Associated Press | August 12, 2001
CARSON, Iowa - Iowa farmers have received $6.75 billion in federal farm subsidies since 1996, the most of any state in the nation.
But the gap is growing between those who get subsidies and those who don't.
In a copyright story in the Des Moines Sunday Register, a study by the Environmental Working Group shows that just the top 10 percent of Iowa recipients - or about 16,000 farmers - received nearly half of all the federal money paid out to farmers between 1996 and 2000.
No other state, even sprawling ones with large farms such as Illinois, Texas and California, received more money during those years, said the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group.
For almost two decades, Environmental Working Group has participated in studies of how farm program payments are distributed to farmers and the impact the payments have on farm operations.
The group, funded by the Henry A. Wallace Genetic Foundation and the Joyce Foundation, has called for the shift of funding to smaller farm operations.
"Farm programs have always been tilted toward the biggest producers," said Ken Cook, Environmental Working Group's president. "But never in the annals of federal farm policy has so much aid gone to so few."
David and Dennis Pilling own about 6,000 acres of farmland in southwest Iowa.
Despite the latest in technology that helps them monitor the weather and corn prices, a giant machine shed and numerous storage bins, the two men say they remain dependent on federal farm payments.
"If they would take these away tomorrow, I'm not sure we could stay in business," said Dennis Pilling, who with his brother and recently deceased father received nearly $1.1 million in federal money from 1996 through 2000.
Record-sized federal agricultural payments continue to sustain farmers across Iowa at a time when the payments were scheduled for elimination under the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act.
Critics complain the subsidies - based on acres farmed and bushels harvested - have helped big farmers get bigger, enabling larger operators to outbid smaller ones, thus worsening the population and economic decline of the rural countryside.
"It has helped create a system headed for a train wreck," said Joseph Keenan, who farms near Ogden.
As Congress begins to debate a new farm bill, much is at stake for Iowa's farmers.
Freedom to Farm seemed to work in 1996 and 1997 when corn and soybean prices were relatively high. Then prices crashed, and Congress approved additional emergency assistance to farmers. Nationwide, the payments totaled $23 billion last year, three times as much as in 1996.
Many farmers say they would prefer to operate without federal aid, but contend it is necessary if they are to compete with farmers in other countries.
"The money from the farm program is a fair amount of our income, but we would rather do without it at all," said Delbert Berghoefer, of Hampton, who along with two brothers received $1.1 million in payments during the five years.
Berghoefer said his newest tractor is about 10 years old and most of his grain trucks are even older.
"If someone thinks we're getting rich on what the government pays us, let them come try it," he said.
Others say the subsidies squeeze small farmers out of the marketplace.
"I would argue that it's more detrimental to (small farmers) because it puts more money in the largest farm pockets," said Mike Duffy, an Iowa State University Extension economist and head of the Beginning Farmer Center. "They can outbid the smaller farmers for opportunities to farm ground."
Iowa's top recipient of federal payments, the Dvorak Brothers of Riceville, received nearly $2.1 million in payments during the five years for land in Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.
"We rely on the government out here just to maintain where we were the year before," said Dean Dvorak, who farms with his brother, Robert.
Dvorak said he and his brother have scaled down their operation considerably in the past year and that they rent most of the land they farm.
"The man who benefits from the farm program is the landowner," he said. "If the government pays more, the rent goes up or the price of land goes up."
Dvorak, who is 51, said he has contemplated getting out of farming.
"I'll probably have no choice," he said. "I didn't have a dime when I started, and I probably won't when I exit."
The Pillings echo a longtime belief that the major beneficiaries of farm subsidies are American consumers, who spend less than 10 percent of their disposable income on food, the lowest of any industrialized country.
"Why shouldn't the government pay to compensate farmers to some extent for keeping prices low?" David Pilling said.Associated Press:
