July 8, 2025 • 63 mins
Make no mistake -- being a farmer is hard work. Farming outfits often have to carry a huge amount of risk from one season to the next, and any number of things may ruin their prospects, from unexpected weather, market volatility and so on. To mitigate these dangers, world governments often provide funding, or subsidies, to agribusiness in order to lower risk and increase chances of farmers staying in business. In the US, these subsidies are a multi-billion dollar industry... but where does all that money actually go?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist, friends and neighbors, farmers and non farmers alike. Oh, agriculture.
Back in twenty twenty March eleventh, I believe we got
deep into the idea of subsidies and the idea of
agriculture in the United States, and full disclosure, we all
(00:24):
thought it would be a little bit of a snoozefest
until we got under the hood.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, so, if you're from you know, a rural part
of this country, or if you who have lived in
the Midwest for any time you drive by a lot
of farmland, there's a ton of farmland, and it just
becomes part of the scenery, right, part of the stuff
you drive by every day. If you're not a farmer
you're working the land in some way like that, it's
(00:55):
just everyday stuff. But then when you actually begin to
add why specific crops are some of the most things
you see in that farmland, you start to realize, oh,
this thing is one giant, interconnected matrix of how the
United States functions.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
A microcosm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We also, by the way, now we are we're introducing
this in twenty twenty five. Brief message of support to
our friends in Utah please know that the powers and
control of your state government are siphoning water for alfalfa,
(01:39):
of all things. It's it's gonna get it's gonna get
wild out there. Shout out to Bookamorman.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
By the way, Oh fantastic. The version they just came
through Atlanta was amazing, just as good as Broadway when
I initially saw it. Guys, did you see the amount
of water that's being pumped into these these brand new
data centers for you know, the biggest new AI servers
and all this stuff that are popping up all over
the place.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Ooh, Nomes has giving us a thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
He agreed.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I see your thumbs down, and I agree because the
amount of fresh water they're pulling out of aquifers, it's
making the wells run dry in these areas. It's it's
just it's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So if we are a nation right anywhere across the
human world, and we are following the ideological guidance of Checkers,
one must eat, then we oh, okay, I'm judging ab
up a little.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Okay, we're saying Checkers, the food establishment.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Checkers is at the Checkers.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Depending on where you are in the States, I think
it's rallies somewhere if I'm not mistaken, those like one
of this Carls Junior's hearty situations.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And this is the surprisingly unboring story of farm subsidies.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
From yous to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
A production of iHeartRadio, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called
me Ben.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
This is going to be an interesting episode today, So
I want to go ahead and congratulate everyone who did
not judge today's episode by the title alone. I think
(03:50):
the title of this is actually the surprisingly unboring story
of farm subsidies.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, it could be interpreted as a snoozefest, but you know,
you know, you know this show, there is not a
snooze fest amongst.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
It reminds me of that part in Wayneswelle where he's
doing the green screen and he's like, hey, I'm in Delaware,
because Delaware seems like the most boring place, but as
it turns out, it's an incredible tax haven.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, that's true. Secret excitement all around.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's why all of your credit cards and many of
your banks are based for some reason in Delaware, Dover,
I believe, uh huh yeah, because the laws are different. Now,
this topic was not something that the three or four
of us came up with on our own, Like many
of the best suggestions for this show, this came to
(04:41):
us from a listener email from the Raven with a
why now the Raven. Maybe I can remove the definitive
there and just call you Raven. You sent us this
fantastic email. It's it's a little bit long, so we're
just gonna read some excerpts, but we're gonna set it up.
And uh, I gotta say, my friend, I like the
(05:03):
way you write.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Oh for sure, especially adding in your own sound effects.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh yeah, come on, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Raven says, greetings, gentlemen, I bring you information for a
possible episode. The topic may seem boring on the surface,
but I feel as though something is a miss I
present to you. Farm subsidies submitted for your approval. Dun dun,
dund dun. Yes, my friends, farm subsidies. I don't know
(05:31):
much about it, but I noticed odd things with a
specific company, so there may be other things out there.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
First off, there's no such thing as a dumb question,
So what the hell is a farm subsidy? Farm subsidies
are essentially cash given from a government. The US does
this as well as many other countries to support agribusinesses.
These can be absolutely life savers because being a farmer
(06:03):
is difficult and it's a dicey proposition. Farmers can use
the money provided by the government to ride out risk
and the potentially enormous losses involved in this unpredictable industry.
Like you can't predict the weather all the time, you
can't predict how you're going to interact with commodities brokers.
(06:23):
You can't predict demand as accurately as people would want.
Farm subsidies are a thing that is pretty close to
Mission Control's heart, and we did check to make sure
it's okay that we said that. But you know us,
as we always like to lean on people with personal experience,
(06:44):
We like primary sources. So if you hear us pausing
when we say something and then quickly correcting ourselves. It
may be because Paul gave us the glare of death
through the studio window.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And look, this is a little known here. This has
never happened before. Paul's Mike mission controls. Mike is live
right now. So like, if he wanted to, he could
say a word, but he's not going to.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'm feeling a sense of foreboding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I was very excited. He's like this cartoon rabbit.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So it was like, if you don't have something nice
to say, don't say nothing at all. So Paul is
going to chime in if he has something nice aka helpful.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Does that correct? Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Farm subsidies, though you may have heard them tossed around
in a lot of headlines recently, you're going to read
language like farm bailout.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yes, that's the one that I've seen the most.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So these things have a long, long history here in
the US. The Homestead Act in eighteen sixty two granted
land in the West to anyone willing to farm. It said,
just show up, make food, and you can have the
land it grows on. And then in the same year
there was something called the Moral actll that was pasted.
(08:06):
This funded colleges of agriculture. So Uncle Sam always knew
that food was important, and the government intervened multiple times
throughout this country's history to assist assist in the creation
of farming interest like the Federal Farm Loan Act that
(08:26):
would give you pretty generous loans if and only if
you are a farmer or starting a farm.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, it's one of those things. As humans, we need water,
we need to be able to breathe, we need shelter,
we need love, and we need food. Food is very important,
and food production becomes very very important, especially when you're
in a time of crisis like of war. Let's say
that's why the subsidizing, where the assistance with farming is
(08:55):
so essential, because each of us has to eat. So
let's jump to nineteen nine.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Nineteen twenty nine, in which the Agricultural Marketing Act of
nineteen twenty nine it established the Federal Farm Board, which
sought to keep crop prices manageable, keep them from absolutely
bottoming out, so farmers were The hope was that they
would limit crops, but that didn't really take and then
(09:29):
the bureau bought and stockpiled these crops in order to,
you know, kind of manipulate supply and demand by limiting supply,
and then it kind of switched gears and transformed into
the Farm Credit Administration in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And then in nineteen thirty three, Congress signs what's called
the Agricultural Adjustment Actor. AAA. Again, I know we can
get the.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Weeds here, but this stuff, this will be important later,
get to the weird part of this.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We'll all be glad that we know this now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, So, this triple A Agricultural Adjustment Act did something
very similar to what you were talking about in nineteen
twenty nine, reduced crop output.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
It paid farmers to not do their job.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And you think, why on earth would you do that.
Don't we need more food? Isn't this whole thing about
all of us needing to eat?
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But you also want people to make a living because
if everybody is growing a ton of this example, Paul use,
if everybody has a bumper crop and grows a great
amount of wheat, then how are they going to be
able to sell it? Because the price will plummet And
then you're you, as a farmer, are being punished for
(10:47):
doing well.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So, yeah, you're right, it really is about supply and demand, and.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
This Triple A, this had some extreme results. Crop prices
in general doubled within just four years, and the Supreme
Court overturned the Triple A because it was putting taxes
on people who processed crops, but it was giving money
(11:18):
to farmers. And then they tried to fix it again
in nineteen thirty eight, and then when a lot of
farms were being foreclosed upon, the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
was a government intervention that gave farms the life saving
loans they needed to continue their businesses.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
So in the same year, in nineteen thirty eight, we've
got the New Agricultural Adjustment Act, creatively named because it
was like the new one, and that kind of took
care of some of the issues that were presented by
the nineteen thirty three version. And this price support system
as it was referred to, kind of petered out in
(11:58):
the nineteen nineties for a long well exactly, yeah, but
that's sort of when it had run its course and
the federal government was able to pretty astoundingly guarantee farmers
a high enough price to stay in business, to actually
make a profit for their families. How is this accomplished well.
It paid farmers to make sure again manipulating supply and demand,
(12:23):
make sure the supply did not exceed the demand. Then
the government subsidized farmers to keep crop lands idle so
fallow fields, essentially in order to prevent basically waste crop
waste overproduction. It also actually bought out any excess crops.
