Archive: Farm Subsidies
Dairy Price Gouging Investigated
Federal regulators are investigating allegations that the nation's largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, has manipulated milk and cheese prices, The Wall Street Journal reported today. And investigators are separately reviewing a transfer of $1 million in cash to Gary Hanman, a former director of the organization, as part...
By Derek Kravitz | May 19, 2008; 09:00 PM ET | Email a Comment
Congress Passes Veto-Proof Farm Bill
UPDATE: Senators gave final congressional approval this afternoon to the farm bill by a veto-proof margin of 81-15, news services are reporting. The Bush administration has pledged to veto the nearly $300 billion measure.If that occurs, each chamber must call a new vote and pass the bill by a two-thirds...
By Derek Kravitz | May 15, 2008; 12:12 PM ET | Comments (3)
A Friend Of Catfish Farmers
The Post's Jeffrey H. Birnbaum reports today that U.S. catfish farmers were one of the winners in the recently brokered $300 billion farm bill, thanks in large part to Thad Cochran, a ranking Mississippi Republican on the appropriations committee. Under the a provision in the bill proposed by Cochran, the...
By The Editors | May 13, 2008; 04:20 PM ET | Email a Comment
Farm Bill Update: Veto Threatened
A final agreement brokered by congressional leaders on a nearly $300 billion farm bill still faces a significant hurdle, with the Bush administration saying it would likely veto what it called a "massive, bloated" measure, The Post's Dan Morgan reports today. It is likely the bill will reach the House...
By The Editors | May 9, 2008; 04:50 PM ET | Email a Comment
A Sticking Point in the Farm Bill
The $290 billion farm bill has been stuck in Congress for months as lawmakers wrestle over tax and policy questions. If the differences can't be resolved, billions in farm subsidies as well as increases for nutrition, conservation and energy programs will die. Now, it turns out, one of the biggest...
By The Editors | April 23, 2008; 01:35 PM ET | Comments (1)
Farm Bill Update: Taxing Matters
Back in 2002, then House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest (R-Texas) helped engineer tens of billions of dollars in new spending for agriculture in a massive new farm bill that was denounced by fiscal conservatives. Combest's pivotal role in outflanking a reform faction and bringing President Bush on board for...
By The Editors | April 16, 2008; 06:03 PM ET | Comments (3)
Farm Bill Update: Harvesting More Cash
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has turned up the pressure on Senate Democrats to support the House version of a $290 billion, 5-year farm bill, reports Dan Morgan, co-author of a nine-part Post series in 2006 exposing waste in agricultural subsidies. At a meeting Wednesday night, an angry Pelosi...
By The Editors | April 10, 2008; 05:31 PM ET | Comments (4)
A Clash Over Animal Waste
Environmental scientists and agribusiness have long been at odds over the impact of discharges from industrial-sized hog, poultry, beef and dairy farms. The latest arena for their battle: a blue-ribbon commission that has been studying the problem for three years. The panel is expected to soon issue a major report...
By The Editors | March 7, 2008; 12:25 PM ET | Comments (6)
A Sweeter Farm Bill For Sugar?
As Congress gets set to finalize a farm bill, lobbyists for the U.S. sugar industry are working behind the scenes to sweeten the legislation, reports Dan Morgan. The lobbyists want to attach a proposed U.S.-Mexican side agreement that would set limits on sugar trade between the two countries and protect...
By The Editors | January 18, 2008; 03:58 PM ET | Comments (96)
New Disclosure on Farm Programs
The Washington Post reported last month that a Department of Agriculture loan program created to spur rural development had cost taxpayers at least $1.5 billion in losses, created few new jobs, undercut some existing businesses and suffered from a lack of oversight. But the department refused to release the...
By The Editors | January 16, 2008; 12:17 PM ET | Email a Comment
The Death of a Farm Program Reform
In advance of this year's farm bill debate, The Washington Post reported that 16 private crop insurance companies made $3.1 billion in profits from the heavily subsidized program over the past eight years while the government lost $1.5 billion. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), citing findings of the Government Accountability...
By The Editors | December 18, 2007; 08:15 AM ET | Comments (16)
Southern Farm Interests Prevail Again
Southern farm interests flexed their political muscle in the Senate today, blocking an attempt to slash limits on what one farm family can collect in federal subsidies from $360,000 to $250,000 a year. It was the second defeat this week for lawmakers seeking to reshape the nation's farm programs,...
By The Editors | December 13, 2007; 02:27 PM ET | Comments (1)
Responding to a Critic
Economist Dean Baker, who blogs for The American Prospect, takes issue with last week's installment in The Post's ongoing Harvesting Cash series. (Read today's editorial about the Post series and former President Jimmy Carter's op-ed piece about farm subsidies.) Baker argues that the article indicts the Agriculture Department's loan...
By The Editors | December 10, 2007; 11:44 AM ET | Comments (1)
Still Not Sweet on the Senator
Last month The Post reported that American Crystal Sugar Co., a huge Minnesota beet refining cooperative, has rewarded pro-sugar lawmakers with nearly $1 million in campaign contributions this year. The company has also punished one lawmaker, Sen. Norman Coleman (R-Minn.), who went against its wishes on a crucial trade vote...
By The Editors | December 7, 2007; 05:13 PM ET | Email a Comment
Investigating the 'Bank for Rural America'
Since the 1970s, a little-known loan program from the Agriculture Department has endured nearly $1.5 billion in losses -- while backing almost $14 billion in guarantees to private banks. That's the latest finding in The Post's ongoing investigation of waste, fraud and abuse in the nation's farm support programs....
By The Editors | December 5, 2007; 11:28 AM ET | Email a Comment
Coming Soon: Our Next Farm Investigation
What do snowmobile clubs, movie theaters, water parks and alligator hunters have to do with the U.S. Department of Agriculture? They are beneficiaries of a little-known federal program intended to create jobs and encourage development in rural areas. In the next installment of the Harvesting Cash investigation of farm spending,...
By The Editors | November 30, 2007; 04:33 PM ET | Email a Comment
Curtains for 'Cowboy Starter Kits'
The Senate is moving to shut down a loophole, first exposed in The Post's "Harvesting Cash" series, that has allowed some non-farming residents of suburban subdivisions to collect federal farm subsidy payments. The series detailed how new owners of small plots carved out of former rice fields near Houston...
By The Editors | November 29, 2007; 11:57 AM ET | Email a Comment
