Friday, August 31, 2007

What I Would Do

If you’ve read my blogs for the past several days, you would know that I think that the current farm bill undermines our rural communities and has some very negative unintended consequences. In addition to the distortions that I’ve written about, I’m concerned that the payment limitations result in otherwise honest farmers, jumping through hoops and setting up shell companies to be able to legally stay within the governmental limitations.

If I were in charge of the farm bill I would reallocate the funds that go into specific crop subsidies for five crops (corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat) into programs for rural entrepreneurship, job creation and the development of niche agricultural production. Just my opinion!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you give one specific example of the kind or type of business that meet your criteria?

BoomtownUSA said...

Any entrepreneurial business would be something I would applaud.

Within the agricultural arena, I'm seeing the rapid emergence of local producers of vegetables, fruits, meats, etc. In each case these producers are buying more products from the local hardware, implement, grocery store, etc. The funds are circulating more locally.

I hope that this answers your question. If not, let me know and I can try again.