Name a government agency in this country that works well, is funded to its proper level, and satisfies the public interest. The TSA? The FBI? The Defense Department? They either don’t work well or, like the U.S. Postal Service, don’t receive enough funding to work well.
Then there’s the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this year I, along with about 100 other interested individuals, attended a hearing on whether or not the local Farm Service Agency office should be closed. I have never been to a hearing that wasn’t window dressing, and the hearing at the Big Creek Grange was no exception. Some legal requirement to hold the hearing was satisfied, but we all might as well have stayed home. The office on Route 209 will be closed, and local farmers must now travel to Bethlehem for services.
Congress has demanded that the Ag Department cut back--it has to meet the 2011 Budget Control Act requirements. Among the items (besides our local office) being cut in this year’s farm bill is $6 billion from environmental programs. At the same time, crop insurance is expected to cost $9 billion a year. The bigger the farm, the larger the crop insurance subsidy.
Robert Semple’s article entitled “Where the Trough Is Overflowing” in today’s New York Times contained a chart detailing which farmers received what direct payments and price supports between 1995 and 2010. It looks like this:
The top 1% received 26%
The next 9% received 50%
The next 10% received 14%
The bottom 80% received 10%
62% of the farms received no subsidies and price supports. I’m in the 62%.
Having been to the meeting and hearing what was said I had the same feeling that the whole thing was a charade anyway. It was a done deal before they had the meeting. It was only done to satisfy the system requirements.
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