We've come along way since 1965.

Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin' is the life for me.
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.

New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.

...The chores.
...The stores.
...Fresh air.
...Times Square

You are my wife.
Good bye, city life.
Green Acres we are there.

Rich people own farms, is all. They're not pretending to drag plows across Manhattan.

I don't see where the farm program has been particularly successful. When you give everyone in a competitive industry a subsidy, they just go out and bid up the price of land, machinery, and other inputs, i.e. the subsidy gets capitalized into the cost of doing business.

Farmers of program crops have about the same income as farmers of non-program crops. Yet, Congress continually tweaks the program. I guess some people have a brain chemistry that causes them to crave a centralized give-away program, whether it works or not.

I also find it interesting that Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson are bringing their Farm Aid concert to New York this year. Randall's Island, on Sept. 9th. I'll probably go, just because I want to see Neil jam with Dave Matthews (and I hear an Allman Bros. contingent will be there as well), but I'd also like to see the list of farmers who benefit from these concerts, and how much each of them gets.

The Environmental Working Group put together a data base of farm subsidy recipients. You might find what you need there:

http://farm.ewg.org/farm/region.php?fips=00000

Here's a Heritage Foundation report on farm subsidies. It is about eight screens of reading.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1763.cfm

There's even a Rockefeller in there.

http://farm.ewg.org/farm/addrsearch.php?s=yup&stab=NY&city=New+York&c=See+Recipients&zip=&last=&first=&fullname=

And Crid is right -- I thought these people were getting these while "farming" rooftop gardens. Seems they have farms elsewhere. But, sorry, if you can live on Park Avenue, it's not like the rest of us should be giving you handouts meant to keep tillers of the land from living lives out of Steinbeck.

PS Will have to look these people up later as I'm on a double deadline. I do love that there's a Rockefeller in there. Should be easy to find his office and give him a call.

Let's take the Rockefeller guy, Mark F. Rockefeller. He lives in 10012, which is probably the West Village. An address check found him on Fifth Avenue. Tony! With his other address listed as 30 Rockefeller Plaza. I can just see the dirt under his fingernailsnow!

Here's some subsidy info on him (pay special attention to the number of children living in poverty in the county where the rest of us are shelling out to help him with his farm):

http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/person1614.php?custnumber=011541582&summlevel=address

USDA Section 1614 Database information for Mark F Rockefeller

Adjusted gross income:

$1,417,028 average in the ZIP code of this beneficiary in 2004 (Source: EWG, Compiled from IRS data).

Poverty

There were 4,084 children under age 18 in Bonneville County, Idaho below the poverty level in 2004 (Source: US Census Bureau).

Addresses on file with USDA for Mark F Rockefeller in the Section 1614 database

USDA county office from which subsidies were paid: Address on file in USDA county office
Bonneville County, Idaho Mark F Rockefeller
New York, NY 10112

Flynne: It's very important to me that you follow this link:

http://urltea.com/1cxq

Mellencamp ain't what you think he is. This speaks precisely to the meaning of this post.

"...I'm particularly busy tormenting anthropologists now..."

Yummy!

More please Amy.

I've been stalking Doug Jones, but it's for a good cause -- to be revealed at a later date. But, here's a book he wrote:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915703408?ie=UTF8&tag=advicegoddess-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0915703408
Also, Bobbi Low, Satoshi Kanazawa, and Elizabeth Cashdan.

Ugh. Crid and Amy, you beat me to the punch. These are the owners of the corporate farms in Iowa, Nebraska, or my state, Montana. Perhaps Mr. Archer, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Midland live on Park Avenue.

The Bush administration has proposed sharply reducing the income threshold to $200,000 a year and ending many of those loopholes.

My god, I actually agree with something being done by Bush. I need to mark this date on my calendar.

...they just go out and bid up the price of land, machinery, and other inputs, i.e. the subsidy gets capitalized into the cost of doing business.

Yup, they do and farming's an industry with economies of scale so the rising input prices are pushing out the small farmers the subsidies are claimed to be helping. WaPo had a good article on that last year. The big push on ethanol recently is feeding the trend even more.

Actually, I don't hate along party lines. I'm a big fan of Bush's health care plan. Hillarycare, phooey!

Wow, Crid. I had no idea! Actually, I wasn't thinking that Mellencamp was in it for the liberalist label. He's in it for the dough, just like Neil and Willie, and I imagine, everyone else on the bill. I know they're not so altruistic as to give up their performance fees. I just wondered who the farmers are who supposedly benefit from the Farm Aid concerts. Now I'm even more jaded. Thanks bunches! o_O

Good catch, Amy.

