Monday, January 7, 2013

Urban farmers?


From the NY Post:

More than 1,500 city residents are getting federal farm subsidies, 374 on the Upper East Side alone.

The recipients include some “farmers” who already have their own well-cultivated money trees, among them Mark F. Rockefeller.

“That should really make people wonder what on earth has happened to the farm program,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the Environmental Working Group, which maintains a national database of farm-subsidy recipients.

“Payments are going to people in Manhattan who simply have invested in farmland and are about as far away from farmers as one could imagine.”

Rockefeller, a fourth-generation member of the family and the younger son of late Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, has gotten $342,634 in taxpayer handouts from 2001 through 2011 for thousands of acres of unused farmland he owns in Bonneville County, Idaho. The payments are made so that he does not farm, to allow the land to return to its natural state.

His subsidy is for conservation purposes. Other subsidies come in the form of disaster payments, which allow farmers to recoup losses from drought, frost, hurricanes or tornadoes, or commodity payments, to regulate the prices for crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

" and the beat goes on and the beat goes on"

Anonymous said...

What about the cash crop that Toby Ann Stavisky's North Flushing Senior Center urban farm harvests each year?

She packs it up all nice and neat...not into a storage silo...but into her political campaign war chest!

Anonymous said...

Remember the next time your politician tells you there is no money for (fill in your non-politically connect project here).

Anonymous said...

is not Mark Rockefeller from the LIMOUSINE LIBERAL wing of the family ?

Anonymous said...

I read about this story years ago.

Anonymous said...

Anon No. 4:

Is not that question irrelevant to this discussion?

Stay on topic.

Anonymous said...

He could be from the CADILLAC CONSERVATIVE wing as well!

Anonymous said...

do conservatives still buy GM products ?

the Chryslers sales increased 21%, Volkswagon increased 31%, in 2012.

GM had a meager car and truck sales increase of 3%. is Socialism a success ?

Anonymous said...

do conservatives still buy GM products ?


I don't know. You don't know, either.