Fuckers: $1 trillion farm bill includes sushi aid

Tucked deep in the 1,198-page House agriculture policy legislation is an initiative to guarantee prices for sushi rice. So too is insurance for alfalfa and a marketing plan for Christmas trees.

Fuckers: $1 trillion farm bill includes sushi aid Qg5r

Catfish farmers also get a morsel in the proposal being taken up this week: profit-margin insurance. The products represent a tiny fraction of the $440 billion U.S. farm economy. Yet each is slated to receive special treatment — either through subsidized insurance, promotional programs or protections against imports — in the bill that carries an estimated 10-year price tag of $939 billion.
“We’re in a golden age of agriculture,” with producer profits projected at a record $128.2 billion this year, Vince Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University, said at a briefing on Capitol Hill last week. The House bill “is about as bad a bill as I could think of writing as an economist,” he said.
The farm bill, which benefits crop-buyers such as Archer- Daniels-Midland Co., grocers including Supervalu Inc. and insurers including Wells Fargo & Co. and Ace Ltd, has been working through Congress for almost two years. The Senate last week passed a version that would spend $955 billion over 10 years; the House this week is considering a version approved by its agriculture committee. The current, five-year authorization of U.S. Department of Agriculture programs passed in 2008 and was extended last year until Sept. 30.
Both the Senate and House versions would reduce payments to growers of corn, wheat and other crops by eliminating a $5 billion-a-year program of direct subsidies while expanding subsidized crop insurance. Their different price tags mainly result from variations in food-stamp spending. The Senate plan would reduce payments by $4 billion over a decade, about one- fifth the House amount.

http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/06/18/1-trillion-farm-bill-includes-sushi-aid

Fuckers: $1 trillion farm bill includes sushi aid

Fuckers: $1 trillion farm bill includes sushi aid

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