Trump promises welfare checks for farmers

I'm glad you wrote this, Mark.  Now I know how ignorant [lack of knowledge] you and others are about farmers and farming.  Yeah, those long work hours, uncertainty, isolation, physical labor, the self-reliance, are what make farming such an easy way to make a living, to provide sustenance to the rest of us from birth to death on the backs of the taxpayers.  The farming culture of stoicism leads you to having to invent what you 'know', your "welfare queen" characterization, of farmers.

Some farmers here believe years of poor farm profits, which many attribute to an agri crisis of the 1980s, are pushing some to the edge.  The forecast is for high crop yields, but farm profits are projected to decline because of low commodity prices which are depressed because a surplus on the global market has caused a lack of demand for U.S. grain and soybeans, since China, our biggest customer for soybeans is going to buy from Brazil instead.

Did you know that your "welfare queens", male farmers, ranchers, and agri managers have significantly rates of suicide deaths, higher rates of anxiety and depression than the general population?  Farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die of suicide than the general population.  An auction and equipment owner points to three tractors up for auction, all three coming from a farmer suicide.

A farmer tells of three years of going in the hole this year to the tune of $80,000, trying to hold it together for his family, his hires making more money than himself.  Last year he cleared $8,800...try living on that for 12 months.  They live on his wife's salary, a social working in a small county hospital because the farm is a "dead loss.  The farming culture is to be stoic, with a stigma around asking for help, not open about their mental health.  Not wanting to ask for help.  This farmer wants to keep on farming but this year may be the cut-off.

In 2024 there were 28 Chapter 12 filings in our state, including farms, livestock operations, equipment, hauling, timber, and logging companies.  Farmers last year lost money on the best crops they've ever had, related one farmer.  

In our state 40% of one farm credit association lost money starting in 2022.  In 2023, half of them last money, and the last year about 70% lost money.  [Could that be why some voted for Trump? Just sayin']

Generations of farmers putting everything they own on the line, every year, working build up their operations and businesses, producing food, fiber, and fuel for the rest of the country, "but nobody seems to care that much."

Like myself, many of you posting about the "welfare queens" had jobs with a yearly salary and working conditions pretty much guaranteed; if something didn't work out you found a better, maybe similar, job.  Farmers don't have that.  They have uncertainty year in and year out, hoping to provide for their families.  

Candy

I think your description is incredibly well said, Candy.   But that doesnt excuse their hypocrisy and vitriol towards the "city folk" who need help too.

If you are an 18 year old kid who has a passion for helping people in a country where we have a mental health crisis you are in alot of trouble.    Before you can take that social work job you have to go to college and get a degree.   A very expensive degree.   And when you get out of college your job helping people barely pays you enough to keep your head above water with monthly bills - let alone your college debt.    THose arent deadbeat, welfare losers either.    But thats thats the rhetoric they get from farmers and blue collar America when Congress attempts to help them.   I invite you to review the responses to Biden's college debt relief from the prior administration.    They are evey bit as nasty as Mark's comments on farmers.

So maybe instead of everyone pointing fingers and being nasty to people who need help - we should all be more compassionate to everyone.    Not just the people on "my team"

I think it would be great if Congress passed a bill right now that helped both farmers and college grads.    But that wont happen.   Its going to be "my team deserves the checks - and the other team sucks at life so they dont deserve them".      And I think thats really shitty and hypocritical....dont you?    

Candy, there's one major element you're not considering. Virtually every job/profession that isn't completely unskilled/menial requires considerable education/training...except for farming. Most of the time, Fred Farmer is a farmer because Pappy was a farmer...and/or Pappy has gone to that big barn in the sky. But Fred very often--I would say most of the time--has no training in how to run business, which a farm certainly is. And I'm sure there are many examples of the opposite--people who are business competent but are lousy farmers.

The result is that you have a LOT of farm businesses that will have to be propped up from time to time. Our long-standing government policy has been to not let farmers go under, in order to maintain a robust food production surplus in times good and bad. There are no other entrepreneurial endeavors that the government so heavily supports, with tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts.

This is grossly inefficient, but I can see why it's done. Politically, however, Fred and his colleagues have to realize and remember that they're partially government employees. 