(12:45):
It then either stockpiled them or gave them away to
lower income families throughout the world. So it had kind
of a philanthropic wing to it as well. And then
in nineteen ninety nine farm subsidy, it's kind of the
year for peak farm subsidies when it reached a record
twenty two billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Can I bring something up here that we that happened
in the nineteen eighties, I think nineteen eighty five. It's
something that Paul was talking to us about earlier off
Mike called the Conservation Reserve Program. Can we talk about
that now quite low Field? Yeah, yeah, exactly, because we
kind of just mentioned it there. It's called the Conservation
Reserve Program or CRP, and I'm reading this from the
(13:30):
FSA dot USDA dot gov. This is a program that
in exchange for a yearly rental payment. Farmers enrolled in
this program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural
production and plant species that will improve the environmental health
and quality. So it's these, it's these contracts and not
(13:53):
a contract. I guess it's you sign up for this program,
then portions of your farmland are just kind of let
to go wild basically.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Which allows the soil to regenerate. It's probably better for
local wildlife, you know, especially herbivores.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Amongst the fauna.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Then we can see the logic here, even though it
sounds maybe a little Joseph Heller esque at first, like
what you're paying me not to do something? But it
feels many people argue that it is necessary. Of course,
not anybody who has ever tried to buy like a
dragon fruit or a pomegranate quickly learns or avocados, for
(14:33):
God's say, quickly learns that not all crops are subsidized
here in the US. Out of all of the crops
that farmers grow, there are only five that are subsidized corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton,
and rice. And that's because the grains here in this
list are the big, big players. If you just took
(14:56):
the edible stuff from what we named rice, wheat, soybeans, corn,
and you added up, you added up all of those crops,
and then you looked at how much food all the
people on earth collectively, eight eighty percent of it would
be rice, wheat, soybeans, and corn.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Think about food processing and how many products exist in
grocery stores across the world that are based in one
of those or if not multiples.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Well not even not only stuff in grocery stores. Think
about ethanol that comes from corn. And I don't want
to jump the gun. I'm sure we're gonna get into
this a little more later, but I believe some of
those subsidies went away under the Trump administration. So a
lot of farmers are having trouble now because they grew
excess corn that they could then sell, you know, to
be made into ethanol. And I think because of our
(15:45):
moved by this government to more like coal kind of
based things and fossil fuels, those subsidies kind of were
changed in a negative way that affected some of these farmers.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well yeah, and also across the world. We've talked about
this before. Ben those these things that can be produced
rather cheaply or you know, somewhat cheaply in more rural places.
It's like the reason why it represents that much of
the chloric intake is because it's fairly cheap to do,
and you can make a lot of it and it
(16:17):
can just be the staple in your diet.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
It can be financially cheap.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But for those people who are growing these crops in
developing countries, it's incredibly time intensive.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Right, oh, yes, exactly, time exactly. And I don't mean
to downplay what it takes to to have a functioning
rice paddy or something. I just mean overall, if you
think about all of the crops that are out there,
the things you could be planting, that's why these make
up that much of the chloric intake.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And that's a huge important point. It's only going to
become more profound as we continue. If we look at
the states overall the states, in all the US territories,
we'll see that there are some clear front runners in
the farm subsidy indy, and make no mistake, it is
an industry by itself. Those top five states are Texas, Nebraska, Kansas,
(17:07):
shout out to Mission Control, Arkansas, and Illinois. In twenty seventeen,
according to the EWG Farm Subsidy Database, these five states
received thirty eight point five percent of the seven point
two billion dollars distributed through these subsidy programs now astute listeners.
Though you'll notice that that number is much smaller than
(17:31):
the number we we cited earlier. In nineteen ninety nine,
farm subsidies were twenty two billion, and now if we
go to twenty seventeen, they're down to seven point two billion.
So we see a lot of waxing and waning here.
It's not a consistent amount of funding.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
It is odd just with inflation and the way that
goes overall, that it would reduce by that much.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, right, because you know, we can explain that by
saying different times. Times are changing, right, and some administrations
have different names than others.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Absolute and of course it would.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Be naive to say that, uh, some of the increases
were not somehow pushed by special interest groups. Right, that's
just the reality. But what about other What what about
other crops? Because those five things aren't everything people grow.
They're also peanuts, sorghum, and mohair. These things get smaller subsidies.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
What is mohair? What is sorghum. Paul, what is mohair?
All right? I'm just never heard of it.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Mohair is the fabric, that's that, that's what. That's what
Benny and the Jets wear electric boots. A mohair suit.
You know, I read it in a magazine.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Is it a uh?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I thought it was a fabric.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I used to think he was saying mole hair suit,
which would be weird because aren't moles kind of suitless?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
They're like furless.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, they're suitless.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, that goes back to it is interesting because it's
like cotton, right, you can't eat it, so why are
we subsidizing it? I believe it goes back to maybe
the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
It's for goat and sheet producers because they wanted to
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
To be able to have the ability to make cheap clothes.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
That's all clothing and so on.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
But what about the other things we eat? Because unless
you're vegan, you are eating other stuff, right, the stuff
other than these grains. You're eating fruits, you're eating vegetables,
and if you're an omnivore, you're eating meat. And I
know there are several of us in the audience who
are like as close to carnivore as you can get. Well,
if you're only eating meat, this still does affect you
(19:51):
because what do a livestock eat.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
They eat grains.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And the people who create the meat, fruit and vegetables
that you eat in your local grocery store or restaurant
or your local applebeees. Of course, they only benefit from
things like crop insurance or disaster relief, and that still
can be a lot of money. Between nineteen ninety five
and twenty seventeen, a total of three hundred and sixty
(20:16):
nine point seven billion dollars in crop insurance and disaster
relief were paid out to someone.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And so that's our lay of the land. Now, if
you if you took a survey now of the US,
you would find that there are two point one million
US farms.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Ninety seven percent of.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
These farms are I'm gonna I'm gonna say it this way,
quote unquote family owned. Well, yeah, scare quote they're family owned.
But please don't think that's like a small one acre
field with someone just growing carrots because they like to.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
No, I mean, you're talking about hundreds of acres a
lot of times. Dozens would probably be common but then
thousands of acres is gonna be also very very common.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But that didn't just happen overnight.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
These are generationally held lands that are expanded, you know,
and passed down right.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, I mean we still use phrases relating to that
practice in office jobs across the planet. Say don't you know,
don't sell the farm, right, or someone's gonna buy the
farm or farm it out or farm it out there
we go, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The farm is the one thing that can sustain us
if everything goes bad.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I'm gonna send you to the funny farm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Now I'm thinking of farm as an acronym like free
all real Americans. I don't know, I'm working live.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
This isn't always gonna be all real Americans. America today
feels like that book animal Farm.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I think, now you might just be naming things with farming,
that's true, but but yes, yeah, they do play this
vital role.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
We see it in language.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Why are we know why farms are important? Of course,
everybody kind of likes eating, that's a trend we can
agree on. But why are farm subsidies important? Because they
get they get a tough they get a tough run.
Occasionally in this country and in others. People will say, well,
you know, farm subsidies are symptoms of something called protectionism,
(22:18):
but of course they're also necessary, yeah on some level.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, where are you gonna get all the food that
your country is going to eat, especially in the United States, Well,
you can get it from a bunch of other places.
You have it all shipped in if you want to.
But that's a little dangerous relying, you know, depending on
your percentage of relying on imported foods to feed the
majority of the citizenry. So it is very important to
(22:46):
have that kind of thing in your not in your pocket,
but at in your backyard, yes, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, because otherwise you will be at the mercy of
the private entity or the nonprofit or the other tree that.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Is feeding you, or just travel and logistics. I mean,
you know, so many things can break down in a
system like that. Look at what's going on with coronavirus
now and how you know that's really affecting trade with other.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Countries and shipping and shipping exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Sales of face masks are going through the roof, even
though a lot of people have no idea how to
use them.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah, I mean apparently it's largely not to nag anybody
or if it makes you feel better. But I think
it's largely like almost like ineffective.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's it's not going to work if people aren't already
practicing basic hygiene.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Right, wash your hand.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You guys know everybody listening you probably know the rule,
but just to say it. If you're worried about contracting
certain diseases, or if you're in a place where you
think there might be a lot of nasty bugs around,
whenever you wash your hands, you just sing in your
head or out loud, if you have a song in
your heart, just sing the Happy Birthday song twice. That's
how long you need to wash your hands to actually
(23:58):
disinfect them with soap and water.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, or you know, memorize like an m One song
or you know something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And you'll you'll be good to go dead pres Yeah,
maybe way of life with stick Man.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, just do like if you do that, maybe most
of the song, you're good.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
So you're up early Matt right to us if you
get that reference, Right to us, if you get that reference.
So the thing is, you guys are exactly right. Countries
have to have to eat and if we don't take
proactive steps to ensure that we have some kind of
food supply, then everyone will be left to the cruel
whims of fate. The government has a job when it
(24:39):
comes to food production to make sure ideally that regardless
of what's going on with the economy, regardless of what
kind of wars are happening domestically or abroad, people are
able to eat. And that is why food production occupies
a weird spot in the pantheon of domestic businesses. It's
(24:59):
kind of like, you know, a lot of governments support
or subsidize their aircraft industry because they also need planes.
Ideally you don't have to be buying those from another country.
So food has to be in some way supported at
least that's the common wisdom so far here in twenty twenty.
(25:20):
But there are other reasons we need farm subsidies beyond
just the brutal realist geopolitics of it.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, and this is where you get into things like
money and how much it costs. And we're going to
talk about that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So I'm going to be completely transparent here. I lived
a long time, I have farmers in my family, but
I lived a long time without knowing the or even
understanding the commodities trade involved. The commodities trade for farmers
(26:07):
is essentially an open exchange where people agree on the
price of a crop. Because we talked about crop prices
going up or going down, but we never talked about
how they're actually assigned.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, how does that number get there? It's kind of weird.
So they trade on these things called futures. Now this
isn't too complicated. Think about it this way. Anytime you
plant something in the ground, it takes a certain amount
of time to then harvest a consumable product.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
And so within that you get like this almost like
sock market of its own, kind of where people are
like placing bets on the success or, like the way
a certain crop will behave. And there's obviously conditions that
feed into that weather it's weather or you know, pestilence
or any kind of conditions that are out of people's control.
