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142 SD Farms Get Trump Welfare Payments Above $125K Cap

The World Trade Organization says Trump’s new sixteen-billion-dollar round of farm bailout checks “could exceed America’s WTO subsidy commitments and unduly influence U.S. planting decisions.” Trump’s last round of farm welfare checks exceeded its own promised limits on payments to individual farms, says the Environmental Working Group:

Nearly 3,500 farms have received more than $125,000 each in bailout payments intended to offset the impacts of President Trump’s trade war, according to an EWG analysis of Department of Agriculture data.

When the USDA announced the Market Facilitation Payments last fall, it said individual capped payments would be limited to $125,000. But data released to EWG under the Freedom of Information Act show that thousands received payments exceeding the limit for crops harvested last year. Of those, 79 farms received more than $500,000 [Scott Faber, Chris Campbell, and Jared Hayes, “FOIA Data Show Thousands Exceed Payment Limit for Trump’s Farm Bailout,” EWG.org, 2019.06.11].

142 South Dakota farms each received more than $125K from Trump’s tariff reparations program. Among those cap-busting payments is $210,512 to Racota Valley Ranch of Hazel, run by Rock Arnold, Governor Kristi Noem’s brother. Racota Valley Ranch has been kept afloat since 1995 with $3.75 million in farm subsidies.

A quick scan of the South Dakota data show $8.65 million in cap-exceeding payments to 41 Hutterite colonies around the state.

14 Comments

  1. John Dale 2019-06-17 09:42

    If I had to choose between keeping wholesome food producers afloat or solar panels .. I’d choose ..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

    Personally, it’s all about the outcomes, which cannot be measured at the current time.

    Furthermore, the subversion coming from deep state actors in DC cloud the results.

    Do we need a hot civil war to clean up the experiment?

  2. jerry 2019-06-17 10:29

    John Dale’s math is as clouded as the rest of his thinking. Solyndra bailout by George W. Bush and President Obama, was a half billion bucks. trumps bailout is considerably more than that, by 19 Billion.

    A hot civil war, would be won by China and Russia… dividing up the spoils to make the US just like Hong Kong. Some experiment, but it would allow farmers the freedom to farm…or so they think.

    The deep state actors are really dolphins and are a pleasure to watch, but not being washed up on the beach from pollution. Give me solar panels. I can make my own food from my garden.

  3. Ag Banker 2019-06-17 12:19

    In looking at some of the information I think most of it is a a technicality. Most of the farms (with the exception of hutterite colonies) that recieved more than the $125M payment are partnerships. A lot of farming partnerships they farm their own fields but share in equipment. some partnerships have siblings and their children operating under the partnership, it would be pretty easy to get above that $125M threshhold but im betting individually they did not.

  4. Edwin Arndt 2019-06-17 13:00

    Per person or legal entity. Emphasis on per person. The contracts are generally written
    to maximize the farm’s payment. The joke was that the husband, the wife
    the kids, the dog, and the dog’s dog were all eligible for the
    maximum payment. As far as I know, except for the dog, it was
    all perfectly legal.

  5. Nick Nemec 2019-06-17 13:50

    This is an old article but it explains what is known as a “Mississippi Christmas Tree”. Basically it is how big farmers get around payment limitations. The limits have been raised in the 22 yeaars since the article was written but the basics are there. A person may not be a person, a person might be multiple people, or multiple people might be a person. There are ways around any rule, just find a good lawyer.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/01/20/loophole-allows-extra-farm-subsidies/eb22721f-4a6c-4373-9120-7abcb4c26566/?utm_term=.ac1529f1ef05

  6. Ag Banker 2019-06-17 14:26

    No I never said a partnership wasn’t a single legal entity. What I read in the MFP program description is as follows, “No person or legal entity, excluding a joint venture or general partnership, as determined by the rules in part 1400 of this chapter may receive more that $125M directly or indirectly as specified in the relevant NOFA”. The way that reads each partner individually will be eligible for up to the $125M

  7. jerry 2019-06-17 15:40

    Welfare payments to big oil make this bribe seem kinda cheap. Big ol’ welfare queens suck all the profits out of the economies of the world.

    “A new International Monetary Fund (IMF) study shows that USD$5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. The equivalent of over 6.5% of global GDP of that year, it also represented a half-trillion dollar increase since 2015 when China ($1.4 trillion), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion) were the largest subsidizers.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/?fbclid=IwAR2Jn0lSC2izNXoH1kAIYXQUnI6vHqm1iNAPNXUGvkgU6XMr-mglb4qcF94#62970ce84473

    The only education we seem to be getting is from the school of grifting.

  8. Greg Deplorable 2019-06-17 20:55

    If the welfare is based on market prices it may be a moot point. Row crops are a slow moving disaster with the cold temps & saturated soils. Summer solstice is a few days away and only 77% of soys are planted. A large portion of the corn has only spiked out or has yet to emerge, nationally on 92% planted. We need 100+ days of 20+ GUD/day and its not happening.

  9. leslie 2019-06-17 22:58

    Dale -full of threats and conspiracies (“subversion coming from deep state actors in DC”)?

    Really? Citation? Evidence?), eh? Macho. Militias? Proud Boys? What “hot civil war” troops are going to square off? You guys with a billion guns and bullets are going to attack the hundreds of millions of unarmed families of folks working in the political trenches?

    You are trolling.

  10. Clyde 2019-06-18 07:26

    It doesn’t seem to matter how these so called ” payment cap’s” are put in place the big boy’s always seem to get around them. In the end it amounts to just more fuel for the folks that want to get rid of all subsidy’s to agriculture. That means one thing only. The big money will have it all.
    You can’t raise a chicken broiler or keep a laying hen without being contracted to a big vertically integrated company now. The same is now the case with hogs.
    A decade or two ago the experts were telling us we had to farm a 1000 acres to be viable. Now they are recommending 10,000. Pretty soon we will just move to one company owning it all. That is the logical progression. Do you think you will eat cheaply then? My god people….wake up.

  11. Gary Swensen 2019-06-19 05:42

    ….GOOD OLD YANKTON …S.D…..RUN BY BANKERS….C.A.F.O. RULE….LITTTLE FARMER SUFFERS…..WELCOME TO C.A.F.O. COUNTY AND MANURE CITY YANKTON…..BORN AND RAISED HERE NEVER SEEN IT SO BAD…Gary Swensen Current Yankton County Commissioner (I) …Kicking out C.A.F.O. Farmers by the Deputy Sheriff at Commission meetings when they RAISE HELL…Threats of Violence…Tractor Parades in front of Government Center….CAFO OWNER GIVES US THE HITLER SALUTE TWICE…….WHAT A MESS DID I MENTION BANKERS RUN YANKTON…

  12. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2019-06-19 06:26

    Hey, Commissioner Swensen, can you calm down, take a breath, and tell us what actually happened and when? We like patient details and narratives here. I’d particularly like details (and photos?) of the alleged CAFO owner’s Nazi expressions.

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