There are American farmers in genuine distress with a legitimate gripe against the government. Witness the corn farmers who, geared up for participation in the U.S. ”breadbasket to the world” drive of the 1970s, now face heavily subsidized foreign competition, the lingering effects of government embargoes, deficit-driven high interest rates, huge crop surpluses, 1948-level corn prices and plummeting crop land values.
Their plight is a national concern. It`s estimated that $11 billion of the Farm Credit System`s $74 billion in outstanding loans is now
unrecoverable. Widespread bankruptcy in this sector would be a major financial calamity for the country.
But ”the farmers` plight” does not apply to all or even most farmers. There are farmers who ought not be in business or whose federal income support programs ought to be junked before they add even more waste to the taxpayers` burden and bring the debt-ridden federal government even closer to bankruptcy. Consider, as the Congress ought now to be doing, the nation`s honey farmers.
There are at most 2,500 full-time honey farmers, who account for half the nation`s honey production. The rest comes from part-timers or people who keep bees as a hobby. Despite their small numbers, they have been treated for more than three decades to a government price support program that makes even $9,600 Pentagon plastic stool caps seem cheap in comparison.
For the last four years, the government price for honey has exceeded the free market price so excessively that three quarters of the American honey produced is sold directly to the government for storage. According to the National Journal, the government is now paying 65 cents a pound for honey worth just 40 cents on the open market.
It costs the government $1 a barrel to put it in storage, another 66 cents a barrel a month to keep it there, and $1 a barrel to take it out again. Government honey is not sold but is given away in poverty programs. While the government has been taking 75 percent of the American product off the market this way, foreign producers have moved in, to the point where the country is now importing 129 million pounds of honey every year as it stores and gives away 119 million pounds of the local stuff. And the foreign producers have been able to inflate their prices above the market value because of the high subsidy being paid by American producers.
The notorious Chrysler bailout amounted essentially to a loan guarantee. If it had been structured like the honey subsidy, the government would have paid Chrysler to produce as many cars as it wished at prices more than 50 percent higher than those in the showrooms. The government would have stored all these Chryslers in expensive garages until it could give them away to poor people through expensive car distribution programs. In the meantime, the Japanese would have the market left to themselves with the bonus of being able to charge jacked-up prices.
If this is what the Congress considers ”the plight of the farmer,” it had better start paying attention to the plight of another group: the taxpayers, who don`t like being stung.
