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Texas Agriculture Archive

December 2, 2005

Give credit to
American farmers

Editor's note: The following opinion piece was written in response to a recent St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial attacking farm subsidies.

By Jo Ann Emerson

Missouri's farmers deserve more credit than the Post-Dispatch editorial page recently gave them.

Seemingly pulled straight from the talking points of the Environmental Working Group—no friend to our nation's producers or consumers—the editorial asserted that "72 percent of agricultural subsidies go to 10 percent of the farmers." This is true only after doing some sly math, which includes adding to their totals every retired farmer and absentee landlord who cash-rents or sharecrops the tiniest parcel of land. Among active farmers, the distribution of payments is much more even.

In addition, the editorial claimed that the federal government has a $22 billion budget for supporting "people who are much better off than most taxpayers." In fact, the last time the U.S. spent $22 billion on farm subsidies was 2001. In the three years since adoption of the 2002 farm bill, total payments to American farmers have dropped precipitously. In the 2004 fiscal year, the federal government spent only $12.5 billion on farm programs—commodities, conservation and disaster subsidies combined.

The number still lacks context without mentioning other, growing annual federal expenditures ($345 billion for Medicare and $526 billion for Social Security) or the nature of farmers' work (high overhead on machinery costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, dawn-to-dusk workdays) and considerable financial uncertainty (weather, disasters, rock-bottom commodity prices and sky-high
energy costs).

For all those challenges heaped on American farmers, the American people get the safest, most affordable food supply in the history of the world. Feb. 7 of each year is Food Check-Out Day, the point in the year by which Americans, on average, have earned enough money to buy their family's annual food supply. Americans spend about 10 percent of their disposable income on food, a low among developed countries.

Remember, too, that the American farmer also provides food aid to help the 840 million hungry people around the world. Every five seconds a child dies of hunger or the long-term effects of malnutrition. In this epic battle against hunger, the American farmer is Hercules.

Farm programs do help keep our rural communities afloat. Every payment to an American farmer creates a positive ripple effect in our rural towns, to our small bankers, seed and implement dealers, rural doctors, teachers and small businesses.

I suggest that the Post-Dispatch editorial page—as well as every American—give a bit more credit to the American farmer. The perfect time to think about it: this evening, and every evening, when we sit down to a complete, nutritious, safe, affordable dinner consisting of the fruits of our farmers' labors.

Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau, Mo., a Republican, represents Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.