm?

I have read the Farm Bill, it is required reading for me

 

Then you've seen the guaranteed profit margins for crop reinsurance

"Factory Farms" where I'm from basically are what used to be referred to as "tenant farms"

 

We have a lot of tenant farmers in Il and Mo, but the vast majority of them are renting from small land owners that either are no longer farming or had it handed down and have no desire to farm. One of the operators I was talking with had 13 different landlords.

I would not call any of these factory farms