So when you start trading on futures, you're kind of
(26:56):
trading on the promise of a thing that doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Like you know about.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
The tulip bubble in the Netherlands where tulip bulbs were
worth so much money, and it created this like supply
that exceeded demand and it just kind of tanked. But
futures is interesting because you're right, Matt, like they do
it with whiskey too. You buy stock in whiskey barrels
that take decades sometimes to age. It's a really interesting
(27:23):
concept of futures. It is a little weird to wrap
your head around, but it also is strangely straightforward. Ben,
is there anything you want to clarify about that?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I think we hit it. Yeah. Yeah, it's gambling, right, yeah,
it is.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It is gambling, but it's a necessary system because you know,
imagine you plant a crop at a time when you
saw the crop selling for I'm just making up numbers here,
saw it selling for five dollars a bushel, and there
was nothing like a commodity exchange. You couldn't make an
agreement that your crop would when it was time to
(27:57):
harvest also sell for five dollars a bushel. And with that,
what happens if you put in all this work and
now it's only selling for fifty cents a bushel, You know,
it's a gamble that people You could compare it maybe
to a utility bill. Some utility bills will give you
(28:18):
the opportunity to pay your bill on what's called a
variable rate, right a power bill per therm or something.
Or you can get a fixed rate for six to
twelve months, which may be a little higher than you
would want, but is it gives you the advantage of consistency.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
So that's what people are looking for.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And you know, one of those ways really screws you
out of money. And I still am not sure which
way is the best or the worst, and I've done
both in the course of my lifetime. I just want
to put in here so we get to the kind
of connect it up to the next thing. Just that
concept of betting on what the crop is going to
be like by the time we get around a harvest time.
(28:57):
That concept that I'm going to lock in this price
with a futures contract of how much bushel is going
to cost or a barrel or whatever it is is
going to cost, and then from that futures contract, I'm
going to take out giant loans for all this stuff
that it costs for a ton of money that it
(29:18):
costs to actually make this harvest.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of farmers rely on loans.
You borrow in the spring and that's when you plant
your seeds, and then you pay your debt in the
fall when you sell your harvest. And that also makes
it feel, you know, like you're gambling.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
You're doing a little bit of roll of the dice
in Yolo.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
People could argue, but this also means that if you
have a few years where, for one reason or another
something completely beyond your control, crops were bad, or crops
were good but prices were low, then you are one
catastrophe away from possibly going under, you know, getting the farm,
(30:02):
you know, foreclosed upond or having to sell a bunch
of equipment or something like that. And from the statistics
we saw, many farms can't survive about two years of
bad luck without going under or getting in serious trouble
because farms can't move.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It's the thing. You can't pull up your tent steaks.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Really, I mean, shoot, most of us, I'm just gonna
put myself in this category can't afford two months of
bad luck in their current financial situation.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
So imagine in like being a big business, like a farm,
with all of this.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Based on loans that you have to take out every year. Yikes.
I get anxiety just thinking about it. Man.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, whenever somebody asked me to predict specific numbers, it
always feels like a trap.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Why else would you ask one to do that?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's a whole different podcast,
but this is one of those things, and one of
the reasons maybe at some point we should explore self
harm in farmers and like you know, suicides and things
like that.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
The pressure is just immense, I mean, to perform and
so many things like again that we were talking about
that are out of her control, acts of God, you know,
crazy weather patterns and storms, and this idea of you know,
climate change maybe or maybe not being a thing. Sure
seems like it's a bit of a thing that has
a real impact on a lot of people's lives, especially
that industry agreed.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And so we've painted a very broad picture of how
this industry works. And it seems, like you said, well,
it seems pretty easy to understand once you go through
some nuts and bolts on it. But not so fast,
because first it appears that the image of the small
family farm that many people outside of farming communities think
(31:51):
of is not as accurate as we might imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
We know that it.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Was true at some point, but now just to turn
a profit, as you guys said earlier, you have to
accrete more land volume baby economies scale capitalism, right, the
only ideology that can take a T shirt that says,
you know, screw capitalism and then sell them across the
(32:18):
planet fifteen dollars a pop. I mean, people get mad,
but that's how the system works. The problem here is
that when it comes to farm subsidies ideologies aside a
strong body of critics argue that this system has a
dark side, a dark side that's more expensive than you think.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean, it's no secret that this system, just
like many systems, it just isn't perfect. There is an
absolute litany of problems. First, since not all crops are
eligible for subsidies, like we said at the top of
the show, countries can get into situations where there's a
lack of diversification of crops. Farmers who really need subsidies
(33:07):
might be forced to grow crops that are dictated by
these programs. It affects variety or diversity of agricultural products
in the market, which then ultimately defeats the purpose of
lowering agricultural imports, because then products that aren't produced locally
(33:28):
are going to have to be farmed out as it
were elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I mean think of it. Okay, so think about that.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
We're the government and we're saying, okay, we'll pay you
to give you some to give you a support net, right,
a safety net, rather a support network, a safety net
while you are growing food for the nation, and we'll
try to make sure that you can make some sort
of living off it, but only if you grow the
following things. And then someone's like, well, I grow tomatoes.
(34:02):
Do you guys hate tomato's what's gonna happen? How do
I survives as the tomato guy? And then they naturally say,
and you can't blame people, they say, well, forget tomatoes.
I'm going to grow a different crop that is way
less risky. That means eventually this domino effect occurs and
no one's growing tomatoes, right, and then something happens where
(34:24):
we need tomatoes and we think we should have been
nicer to those other countries.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah. Yeah, they come to me a year ago.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
No, it's true, I mean, you really do have to
you have to chase those subsidies in the same way
like film production, as you know the people, you go
where the money is, you go where the best tax
breaks are. And it's just not even a question like sure,
maybe I love blueberries, it's my favorite fruit. I've always
wanted to be a blueberry farmer. But there just isn't
that same money for blueberries as there is for corn.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yep, and there's not.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
There's not a silver bullet solution for that. Another problem
is that this leads to discrimination against some farmers.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Right, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
If you insist on growing a non eligible crop, then
you have a higher chance of failure, and if you
play ball with the government and grow a subsidized crop,
you have a higher chance of success. Somebody's putting their
thumb on the scale. And people who are against government
intervention just in general, right, people who lean a little
more libertarian would say this, this is not the correct
(35:31):
way to address the system. That this becomes big government
too quickly. And it is a very it's a very
big bet that we're placing the other problem environmental damage.
You want if you are a traditional farming outfit, then
you rotate crops, you plant crop a one season, you
(35:52):
plant crop b another and they kind of interact with
each other to feed the soil to keep it from
being worthless, because eventually, if you grow the same thing
depending on the crop, then the soil will just not
sustain it. It won't be as nutrient rich because all
the other identical crops wanted the identical stuff in the dirt,
(36:12):
and there's less of questions to go around.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
That makes sense. I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
It's really interesting. I only took one very minor gardening
class at a local place over here, but it was
really That was the big takeaway for me, was rotating
crops and figuring out how you actually get your soil
to be ready for a certain plant, and then switching
that out so then the nitrogen gets back in, or
the levels of nitrogen and pH balance and everything gets correct.
(36:39):
It's very I mean, it's fascinating. I never thought about
it before. I thought, oh, here's some dirt, put some
stuff in there, and then it'll grow yay, But you
have to wait. That's why there's agricultural science colleges.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Goodness, say goodness.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
And the other aspect here is, of course this is related,
but it's not a one to one thing is the
enormous use of pesticide, which were later proven to be
quite dilatorious to anything that wasn't a certain crop, as
well as animals like people.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
People scoffed at us. I'm going to brag a little bit.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
People scoffed at us back in two thousand and nine
when we said there's solid proof that a class of
pesticides called neo nicotinoids are are directly responsible for the
collapse in domestic bee populations. Yes, and it turns out
we were right. Well, the scientists who did the research.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Were right, and we just said it into microphone.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
We just listened to that. Hey, but she picked a winner, guys,
good job. Well this is true.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So at this point you might be saying, wait, how
does this affect me, Matt Nole, Michigan Control Ben, I'm
not a farmer. I have nothing against them, but I'm
not a farmer. What does this matter to me other
than you know, I'm paying my tax dollars, right, and
I don't have a control of where they go.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And I do like rice cakes, and I like rice cakes,
you know.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And I've always thought of myself as a blueberry farmer,
a tomato guy.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
My local Thai restaurant is like one of my favorite spots.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I can see that because now they finally give you
the appropriate heat.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Right yeah, and just really great rice.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
This guy's a hard time convincing people and restaurants to
give him the amount of heat or spicyat he tie.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Places will say you want it tie hot, and they
look at you really serious, and I go.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yes, I mean it, can you make it hotter and
pro Nolan and I have seen that in action. Don't
question me. No, it's true.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Matt is a spice monger, absolute spice chunkie, spice lord.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, yeah, spice lord. So traveling without moving, traveling without moving.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So it affects you in another way. It's very important.