Candy, as I said in another post, I grew up in a farm family. My paternal grandparents were farmers. My parents had a 1000-acre farm (1970s) that was sold when I was 12 because my dad didn't want to mess with it anymore. Then I had a long-term high school girlfriend who became my first wife. So I pitched in on their family's farm from when I was 16 to 21.  During this same time frame, while I was in high school and college, I would often pick up day labor at various farms, typically putting up hay.   So in my youth, I spent some time farming. 

For all the years my dad farmed, he was exclusively a crop farmer. My grandparents primarily crop farmed but also had a small dairy operation and would raise beef and pork for family consumption only. My grandfather never worked a job outside farming and it was a full-time business for him, although he had a lot of downtime. My dad managed to farm his thousand acres and still work 50 hours a week. He would typically take a week of vacation from his day job during harvesting and planting. 

I still live in this area. Most of the farms in my area are now exclusively crop farmers, primarily corn and soybeans.  I'd say the number is 80% with 10% doing a hybrid and another 10% doing animals only.  There is a tremendous amount of free time that comes with being a crop farmer. In fact, more than almost any other profession. For example, they are harvesting in my area right now. Once that is finished, there is virtually no work to do until mid-April.  What other profession can you work in and have all of November, December, January, February, and March off? Plus, you gain another month because around here, it is typically mid-April before you plant, and you are done harvesting by mid-October. That is a whopping six months off a year and you have a full-time income.  The government, through various farm aid programs, supports this work 6 months a year lifestyle.  That is why so many of them in my area quit dairy and livestock.  They wanted to be free from the constraints of year-round farming and we, the taxpayers, support that time off.  You can dress it up however you want but it is still welfare. 

That's not to say they don't do a lot of grueling physical labor for maybe a couple of months during the year, primarily around planting and harvesting. But it is no more grueling than the folks working in the manufacturing sector in my area that put in a minimum of 45- 55 hours a week in and week out, to make 50k to 70K a year. Often, this overtime is mandatory and their vacation time consists of two weeks a year, always at the same time, once in the summer and once around Christmas. There is a week-long shutdown during these times so these folks can take their earned vacation. In my mind, how do you justify taxpayer support for part-time work?

During farm downtime a lot of these farmers often gather in groups at the local resturants where they take up the tables for hours on end, sipping coffee and complaining about how easy teachers have it because they have three months a year off, how we shouldn't be bailing out banks, automotive companies, airlines and just about any other type of business that gets goverment money.  You should have seen how bent out of shape they got over student loan forgiveness. My god, they howled for months on end, even though they have been getting taxpayer checks since they were young adults. That is one of my beefs with farmers. They are off the charts hypocrites and lack self-awareness. 

My other beef is that despite them constantly crowing about how they are also successful businessmen, they are bad businessmen who count on the government to bail them out. Often, this comes up in the context of complaining about someone else getting a bailout. For example, they say things like if I were to run GM they wouldn't need a bailout. Those college-educated idoits are the problem.  Or the problem with all of those college-educated people needing a student loan bailout is that they are afraid of hard work. My daddy had me working on the farm when I was six. They seem to lack general knowledge that most younger college-educated folks are expected to put in a lot more than 40 hours a week in the private sector 52 weeks a year, excepting two weeks of vacation time. Since they are typically multi-generational farmers, they simply have no concept of what working a private sector job is like in 2025. 

 If you run a business, politics is no longer about how you feel about things personally.  A good business person sets aside their personal feelings and selects the candidate who will be best for their business. You know the business they need to support their family. In this case, they already had four years of Trump and saw how awful he and tariffs were for their farm businesses the last time. Trump campaigned on more tariffs this time and farmers still voted for him.  I guess, because the other candidate had a cackling laugh or some bizarre fixation over trans people. In every type of business I know of, if you make one bad decision, you often go out of business. Why do farmers deserve a bailout when they have made the same bad decision three times in a row now, as they voted as a group for Trump the last three times?

In my book, they deserve to face the consequences of their bad decisions. If given the opportunity, they will make the same bad decision over and over again because they never face any consequences for those bad decisions. 

None of those other folks who find themselves out of work or is facing their business failing because of Trump's tariffs or his shit talking other countries is getting a Trump bailout. 

So, are we to assume that farmers exude "hypocrisy and vitriol" to other people who could use help from the government?  I'd be surprised to know that, if true.   

Most people could use a break.  Many need help.  Several sides to every story.  I like Kevin's idea, something to help farmers AND students, and everybody else who could use some help.  But the upper 1% will make sure that doesn't happen, 'cause they want it all and have the bigger hammer. 

