Connection: More Subsidies Than Ever

Eastern Washington farmers are no strangers to subsidies.

Last year, farmers in the state collected more than $171.7 million, according to the Farm Service Agency state office in Spokane.

Even as wheat prices faltered, the federal government was there, pouring more money into subsidy programs than ever before, said Larry Albin, the retiring state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Five years ago, politicians passed the Freedom to Farm bill, a program Congress hoped would revamp agriculture policies and ease farmers off the government dole.

Instead, the bill’s subsidy safety net paid Washington farmers about $82.9 million. It still wasn’t enough as prices spiraled downward and farm policy collapsed.

Another government program - basically a disaster payment fund - was erected to allow the government to bail out rural America. It paid Washington farmers another $88.8 million.

Without federal payments, farmers would have faced business failure on a massive scale.

In four Eastern Washington counties, where the government subsidized farmers growing wheat, barley, corn and oats, the USDA reported that it paid farmers more than:

$8.6 million in Spokane County.

$37.8 million in Whitman County.

$19.2 million in Adams County.

And $28.7 million in Lincoln County.

Payments to farmers will continue, predicted Albin, as long as farmers are able to grow too much food and the public is willing to pay them for it. John Stucke