Let's walk through it. When people are paid to focus
on certain crops, those crops end up being cheaper, and
when they end up being cheaper, they become a more common.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Part of your diet. It's just easier.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
And that is why grains overall make up one fourth
of the average American diet. Another fourth of it is
made entirely of oil from corn, soybeans, and canola. Fruits
and vegetables. If you're keeping score, are ten percent, less
than ten percent, and more than six percent of these
(39:25):
farm subsidies go to stuff that your old middle school
or high school nutrition teacher would have called junk food
corn syrup, high fructus corn syrup, which is in everything.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Isn't that the top part of the food pyramid, guy
supposed to be?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, fat oils, Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be. And
the food pyramid has its own problems, right, But if
you are from the US, or if you've ever traveled here,
I'm sure you've noticed when you read the ingredients of
stuff that corn is in a lot of things. They
are not even things you would spect.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right manufacturing products.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
And part of that goes back to the subsidies. So
you could build an argument then that the federal government,
through its food subsidization is contributing to America's obesity problem
because again, high fructose corn syrups and everything. I'm sure
our friends Lauren and Annie over on our sister podcast
(40:25):
saveror have an episode about corn syrup, but it is
it can be bad for you, at least when you're
consuming it at the level that most people do. US
farm subsidies also block global trade.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
This is its own thing. We won't spend too much
time on this, but.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
US farm subsidies have an effect beyond the domestic market.
In fact, you can hear multiple voices in developing countries
arguing against these subsidies in developed countries because if you're
a farmer in a wealthy country that can pay you
(41:05):
a guaranteed price or even give you a safety net,
and if things go sideways, then it's much easier for
you to sell stuff than it is if you're the
same kind of farmer in a less developed country whose
government does not give you subsidies.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
So one of the most.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well known examples of how these policies can affect farms,
even if they're outside of the country as the subsidies
is the relationship between Haiti and the US involving rice.
So Haiti is developing country. It had the capacity to
(41:45):
produce rice. It does have the capacity, but at one
time it was able to produce all the rice that
needed for its people. However, now that is no longer
the case. Sixty percent of the food consumed in Haiti
is hoarded. They lowered tariffs and so they were flooded
(42:05):
with rice that was cheaply produced in the United States
and was able to outcompete rice farmers in Haiti because
they didn't have those subsidies, they didn't have a helping
hand from Uncle Sam Wow. And this meant that the
domestically produced rice was displaced. So this is a thing
(42:26):
we're removing. That trade barrier led to a very real
cost for the people of or the farmers of Haiti.
So the people of Haiti were able to get food
at a lower cost, but the rice farmers had, you know,
they got painted into a corner, a courting to Oxfam
(42:49):
and the IMF. I actually, I want to correct myself here.
I believe now, okay, Haiti is importing sixty percent of
its food overall, but eighty percent of the rice is
imported now, which is crazy because it would have been
if not for this trade stuff, it would have been
entirely a self sufficient country.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
You know, this is a real issue here, and I
would say a lot of the problems arise because of
the next thing we're going to talk about. When you're
we've the way you've been talking about this, it makes
it feel like, Okay, it's a farm, it's a family,
it's a you know, you know, whatever you want, whatever
a family looks like to you, it's that just living
(43:32):
on a farm and producing a thing. But as we find,
these subsidies are not necessarily for that type of farming situation.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
And we'll get to that after a word from our
sponsor and we're back. There's another problem, and you can
see it in the example that we just gave about
Haitian rice and the trade deal stuff. That's that's a
(44:01):
whole different backup badgers. The point we're making is that
these subsidies overall throughout the world, in whichever country they occur,
they tend to help high income business, not the poor
rural farmers that so many people think of when they
hear the word fam well, when they hear the term
family farm. As a matter of fact, the majority of
(44:24):
this money goes to huge agribusinesses and the numbers are spooky.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
So between nineteen ninety five and twenty seventeen, the top
ten percent of recipients got seventy seven percent of the
two hundred and five point four billion that was distributed,
and that is according to the EWG Farm Subsidy Database.
Then the top one percent received twenty six percent of
the payments, and that kind of averages out to around
(44:49):
one point seven million per company. Fifty people on the
Forbes four hundred lists of the wealthiest human beings in
America received farm subsidies. On the other other hand, sixty
two percent of US farms did not get any.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And you remember.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Raven who wrote to us at the top of the
show and include us into this topic. We will let
this savvy listener sum it up. We've got Rice Lands
Foods Incorporated at five hundred and fifty four million dollars, producers,
Rice Mill Incorporated, three hundred and fourteen million dollars, farmers,
(45:25):
Rice co Op one hundred and forty six million dollars,
Number four only forty eight million received, and it trickles
down from there.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
It's a pretty big discription. It's a big old dip,
in't it. So what's what's the deal?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Well, the one thing you'll notice is that it's all
rice produces.
Speaker 4 (45:44):
Well sure, very uncreatively named corporations, if I might add.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
And it's a precipitous dip from one rank to the next,
from five point fifty four all the way down to
three fourteen and then number four only forty eight million.
I say, only forty eight million, right. I don't think
any of us have been in a situation where we said, well,
you know, it's only forty eight million, it's not like fifty.
He can still go to Dave and Busters later. Sorry,
(46:12):
it's my dream to be at a Dave and Busters
with an ungodly amount of money.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I wouldn't you rather have Dave and Busters tickets? I
guess so?
Speaker 5 (46:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, I would want to participate.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
In their currency, right, They won't take your money there,
David Busters only tickets.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I don't know why casinos bother me, but I love
Dave and Busters. It's kind of the same thing, but
for kids, right, well.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
See, yeah, I mean it's half for it's really for
drunk adults kind of more than anything.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Okay, well I haven't been. I haven't been in a
long time.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Oh I thought you'd never been. It's about to be
very sad for you talk about it so much. Yeah,
I love the idea of it.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
At least, when are we going to go? Let's we
should go? That's our show, folks.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
You guys want to go to chuck e Cheese with
me and my kid?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, because you have to have a kid. Yeah, It's
like a playground at a public park, right, yes, if
you don't have a kid there.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Not to divert too much from the topic a hand,
but did you guys know maybe I haven't missed this before.
They have this crazy system where when you go in
you get an invisible ink stamp on your hand and
on your kid's hand, and they have to match, and
they like shine a light on you before you leave
to make sure you're not like running off with someone
else's kid.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Good, pretty clever. I can doone this system. Yeah, yeah,
I'll I mean, I'll go. I'll go with you, Matt
if it. Yeah. Yeah. Do they have ski ball? They do?
Speaker 1 (47:27):
They have laser tag. No, I'll still go, but I
won't stay along.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
They have this Yoshi's Haunted Mansion game that is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
I'm in.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I'm in, assuming this whole thing doesn't burn down before
we get a chance to go.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Raven.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
You also noted the possibility of another conspiracy, and we'll
quote from your letter here. You said the bigger payouts
were substantially higher than all other years, and they happened
at the same time nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, two
thousand and one, two thousand and two. Now, remember we
had that statistic that you quoted at the top thereinal
(48:08):
in nineteen ninety nine. The subsidies were huge. They were
twenty two billion dollars. But Raven says, I don't see
a record of a natural disaster or anything that could
warrant the need for so much assistance. Raven continues and says,
for a company like Riceland Foods that boast almost a
million dollars a year in revenue, why would they need
(48:30):
so much in subsidies? And why are the top three
also rice? Riceland Foods and producers Rice mill are both
also based in Stuttgart, Arkansas. That's a place with less
than nine thousand people. And so this leads Raven to conclude,
what the US just pays them to exist. Plus they
get insurance so if they lose money, they can file
(48:50):
insurance claim. You can't tell me, says Raven. There's no
conspiracy here. So I have to ask you guys, you know,
is it possible that this is corruption? Is this what
is it pork barrel politics? Is somebody pocketing these millions
of dollars? I mean, these are corporations, so I'm sure
(49:11):
that the executive suites, are you know, getting their vague
in the form of bonuses or performance compensation or something.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
I would say, it just feels a bit odd because
you know, they need that money to stay in business.
It does feel weird that the companies wouldn't attempt to
like pivot to maybe something else. It wouldn't require that
level of like I think it was fifty five percent
(49:40):
of the profits coming from or fifty five percent of
their income coming from government subsidies. It seems like you
you'd have to switch and start doing something else, just
knowing that if you end up losing those subsidies, depending
on who's in office and the way, you know, the
wins of change from whatever government become you know, whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
As to witch crops become priority.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
You mean, like as to whether or not those subsidies continue,
because they may not, because there's a big debate now
about a lot of times it's portrayed as in one hand,
you have subsidizing crops and farms. In the other hand,
you have snap and you know, helping those who are
in need, right, Like, yeah, food stams are just food
(50:26):
assistants product. Yeah, So in a lot of times it's
not those those two things aren't necessarily connected, but maybe
it's just they appear to be connected in people's minds,
and lately they've been tied together in like taking money
away from food assistants and adding money to subsidizing farms.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
The idea being that those two things are so inextricably
intertwined that you're kind of putting money in the same
place in a weird but that's see, I wouldn't you
say it's somewhat disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
I think it's very disingenuous because you what you could
be doing is all of those over you know, creating
too much supply, and all of these things being paid
not to create food.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Why would you just not.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Have specialized processors like farmers and processors to make specialized
foods that are then specifically for those programs that are
just then free I then paid for with the subsidy itself.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Well, ultimately the bill comes due, you know, someone gets
left holding the end voice at the end of the day.
But it is a good question because governments also try
to get in front of this, for lack of a
better corporate term, by buying up those excess crops and
saving them for a rainy day or saving them for
(51:47):
people who need assistance. But also, you know, it is
not disingenuous to argue that SNAP and agricultural subsidies are related, because.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
If the government is paying for.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Food assistance of some sort, then it wants the lowest price, right.
And it's strange because you can see how there might
be a conflict of interest there at some point, if
you put too much money into subsidizing farms, maybe it
affects the price of food that the government pays for
(52:26):
under SNAP in a way that they didn't anticipate or
in a way that they do not find favorable. So
sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's
doing here. And that's not saying that anybody's necessarily a
bad actor. That's just saying that this is a complex system,
a lot of moving parts, a lot of stakeholders, and
a lot of people with goals that contradict one another.
