Thin profit margins call for aid
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IN RESPONSE to your editorial "Fertilizer from the farm lobby": President Obama's plan is not "modest," and it certainly does affect small farms. You see $500,000 as a revenue figure, and agree that these farmers should not be receiving government payments. Do you realize the huge dollar amounts that farmers deal with? What if expenses are $490,000? That farmer has a $10,000 net profit to live on. What if expenses are more than $500,000? It's not unheard of for operating expenses to be larger than sales revenue. It doesn't matter how high sales revenue is if the margin between sales revenue and expenses is very small.
There are other places spending cuts can be made, but if Obama is determined to make cuts in payments to farmers, they need to be based on profits, not sales revenue.
Krista Ubbenga
Urbana, Ill.
The writer grew up on a family farm in central Illinois.
AS A former House Agriculture Committee chairman, I believe your May 26 editorial distorted the facts about the people who feed and clothe our country and the policies on which they depend.
People, not corporations, comprise US agriculture. Because of agriculture's high risks and low profits, large agribusinesses are on the processing and marketing end of the food business, which are not supported in the farm bill.
And President Obama's proposal to slash the farm bill budget was not aimed at entities with $500,000 in income, as the editorial contends; it targeted farms with $500,000 in sales. There is a huge difference in sales and income, as any newspaper with millions in sales but little profit can attest.
Finally, the farm bill budget has fallen drastically over the past decade, and was just cut again in the 2008 farm bill. We spent more on a single bailout check to
Seems like a pretty good deal considering agriculture employs 21 million Americans and produces the safest, most abundant, most affordable food supply the world has ever known.
Larry Combest
Lubbock, Texas
The writer is a spokesman for The Hand That Feeds US.
