The Problem with Judging Farm Subsidies
By Jennifer Hill
On the tail end of 2021 my family picked up our generational ranch (we are currently attempting to raise the 6th but boy these hooligans don’t make it easy) and moved countless loads of priceless junk, three generations of family members and 600 cows over 600 miles. We left the droughted high desert and federal lands behind us and stepped into a new world of sandhill grasses and water that just shows right up under the earth. Truly God’s own beef country, where there’s more cattle than people and everyone is also a farmer. As former desert ranchers we have very literal experience with farming. Heck, we couldn’t even put up our own hay due to lack of water. Frankly we’ve been known to make one or two jokes at the expense of our fellow agriculturalists. Ranchers are rugged individualists. We don’t need anyone, especially the government, to tell us nothin’! But farmers… well they are a whole different story.
“How does a farmer double his income overnight?”
“He puts out a second mailbox for another subsidy check!”
*Que canned laughter
But living amongst the farmers and dealing with my own trepidations and excitement about taking on the task of growing our own feed has forced me to learn an entire new sector of the industry and pull my thoughts on farm subsidies down from a surface libertarian level, thinking deeper about some previously held attitudes.
According to the CATO Institute, the US Government provided more than $424 billion dollars in farm subsidies from 1995-2020. The bulk of the funds go directly to commodities, but since 2007 there has been a sharp increase in crop insurance payments. That massive amount of money causes all sorts of market distortions including oversupply, often in low nutrient dense crops.
In a prefect, free market, minarcist society farm subsidies wouldn’t exist. There would be no NRCS grants, NDA or FSA funds. No government funds for drought years and minimum prices for crops. Corn would have to stand all on its own without the government artificially funneling so much of it into ethanol. All commodities would be traded in the open market without any influence from the government. But we don’t live in Ancapastan, a reality that often hard for many Libertarians to accept. We must deal with the world we live in, which has utilized the practice of high taxation and subsidy returns since the New Deal Era. (If you want to feel sick about taxes sometime, check out Nebraska’s property tax rates, it’ll churn your stomach). If we didn’t pay our taxes, we’d go to jail so we cut those checks and file the paperwork knowing our money will frequently be wasted or fund things we don’t believe in. Many generational farms and ranches were formed as C-Corps back in the 60’s because that was the thing to do then, leaving them open to large tax burdens. If the government doesn’t get your farm or ranch up front they’ll sure nail you when you die with inheritance tax. And it’s not just the money they steal from us, it’s the market manipulation, both domestic and abroad, that impacts our daily business. Trade deals and tariffs weigh heavily in a commodity system. Additionally, the government hits us with overly burdensome regulations, making it near impossible to grow and expand in many cases. In short, they screw with us at every turn while stealing our money.
Call it a rationalization but it seems to me that if America’s farmers and ranchers are able to get back a small piece of what they’ve had stolen from them for generations by getting Equip funds to help buy their grass seed or an FSA drought payment then I will no longer judge them, especially in hard years when many family farms find themselves on the brink. Besides, they’ll just be taxed again on the back end for any government funds they receive.
Yes, farm subsidies should die right along with 99% of all government programs, but until that time taking back a chunk of what’s been stolen from you is nothing to be ashamed of.