(52:49):
So of course they're going to butt heads. But one
thing is for sure, Raven, there is a lot of
money in play here, and money tends to make people,
if not terrible, a little less worried about ethics in general.
Related episode, for anyone who hasn't heard it, check out
(53:09):
check out the podcast that Matt Nolan and I did
on whether wealth makes you a bad person. Yeah, the
studies are fairly conclusive and terrified.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yike.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
True, Like you're literally more likely to take candy from children.
Someone did that study and I think replicated it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Money can't buy happiness, but it sure can make you
an a soul. There we go, There we go.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I want that crocheted and hanging up somewhere.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
You know, one of those little circle frames.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah, you know, Yeah, I want to carry that as
a placard around and replace all the live, laugh, love
signs I see with that.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
I can't do that.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
You can't replace other people's signs. It's up to them,
you know, if they want to live, they want to laugh. Wow,
I sound like a monster.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
Hey, I want to bring something up. Monster, Not sure, No,
I want to bring this up. There's something I was
reading earlier today about finding ways to get more money
out of these farm subsidies, and it was and correct
me if I'm wrong, Ben Paul Noll or you listening
out there. I believe the amount of money you can
(54:17):
get in this subsidy for farming was eighty thousand dollars
per individual. Then you could go into like a co
op or into a.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Create a group or company. Then that has.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
A group of individuals, and then each one of them
could get eighty thousand, and then that co op can
get a you know, a much larger sum in subsidies
from the government. Then you can use that for a
larger farming operation essentially. And I don't know exactly what
the limits are for any of that stuff, but it
does seem as though you could exploit the system in
a couple of ways just by teaming up.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Is that do we know?
Speaker 3 (54:55):
If that's correct?
Speaker 1 (54:57):
It's they're definitely they're dea point loopholes that are in play.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
I mean, that's the only way that.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Only one hundred thousand individuals could collect seventy percent of
the money at play here.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
So then I just wonder what the we're We aren't
able to really explore the full numbers here, but how
that is affected when you, let's say you build those
numbers up and you have a large enough operation that
you do get into the you know, five hundred million
dollars subsidy range. That's that's pretty astonishing, And I wonder
(55:37):
at what point that five hundred and fifty four million
dollars is actually sustaining and making like generating real wealth
for the individuals involved. As we were talking about, like
I wonder how wealthy actually some of the people running
those large companies are.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Right, because you've heard the phrase land rich, cash poor. Yeah,
there can be people like through a variety of different
financial instruments, you can you can appear to be much
you can appear to have much less or much more
money than you actually possess, you know what I mean,
especially when you're leveraging loans, leveraging.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
Futures, speculation gets involved.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's true, there is a lot of money at play,
and there are many opportunities to game the system. That
is not the same thing as saying that people are
thieving or doing that. You know that they're purposely doing that,
just saying the opportunity is there. We do know that
the farm subsey program, at least the modern version of it,
has occupied a special place in the halls of Congress
(56:40):
and in the halls of various presidential administrations. Like you
guys remember the auto industry bailout right or the bank bailout.
People were up in arms, torches, pitchforks, you know, both
sides of Congress had had some angry words to say
and was hotly debated, but the USDA created the new
(57:03):
farm subsidy program just like out of thin air. Congress
didn't really have anything to say about it. And we
know that if we look at the state of subsidies today,
they're going to continue. In twenty nineteen, the federal government
delivered the biggest aid package it had delivered in fourteen years.
(57:26):
You know, the price of farm subsidies has spiked. These
subsidies aren't going to go away. It may wax and
wane in terms of the total money paid out by
the government and hence the taxpayer. And the question is
should they go away? Because we know that there's growing
instability in the global climate, and we know that that
(57:49):
means even just that alone means that further government intervention
is probably in the cards. Even people who would otherwise say,
you know, no big government whatsoever, even those people will
will sometimes make an exception and come out in defense
of things like, you know, the military, right, or the
(58:11):
agricultural industry, especially if they're involved in the farming industry
and are otherwise solidly libertarian. I'll say this is different
because everybody needs to eat. Now, what do you think
about this, folks? What are farm subsidies? Are they an
economic necessity? Are they an opportunity for a quagmire of
(58:31):
large scale, billion dollar level corruption?
Speaker 3 (58:34):
Are they a fun combo right? Like a number two.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
The Yeah?
Speaker 1 (58:41):
It is it a necessity in corruption? With a side
of fries in sour gum.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
And what is it mohair and mohair mohair.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Container just sprinkled on top. Yeah, you don't like a
little hair on your burger? No? No, I feel like
that's not a hot take. I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
What if we get so many emails from people who
are like, I can't believe you guys eat on Harry burgers.
Speaker 4 (59:05):
You ever got a hair stuck in your throat and
you pull it out and it just doesn't stop?
Speaker 2 (59:08):
No long hair like a gross stage magician, just like
the like the ring. Yeah, never had that man? You Nope,
me neither. Okay, good. I was worried for a second.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
But but we do want to We do want to
hear from you because this is this is a very
serious topic.
Speaker 2 (59:29):
There's a lot of money on.
Speaker 1 (59:31):
The table and one of the one of the biggest
points we have to make before we end the episode.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Today is this.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Obviously, this weird arrangement has has a lot of imperfections.
Obviously there's plenty of room for conspiracy and corruption and later.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
Cover ups, but.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
That should not be taken in any way to be
an allegation against all farmers. Farmers throughout American history and
in the modern day are some of the hardest working
individuals in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Full stop.
Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
There you go, that's exactly what I would say. Paul,
Do you wanna give shout outs to any farmers out
there they've been listening to the show, he says. Paul says,
I send you my admiration and love, and oh he's
given me his phone number. Okay, uh oh no, he
says he's going to retract that, but he does send
(01:00:27):
his admiration.
Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
So we in the room here only get his contempt
and icy stares.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But but you know, it's a he's a tough love producer.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
You gotta respect the guy. It's true. So it's all
about the chase with Paul. So he is gonna kill us.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
So, as always, we want to thank you for tuning in.
We want to hear from you. You can find us
any number of ways. Because this concludes our episode, but
not our show. Some of the best parts of our
episode are the parts that you generate in conversation with
our fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Online.
Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We love
to recommend our community page. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
If you don't want to do that, but you should.
But if you don't want to, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std WYTK.
Leave us a message, tell us what you're thinking. We
look forward to talking to you and or at least
hearing from you, and then maybe you'll get a callback.
Who knows if you If you feel like this whole
(01:01:34):
episode was just a giant tease to hear Paul's voice
and you didn't get it, head on over to movie Crush.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
You can find him.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
You search up his name, Paul Decant search it on
the internet if you want to track him down. Don't, don't,
you know, not like in a creepy or ely super
creepy way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Said Threading.
Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Just do it in a standard creepy way, you know,
waiting outside, staring up at his window in the it's
all good.
Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Holding up a giant jukebox playing in your eyes by
Peter Gabriel, or you.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Know, whatever your choice of music, just make it happen.
I would say, Casey Musgrove is probably a good, good call.
It's a weird plug for that I have, and I
would say that.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Or if you know, if you have, if you have
input here, and especially if you have personal experience with
farm subsidies, yes, and you have seen you know, allegations
of corruption, or you have seen the system work beautifully.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
If you're one of those people and you say I
have something to say.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
If I hate the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I remember your Facebook episode from a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
We do too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
We do too, And I, like many people, hate using phones.
But I want to contact you somehow while you are
in luck, friends and neighbors. We have one more way
to contact us. You can send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist, friends and neighbors, farmers and non farmers alike. Oh, agriculture.
Back in twenty twenty March eleventh, I believe we got
deep into the idea of subsidies and the idea of
agriculture in the United States, and full disclosure, we all
(00:24):
thought it would be a little bit of a snoozefest
until we got under the hood.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Well, so, if you're from you know, a rural part
of this country, or if you who have lived in
the Midwest for any time you drive by a lot
of farmland, there's a ton of farmland, and it just
becomes part of the scenery, right, part of the stuff
you drive by every day. If you're not a farmer
you're working the land in some way like that, it's
(00:55):
just everyday stuff. But then when you actually begin to
add why specific crops are some of the most things
you see in that farmland, you start to realize, oh,
this thing is one giant, interconnected matrix of how the
United States functions.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
A microcosm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We also, by the way, now we are we're introducing
this in twenty twenty five. Brief message of support to
our friends in Utah please know that the powers and
control of your state government are siphoning water for alfalfa,
(01:39):
of all things. It's it's gonna get it's gonna get
wild out there. Shout out to Bookamorman.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
By the way, Oh fantastic. The version they just came
through Atlanta was amazing, just as good as Broadway when
I initially saw it. Guys, did you see the amount
of water that's being pumped into these these brand new
data centers for you know, the biggest new AI servers
and all this stuff that are popping up all over
the place.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Ooh, Nomes has giving us a thumbs down.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
He agreed.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I see your thumbs down, and I agree because the
amount of fresh water they're pulling out of aquifers, it's
making the wells run dry in these areas. It's it's
just it's horrifying.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So if we are a nation right anywhere across the
human world, and we are following the ideological guidance of Checkers,
one must eat, then we oh, okay, I'm judging ab
up a little.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Okay, we're saying Checkers, the food establishment.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Checkers is at the Checkers.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Depending on where you are in the States, I think
it's rallies somewhere if I'm not mistaken, those like one
of this Carls Junior's hearty situations.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And this is the surprisingly unboring story of farm subsidies.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
From yous to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
A production of iHeartRadio, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called
me Ben.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
This is going to be an interesting episode today, So
I want to go ahead and congratulate everyone who did
not judge today's episode by the title alone. I think
(03:50):
the title of this is actually the surprisingly unboring story
of farm subsidies.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, it could be interpreted as a snoozefest, but you know,
you know, you know this show, there is not a
snooze fest amongst.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
It reminds me of that part in Wayneswelle where he's
doing the green screen and he's like, hey, I'm in Delaware,
because Delaware seems like the most boring place, but as
it turns out, it's an incredible tax haven.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, that's true. Secret excitement all around.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's why all of your credit cards and many of
your banks are based for some reason in Delaware, Dover,
I believe, uh huh yeah, because the laws are different. Now,
this topic was not something that the three or four
of us came up with on our own, Like many
of the best suggestions for this show, this came to
(04:41):
us from a listener email from the Raven with a
why now the Raven. Maybe I can remove the definitive
there and just call you Raven. You sent us this
fantastic email. It's it's a little bit long, so we're
just gonna read some excerpts, but we're gonna set it up.