The graphic of Manhattan farm subsidy recipients is courtesy of the Environmental Working Group's Farm Policy Analysis Database which can be found at www.mulchblog.com. Our data comes directly from the USDA. Taxpayer funded subsides don't just go to Manhattan, either. Check out farm subsidy maps of these other cities like:

San Francisco

Chicago

Houston

Minneapolis

Washington DC

Los Angeles

Las Vegas

Atlanta

Phoenix

This goes a long ways in explaining why Dick Armey and Barney Frank weren't able to get an urban coalition together to oppose farm subsidies.

This is good stuff. Our system of farm subsidies skews the hell out of the market without accomplishing what it was intended to do. Food is something people will pay to purchase, even before they buy sweet rims for their rides (well, most people. For me, the rims come first); hence, there's no worry that market forces will be insufficient to persuade people and companies to grow crops.

A side-note to this bill: Who bets Bush finds fiscal discipline religion now that he can blame spending on the Democrats? He signed six years of bloated budgets full of Republican pork (and HUGE farm subsidies), but now he won't do it because it lets him stick it to his opponents.

I get a kick out of every "simple" analysis of this and that governmental financial activity. Last week, John Stossel asked a bunch of rich people why they didn't give more to charity. I must remind you all that money that is not earned is not kept, because there is no value to it as a gift. Feed the hungry people, and what you get for your trouble is a bunch of hungry people who now demand your continued support.

In Florida, the "luxury tax" put thousands of people on the street, because Congress, eager to "stick it to the rich people", didn't recognize who builds their yachts. Singapore, Germany and Holland say, "Thank you, Congress!"

There is an amazing, no, I mean amazing, irony to bellyaching about "the rich": it doesn't make it the slightest bit easier to get there yourself if you're not!

Rad, "simple" doesn't always mean "wrong".

There is a difference between a subsidy (current farm program) and taxing out of existence (the yacht building industry).

As for Mark Rockefeller, I'm sure an investment adviser talked him into investing in some Idaho farmland. He gets subsidy money just by virtue of being a landowner.

The "simple" part here is the assumption that farm subsidies are a bad idea. Ignoring for the moment that conglomerates, with centralized finance and legal arms, are far more efficient than family farms at extracting pounds of produce out the soil, it remains that farming is an uncertain business dependent on the weather; the subsidy, however mutated it may be today, has a valid purpose in stabilizing fluctuations in output. Maybe less than in the past, when market information was slower than the seasons, but still not worth outright abolishment.

"The "simple" part here is the assumption that farm subsidies are a bad idea."

I wouldn't call it an assumption. I would call it a conclusion based on the evidence.

"...conglomerates, with centralized finance and legal arms, are far more efficient than family farms at extracting pounds of produce out the soil,..."

I would debate this awhile. It is hard for big corporate farms to beat the efficiency of a family farm.

"it remains that farming is an uncertain business dependent on the weather..."

There is a heavily subsidized crop insurance program, right beside the direct subsidy program, for this sort of thing.

"the subsidy, however mutated it may be today, has a valid purpose in stabilizing fluctuations in output."

It may be a valid purpose, but I'm not sure the efficacy of the current program. We could live without it.

Amy said "I'm particularly busy tormenting anthropologists now, or I would file it myself" and you gave a link to a book sold on Amazon about attractiveness and sexual selection.

Amy, I haven't read the book or heard anything about it, but sexual selection for attractiveness seems reasonable. Do you disagree with it or is there more to it than the title indicates, or is it something else?

Rebecca said "My god, I actually agree with something being done by Bush. I need to mark this date on my calendar."

Me too. I think I'm feeling a bit woozy.

Do I disagree with sexual selection for attractiveness? Not in the slightest. To learn more about it in a more basic book than Doug Jones', try Evolution of Desire by David Buss.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046500802X?ie=UTF8&tag=advicegoddess-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=046500802X

It is hard for big corporate farms to beat the efficiency of a family farm.

Sorry this is so late - I haven't been to this thread in a while - but this is just plain wrong. Private farmers form cooperatives to get closer to the conglomerate model; in these, several family farms plan harvests and use pooled labor and machinery to pull it off. That way, individual farmers do not bear the costs of anything by themselves. That's the "economies of scale" referred-to above - which is itself merely reflection of the distribution of labor. On a single-family farm, Dad is the buyer, mechanic, painter, tractor driver, medic and seller - with the support of a family, of course, who will all deal with these issues to their best ability with no competition for their post. Start looking at time/motion and there is no way they can match the Wal-Mart Way.