Whoever has the gold makes the rules.  

Candy

Candy, I've lived in many places, and I can support what PJ says. As I've noted before in other contexts, while Oregon is strongly liberal overall, if you leave the more populous Portland--Salem--Eugene metro complex, you are now in MAGA Land. Rabid, eyes-bugged-out, fist-pounding, Trump-licking MAGA Land. And the loudest sound in the air is the locals complaining about how they're being screwed by all them liberals in Salem and Washington.

Local politicians run almost exclusively on that platform. We're not getting our fair share. Waah, waah.

But then they vote for a cult that is stripping away their medical benefits and making their cost of living skyrocket--JUST LIKE THEY SAID THEY WOULD.

To go back to what PJ said, in those communities, in the coffee shops, in the local papers, on the radio, I continually see and hear the, as PJ aptly put it, the "hypocrisy and vitriol" toward ANYONE except them who receives government assistance. Everything is HORRIBUL GUMMINT SPENDIN' unless they're the recipients. The most intense hate is toward some group that they're not part of, like migrant workers, homeless people, students, etc. And of course, local politicians eagerly stoke that fire, as MAGA does.

To give you a vivid example, Gold Beach is a town of about 2,500 on the southern Oregon Coast. It's 25 and 28 miles, respectively, from two other small towns, and a good three hours' drive from any larger towns inland. Quite isolated.

Oregon, with some federal assistance, recently built a full-service complete hospital in Gold Beach. Taxpayer dollars were used to construct a facility that is LARGER than the largest hospital in Grants Pass, metro population 50,000. It's great for the locals, because medical care that used to be three hours away is now five minutes away.

Most of Gold Beach is farmers, fishermen, small craftsmen, and food processors and distributors. The hospital cost about $6500 for each and every resident. But walk into one of the local coffee shops and all you'll hear is bitching and moaning about all that wasteful gummint spending and how the liberals are screwing them over.

Those same liberals who approved and built a $20 million hospital for them.

Thank you, Mark, for sharing your farming legacy.  To be honest I've been really busy today so I have yet to read your post entirely but I plan to do so tonight or tomorrow.   This kind of discussion is what I look forward to.  I may not agree with everything everybody says, but I value civil discourse like this, especially when it occurs here in Kitchen Sink! 

Candy

Do you know who created farm subsidies?

Democrats.

Do you know who crafted the overall policy of government support of farmers?

Democrats.

Do you know who has always had as part of their platform, the support of a robust farm product surplus, as a kind of strategic reserve?

Democrats.

And do you know who rail and rail against BIG GUMMINT and how THEM DEMMURKATS interfere in their noble profession?

Farmers.

I too live in a farming community and our family currently leases to another large farmer.  They rotate crops as they should, but almost always have something planted. For example last august they planted wheat, and after harvest in late june they planted soybeans, which will be harvested shortly.  It would be interesting for someone to post the prices for crops the last 30 years to see if prices are better with Dem leadership.  If not what are we really talking about here.

      I grew up going to small family dairys evey weekend where my dad would artificially insimanate dairy cows.  Not a pretty site, but government regulations ended all family dairys within a hundred miles of where I am at.  I do not no which party is really to blame , but the Dems are the ones known for big government regulations in our area.  My grandfater was also a farmer and custom cutter and I spent alot  many night working fields until 2 or 3 in the morning  to get ready to plant before a rain.  We also did the hay to rotate crops as well.  We also sold Pioneer seed for years.  

    I do not know of a dem policy that has helped farmers in our area.  I do know that farmers in the last election were very afraid of the green energy  , and climate agenda of the dems.  I will also say that one of the biggest things that destroy family farms is paying the capital gains taxes on the land when it is passed down.  I also have a cousin who works tech for self driving tractors, etc that uses gps and geo fencing.  I could go on for quite awhile, but again I am only telling it like it is in our area.  I am sure everyones area is a little different

Very interesting, Brent.  Thanks for your experience and perspectives, especially your last paragraph concerning farmers were "very afraid of the green energy and climate agenda of the dems."   Perhaps why so many voted rep, if that is true.  And makes the point that people vote what they know, or think they know at the time and what matters at the time.   Unfortunately there is always downside when pol is involved.  Thanks for helping keep this discussion civil.

Candy