And uh, I gotta say, my friend, I like the
(05:03):
way you write.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Oh for sure, especially adding in your own sound effects.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh yeah, come on, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Raven says, greetings, gentlemen, I bring you information for a
possible episode. The topic may seem boring on the surface,
but I feel as though something is a miss I
present to you. Farm subsidies submitted for your approval. Dun dun,
dund dun. Yes, my friends, farm subsidies. I don't know
(05:31):
much about it, but I noticed odd things with a
specific company, so there may be other things out there.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Here are the facts.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
First off, there's no such thing as a dumb question,
So what the hell is a farm subsidy? Farm subsidies
are essentially cash given from a government. The US does
this as well as many other countries to support agribusinesses.
These can be absolutely life savers because being a farmer
(06:03):
is difficult and it's a dicey proposition. Farmers can use
the money provided by the government to ride out risk
and the potentially enormous losses involved in this unpredictable industry.
Like you can't predict the weather all the time, you
can't predict how you're going to interact with commodities brokers.
(06:23):
You can't predict demand as accurately as people would want.
Farm subsidies are a thing that is pretty close to
Mission Control's heart, and we did check to make sure
it's okay that we said that. But you know us,
as we always like to lean on people with personal experience,
(06:44):
We like primary sources. So if you hear us pausing
when we say something and then quickly correcting ourselves. It
may be because Paul gave us the glare of death
through the studio window.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And look, this is a little known here. This has
never happened before. Paul's Mike mission controls. Mike is live
right now. So like, if he wanted to, he could
say a word, but he's not going to.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I'm feeling a sense of foreboding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
He said that.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I was very excited. He's like this cartoon rabbit.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So it was like, if you don't have something nice
to say, don't say nothing at all. So Paul is
going to chime in if he has something nice aka helpful.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Does that correct? Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Farm subsidies, though you may have heard them tossed around
in a lot of headlines recently, you're going to read
language like farm bailout.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yes, that's the one that I've seen the most.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So these things have a long, long history here in
the US. The Homestead Act in eighteen sixty two granted
land in the West to anyone willing to farm. It said,
just show up, make food, and you can have the
land it grows on. And then in the same year
there was something called the Moral actll that was pasted.
(08:06):
This funded colleges of agriculture. So Uncle Sam always knew
that food was important, and the government intervened multiple times
throughout this country's history to assist assist in the creation
of farming interest like the Federal Farm Loan Act that
(08:26):
would give you pretty generous loans if and only if
you are a farmer or starting a farm.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, it's one of those things. As humans, we need water,
we need to be able to breathe, we need shelter,
we need love, and we need food. Food is very important,
and food production becomes very very important, especially when you're
in a time of crisis like of war. Let's say
that's why the subsidizing, where the assistance with farming is
(08:55):
so essential, because each of us has to eat. So
let's jump to nineteen nine.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Let's do it.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Nineteen twenty nine, in which the Agricultural Marketing Act of
nineteen twenty nine it established the Federal Farm Board, which
sought to keep crop prices manageable, keep them from absolutely
bottoming out, so farmers were The hope was that they
would limit crops, but that didn't really take and then
(09:29):
the bureau bought and stockpiled these crops in order to,
you know, kind of manipulate supply and demand by limiting supply,
and then it kind of switched gears and transformed into
the Farm Credit Administration in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And then in nineteen thirty three, Congress signs what's called
the Agricultural Adjustment Actor. AAA. Again, I know we can
get the.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Weeds here, but this stuff, this will be important later,
get to the weird part of this.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We'll all be glad that we know this now.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, So, this triple A Agricultural Adjustment Act did something
very similar to what you were talking about in nineteen
twenty nine, reduced crop output.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
It paid farmers to not do their job.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And you think, why on earth would you do that.
Don't we need more food? Isn't this whole thing about
all of us needing to eat?
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
But you also want people to make a living because
if everybody is growing a ton of this example, Paul use,
if everybody has a bumper crop and grows a great
amount of wheat, then how are they going to be
able to sell it? Because the price will plummet And
then you're you, as a farmer, are being punished for
(10:47):
doing well.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So, yeah, you're right, it really is about supply and demand, and.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
This Triple A, this had some extreme results. Crop prices
in general doubled within just four years, and the Supreme
Court overturned the Triple A because it was putting taxes
on people who processed crops, but it was giving money
(11:18):
to farmers. And then they tried to fix it again
in nineteen thirty eight, and then when a lot of
farms were being foreclosed upon, the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
was a government intervention that gave farms the life saving
loans they needed to continue their businesses.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
So in the same year, in nineteen thirty eight, we've
got the New Agricultural Adjustment Act, creatively named because it
was like the new one, and that kind of took
care of some of the issues that were presented by
the nineteen thirty three version. And this price support system
as it was referred to, kind of petered out in
(11:58):
the nineteen nineties for a long well exactly, yeah, but
that's sort of when it had run its course and
the federal government was able to pretty astoundingly guarantee farmers
a high enough price to stay in business, to actually
make a profit for their families. How is this accomplished well.
It paid farmers to make sure again manipulating supply and demand,
(12:23):
make sure the supply did not exceed the demand. Then
the government subsidized farmers to keep crop lands idle so
fallow fields, essentially in order to prevent basically waste crop
waste overproduction. It also actually bought out any excess crops.
(12:45):
It then either stockpiled them or gave them away to
lower income families throughout the world. So it had kind
of a philanthropic wing to it as well. And then
in nineteen ninety nine farm subsidy, it's kind of the
year for peak farm subsidies when it reached a record
twenty two billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Can I bring something up here that we that happened
in the nineteen eighties, I think nineteen eighty five. It's
something that Paul was talking to us about earlier off
Mike called the Conservation Reserve Program. Can we talk about
that now quite low Field? Yeah, yeah, exactly, because we
kind of just mentioned it there. It's called the Conservation
Reserve Program or CRP, and I'm reading this from the
(13:30):
FSA dot USDA dot gov. This is a program that
in exchange for a yearly rental payment. Farmers enrolled in
this program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural
production and plant species that will improve the environmental health
and quality. So it's these, it's these contracts and not
(13:53):
a contract. I guess it's you sign up for this program,
then portions of your farmland are just kind of let
to go wild basically.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Which allows the soil to regenerate. It's probably better for
local wildlife, you know, especially herbivores.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Amongst the fauna.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Then we can see the logic here, even though it
sounds maybe a little Joseph Heller esque at first, like
what you're paying me not to do something? But it
feels many people argue that it is necessary. Of course,
not anybody who has ever tried to buy like a
dragon fruit or a pomegranate quickly learns or avocados, for
(14:33):
God's say, quickly learns that not all crops are subsidized
here in the US. Out of all of the crops
that farmers grow, there are only five that are subsidized corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton,
and rice. And that's because the grains here in this
list are the big, big players. If you just took
(14:56):
the edible stuff from what we named rice, wheat, soybeans, corn,
and you added up, you added up all of those crops,
and then you looked at how much food all the
people on earth collectively, eight eighty percent of it would
be rice, wheat, soybeans, and corn.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Think about food processing and how many products exist in
grocery stores across the world that are based in one
of those or if not multiples.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Well not even not only stuff in grocery stores. Think
about ethanol that comes from corn. And I don't want
to jump the gun. I'm sure we're gonna get into
this a little more later, but I believe some of
those subsidies went away under the Trump administration. So a
lot of farmers are having trouble now because they grew
excess corn that they could then sell, you know, to
be made into ethanol. And I think because of our
(15:45):
moved by this government to more like coal kind of
based things and fossil fuels, those subsidies kind of were
changed in a negative way that affected some of these farmers.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well yeah, and also across the world. We've talked about
this before. Ben those these things that can be produced
rather cheaply or you know, somewhat cheaply in more rural places.
It's like the reason why it represents that much of
the chloric intake is because it's fairly cheap to do,
and you can make a lot of it and it
(16:17):
can just be the staple in your diet.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
It can be financially cheap.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But for those people who are growing these crops in
developing countries, it's incredibly time intensive.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Right, oh, yes, exactly, time exactly. And I don't mean
to downplay what it takes to to have a functioning
rice paddy or something. I just mean overall, if you
think about all of the crops that are out there,
the things you could be planting, that's why these make
up that much of the chloric intake.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
And that's a huge important point. It's only going to
become more profound as we continue. If we look at
the states overall the states, in all the US territories,
we'll see that there are some clear front runners in
the farm subsidy indy, and make no mistake, it is
an industry by itself. Those top five states are Texas, Nebraska, Kansas,
(17:07):
shout out to Mission Control, Arkansas, and Illinois. In twenty seventeen,
according to the EWG Farm Subsidy Database, these five states
received thirty eight point five percent of the seven point
two billion dollars distributed through these subsidy programs now astute listeners.
Though you'll notice that that number is much smaller than
(17:31):
the number we we cited earlier. In nineteen ninety nine,
farm subsidies were twenty two billion, and now if we
go to twenty seventeen, they're down to seven point two billion.
So we see a lot of waxing and waning here.
It's not a consistent amount of funding.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
It is odd just with inflation and the way that
goes overall, that it would reduce by that much.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Right, right, because you know, we can explain that by
saying different times. Times are changing, right, and some administrations
have different names than others.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Absolute and of course it would.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Be naive to say that, uh, some of the increases
were not somehow pushed by special interest groups. Right, that's
just the reality. But what about other What what about
other crops? Because those five things aren't everything people grow.
They're also peanuts, sorghum, and mohair. These things get smaller subsidies.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
What is mohair? What is sorghum. Paul, what is mohair?
All right? I'm just never heard of it.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Mohair is the fabric, that's that, that's what. That's what
Benny and the Jets wear electric boots. A mohair suit.
You know, I read it in a magazine.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Is it a uh?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
I thought it was a fabric.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I used to think he was saying mole hair suit,
which would be weird because aren't moles kind of suitless?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
They're like furless.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, they're suitless.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, that goes back to it is interesting because it's
like cotton, right, you can't eat it, so why are
we subsidizing it? I believe it goes back to maybe
the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
It's for goat and sheet producers because they wanted to
they wanted.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
To be able to have the ability to make cheap clothes.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
That's all clothing and so on.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
But what about the other things we eat? Because unless
you're vegan, you are eating other stuff, right, the stuff
other than these grains. You're eating fruits, you're eating vegetables,
and if you're an omnivore, you're eating meat. And I
know there are several of us in the audience who
are like as close to carnivore as you can get. Well,
if you're only eating meat, this still does affect you
(19:51):
because what do a livestock eat.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
They eat grains.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And the people who create the meat, fruit and vegetables
that you eat in your local grocery store or restaurant
or your local applebeees. Of course, they only benefit from
things like crop insurance or disaster relief, and that still
can be a lot of money. Between nineteen ninety five
and twenty seventeen, a total of three hundred and sixty
(20:16):
nine point seven billion dollars in crop insurance and disaster
relief were paid out to someone.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And so that's our lay of the land. Now, if
you if you took a survey now of the US,
you would find that there are two point one million
US farms.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Ninety seven percent of.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
These farms are I'm gonna I'm gonna say it this way,
quote unquote family owned. Well, yeah, scare quote they're family owned.
But please don't think that's like a small one acre
field with someone just growing carrots because they like to.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
No, I mean, you're talking about hundreds of acres a
lot of times. Dozens would probably be common but then
thousands of acres is gonna be also very very common.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
But that didn't just happen overnight.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
These are generationally held lands that are expanded, you know,
and passed down right.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, I mean we still use phrases relating to that
practice in office jobs across the planet. Say don't you know,
don't sell the farm, right, or someone's gonna buy the
farm or farm it out or farm it out there
we go, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
The farm is the one thing that can sustain us
if everything goes bad.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I'm gonna send you to the funny farm. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Now I'm thinking of farm as an acronym like free
all real Americans. I don't know, I'm working live.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
This isn't always gonna be all real Americans. America today
feels like that book animal Farm.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I think, now you might just be naming things with farming,
that's true, but but yes, yeah, they do play this
vital role.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
We see it in language.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Why are we know why farms are important? Of course,
everybody kind of likes eating, that's a trend we can
agree on. But why are farm subsidies important? Because they
get they get a tough they get a tough run.
Occasionally in this country and in others. People will say, well,
you know, farm subsidies are symptoms of something called protectionism,
(22:18):
but of course they're also necessary, yeah on some level.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, where are you gonna get all the food that
your country is going to eat, especially in the United States, Well,
you can get it from a bunch of other places.
You have it all shipped in if you want to.
But that's a little dangerous relying, you know, depending on
your percentage of relying on imported foods to feed the
majority of the citizenry. So it is very important to
(22:46):
have that kind of thing in your not in your pocket,
but at in your backyard, yes, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, because otherwise you will be at the mercy of
the private entity or the nonprofit or the other tree that.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Is feeding you, or just travel and logistics. I mean,
you know, so many things can break down in a
system like that. Look at what's going on with coronavirus
now and how you know that's really affecting trade with other.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Countries and shipping and shipping exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Sales of face masks are going through the roof, even
though a lot of people have no idea how to
use them.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Yeah, I mean apparently it's largely not to nag anybody
or if it makes you feel better. But I think
it's largely like almost like ineffective.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's it's not going to work if people aren't already
practicing basic hygiene.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Right, wash your hand.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
You guys know everybody listening you probably know the rule,
but just to say it. If you're worried about contracting
certain diseases, or if you're in a place where you
think there might be a lot of nasty bugs around,
whenever you wash your hands, you just sing in your
head or out loud, if you have a song in
your heart, just sing the Happy Birthday song twice. That's
how long you need to wash your hands to actually
(23:58):
disinfect them with soap and water.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, or you know, memorize like an m One song
or you know something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And you'll you'll be good to go dead pres Yeah,
maybe way of life with stick Man.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, just do like if you do that, maybe most
of the song, you're good.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
So you're up early Matt right to us if you
get that reference, Right to us, if you get that reference.
So the thing is, you guys are exactly right. Countries
have to have to eat and if we don't take
proactive steps to ensure that we have some kind of
food supply, then everyone will be left to the cruel
whims of fate. The government has a job when it
(24:39):
comes to food production to make sure ideally that regardless
of what's going on with the economy, regardless of what
kind of wars are happening domestically or abroad, people are
able to eat. And that is why food production occupies
a weird spot in the pantheon of domestic businesses. It's
(24:59):
kind of like, you know, a lot of governments support
or subsidize their aircraft industry because they also need planes.
Ideally you don't have to be buying those from another country.
So food has to be in some way supported at
least that's the common wisdom so far here in twenty twenty.
(25:20):
But there are other reasons we need farm subsidies beyond
just the brutal realist geopolitics of it.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, and this is where you get into things like
money and how much it costs. And we're going to
talk about that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
We're back.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
So I'm going to be completely transparent here. I lived
a long time, I have farmers in my family, but
I lived a long time without knowing the or even
understanding the commodities trade involved. The commodities trade for farmers
(26:07):
is essentially an open exchange where people agree on the
price of a crop. Because we talked about crop prices
going up or going down, but we never talked about
how they're actually assigned.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, how does that number get there? It's kind of weird.
So they trade on these things called futures. Now this
isn't too complicated. Think about it this way. Anytime you
plant something in the ground, it takes a certain amount
of time to then harvest a consumable product.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
And so within that you get like this almost like
sock market of its own, kind of where people are
like placing bets on the success or, like the way
a certain crop will behave. And there's obviously conditions that
feed into that weather it's weather or you know, pestilence
or any kind of conditions that are out of people's control.
So when you start trading on futures, you're kind of
(26:56):
trading on the promise of a thing that doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Like you know about.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
The tulip bubble in the Netherlands where tulip bulbs were
worth so much money, and it created this like supply
that exceeded demand and it just kind of tanked. But
futures is interesting because you're right, Matt, like they do
it with whiskey too. You buy stock in whiskey barrels
that take decades sometimes to age. It's a really interesting
(27:23):
concept of futures. It is a little weird to wrap
your head around, but it also is strangely straightforward. Ben,
is there anything you want to clarify about that?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I think we hit it. Yeah. Yeah, it's gambling, right, yeah,
it is.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
It is gambling, but it's a necessary system because you know,
imagine you plant a crop at a time when you
saw the crop selling for I'm just making up numbers here,
saw it selling for five dollars a bushel, and there
was nothing like a commodity exchange. You couldn't make an
agreement that your crop would when it was time to
(27:57):
harvest also sell for five dollars a bushel. And with that,
what happens if you put in all this work and
now it's only selling for fifty cents a bushel, You know,
it's a gamble that people You could compare it maybe
to a utility bill. Some utility bills will give you
(28:18):
the opportunity to pay your bill on what's called a
variable rate, right a power bill per therm or something.
Or you can get a fixed rate for six to
twelve months, which may be a little higher than you
would want, but is it gives you the advantage of consistency.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
So that's what people are looking for.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And you know, one of those ways really screws you
out of money. And I still am not sure which
way is the best or the worst, and I've done
both in the course of my lifetime. I just want
to put in here so we get to the kind
of connect it up to the next thing. Just that
concept of betting on what the crop is going to
be like by the time we get around a harvest time.
(28:57):
That concept that I'm going to lock in this price
with a futures contract of how much bushel is going
to cost or a barrel or whatever it is is
going to cost, and then from that futures contract, I'm
going to take out giant loans for all this stuff
that it costs for a ton of money that it
(29:18):
costs to actually make this harvest.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of farmers rely on loans.
You borrow in the spring and that's when you plant
your seeds, and then you pay your debt in the
fall when you sell your harvest. And that also makes
it feel, you know, like you're gambling.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
You're doing a little bit of roll of the dice
in Yolo.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
People could argue, but this also means that if you
have a few years where, for one reason or another
something completely beyond your control, crops were bad, or crops
were good but prices were low, then you are one
catastrophe away from possibly going under, you know, getting the farm,
(30:02):
you know, foreclosed upond or having to sell a bunch
of equipment or something like that. And from the statistics
we saw, many farms can't survive about two years of
bad luck without going under or getting in serious trouble
because farms can't move.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It's the thing. You can't pull up your tent steaks.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Really, I mean, shoot, most of us, I'm just gonna
put myself in this category can't afford two months of
bad luck in their current financial situation.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
So imagine in like being a big business, like a farm,
with all of this.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Based on loans that you have to take out every year. Yikes.
I get anxiety just thinking about it. Man.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, whenever somebody asked me to predict specific numbers, it
always feels like a trap.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Why else would you ask one to do that?
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's a whole different podcast,
but this is one of those things, and one of
the reasons maybe at some point we should explore self
harm in farmers and like you know, suicides and things
like that.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
The pressure is just immense, I mean, to perform and
so many things like again that we were talking about
that are out of her control, acts of God, you know,
crazy weather patterns and storms, and this idea of you know,
climate change maybe or maybe not being a thing. Sure
seems like it's a bit of a thing that has
a real impact on a lot of people's lives, especially
that industry agreed.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And so we've painted a very broad picture of how
this industry works. And it seems, like you said, well,
it seems pretty easy to understand once you go through
some nuts and bolts on it. But not so fast,
because first it appears that the image of the small
family farm that many people outside of farming communities think
(31:51):
of is not as accurate as we might imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
We know that it.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Was true at some point, but now just to turn
a profit, as you guys said earlier, you have to
accrete more land volume baby economies scale capitalism, right, the
only ideology that can take a T shirt that says,
you know, screw capitalism and then sell them across the
(32:18):
planet fifteen dollars a pop. I mean, people get mad,
but that's how the system works. The problem here is
that when it comes to farm subsidies ideologies aside a
strong body of critics argue that this system has a
dark side, a dark side that's more expensive than you think.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean, it's no secret that this system, just
like many systems, it just isn't perfect. There is an
absolute litany of problems. First, since not all crops are
eligible for subsidies, like we said at the top of
the show, countries can get into situations where there's a
lack of diversification of crops. Farmers who really need subsidies
(33:07):
might be forced to grow crops that are dictated by
these programs. It affects variety or diversity of agricultural products
in the market, which then ultimately defeats the purpose of
lowering agricultural imports, because then products that aren't produced locally
(33:28):
are going to have to be farmed out as it
were elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, I mean think of it. Okay, so think about that.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
We're the government and we're saying, okay, we'll pay you
to give you some to give you a support net, right,
a safety net, rather a support network, a safety net
while you are growing food for the nation, and we'll
try to make sure that you can make some sort
of living off it, but only if you grow the
following things. And then someone's like, well, I grow tomatoes.
(34:02):
Do you guys hate tomato's what's gonna happen? How do
I survives as the tomato guy? And then they naturally say,
and you can't blame people, they say, well, forget tomatoes.
I'm going to grow a different crop that is way
less risky. That means eventually this domino effect occurs and
no one's growing tomatoes, right, and then something happens where
(34:24):
we need tomatoes and we think we should have been
nicer to those other countries.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah. Yeah, they come to me a year ago.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
No, it's true, I mean, you really do have to
you have to chase those subsidies in the same way
like film production, as you know the people, you go
where the money is, you go where the best tax
breaks are. And it's just not even a question like sure,
maybe I love blueberries, it's my favorite fruit. I've always
wanted to be a blueberry farmer. But there just isn't
that same money for blueberries as there is for corn.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yep, and there's not.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
There's not a silver bullet solution for that. Another problem
is that this leads to discrimination against some farmers.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Right, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
If you insist on growing a non eligible crop, then
you have a higher chance of failure, and if you
play ball with the government and grow a subsidized crop,
you have a higher chance of success. Somebody's putting their
thumb on the scale. And people who are against government
intervention just in general, right, people who lean a little
more libertarian would say this, this is not the correct
(35:31):
way to address the system. That this becomes big government
too quickly. And it is a very it's a very
big bet that we're placing the other problem environmental damage.
You want if you are a traditional farming outfit, then
you rotate crops, you plant crop a one season, you
(35:52):
plant crop b another and they kind of interact with
each other to feed the soil to keep it from
being worthless, because eventually, if you grow the same thing
depending on the crop, then the soil will just not
sustain it. It won't be as nutrient rich because all
the other identical crops wanted the identical stuff in the dirt,
(36:12):
and there's less of questions to go around.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
That makes sense. I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
It's really interesting. I only took one very minor gardening
class at a local place over here, but it was
really That was the big takeaway for me, was rotating
crops and figuring out how you actually get your soil
to be ready for a certain plant, and then switching
that out so then the nitrogen gets back in, or
the levels of nitrogen and pH balance and everything gets correct.
(36:39):
It's very I mean, it's fascinating. I never thought about
it before. I thought, oh, here's some dirt, put some
stuff in there, and then it'll grow yay, But you
have to wait. That's why there's agricultural science colleges.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Goodness, say goodness.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
And the other aspect here is, of course this is related,
but it's not a one to one thing is the
enormous use of pesticide, which were later proven to be
quite dilatorious to anything that wasn't a certain crop, as
well as animals like people.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
People scoffed at us. I'm going to brag a little bit.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
People scoffed at us back in two thousand and nine
when we said there's solid proof that a class of
pesticides called neo nicotinoids are are directly responsible for the
collapse in domestic bee populations. Yes, and it turns out
we were right. Well, the scientists who did the research.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Were right, and we just said it into microphone.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
We just listened to that. Hey, but she picked a winner, guys,
good job. Well this is true.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So at this point you might be saying, wait, how
does this affect me, Matt Nole, Michigan Control Ben, I'm
not a farmer. I have nothing against them, but I'm
not a farmer. What does this matter to me other
than you know, I'm paying my tax dollars, right, and
I don't have a control of where they go.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And I do like rice cakes, and I like rice cakes,
you know.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And I've always thought of myself as a blueberry farmer,
a tomato guy.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
My local Thai restaurant is like one of my favorite spots.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I can see that because now they finally give you
the appropriate heat.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Right yeah, and just really great rice.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
This guy's a hard time convincing people and restaurants to
give him the amount of heat or spicyat he tie.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Places will say you want it tie hot, and they
look at you really serious, and I go.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yes, I mean it, can you make it hotter and
pro Nolan and I have seen that in action. Don't
question me. No, it's true.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Matt is a spice monger, absolute spice chunkie, spice lord.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, yeah, spice lord. So traveling without moving, traveling without moving.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
So it affects you in another way. It's very important.
Let's walk through it. When people are paid to focus
on certain crops, those crops end up being cheaper, and
when they end up being cheaper, they become a more common.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Part of your diet. It's just easier.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
And that is why grains overall make up one fourth
of the average American diet. Another fourth of it is
made entirely of oil from corn, soybeans, and canola. Fruits
and vegetables. If you're keeping score, are ten percent, less
than ten percent, and more than six percent of these
(39:25):
farm subsidies go to stuff that your old middle school
or high school nutrition teacher would have called junk food
corn syrup, high fructus corn syrup, which is in everything.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Isn't that the top part of the food pyramid, guy
supposed to be?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, fat oils, Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be. And
the food pyramid has its own problems, right, But if
you are from the US, or if you've ever traveled here,
I'm sure you've noticed when you read the ingredients of
stuff that corn is in a lot of things. They
are not even things you would spect.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right manufacturing products.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
And part of that goes back to the subsidies. So
you could build an argument then that the federal government,
through its food subsidization is contributing to America's obesity problem
because again, high fructose corn syrups and everything. I'm sure
our friends Lauren and Annie over on our sister podcast
(40:25):
saveror have an episode about corn syrup, but it is
it can be bad for you, at least when you're
consuming it at the level that most people do. US
farm subsidies also block global trade.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
This is its own thing. We won't spend too much
time on this, but.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
US farm subsidies have an effect beyond the domestic market.
In fact, you can hear multiple voices in developing countries
arguing against these subsidies in developed countries because if you're
a farmer in a wealthy country that can pay you
(41:05):
a guaranteed price or even give you a safety net,
and if things go sideways, then it's much easier for
you to sell stuff than it is if you're the
same kind of farmer in a less developed country whose
government does not give you subsidies.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
So one of the most.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well known examples of how these policies can affect farms,
even if they're outside of the country as the subsidies
is the relationship between Haiti and the US involving rice.
So Haiti is developing country. It had the capacity to
(41:45):
produce rice. It does have the capacity, but at one
time it was able to produce all the rice that
needed for its people. However, now that is no longer
the case. Sixty percent of the food consumed in Haiti
is hoarded. They lowered tariffs and so they were flooded
(42:05):
with rice that was cheaply produced in the United States
and was able to outcompete rice farmers in Haiti because
they didn't have those subsidies, they didn't have a helping
hand from Uncle Sam Wow. And this meant that the
domestically produced rice was displaced. So this is a thing
(42:26):
we're removing. That trade barrier led to a very real
cost for the people of or the farmers of Haiti.
So the people of Haiti were able to get food
at a lower cost, but the rice farmers had, you know,
they got painted into a corner, a courting to Oxfam
(42:49):
and the IMF. I actually, I want to correct myself here.
I believe now, okay, Haiti is importing sixty percent of
its food overall, but eighty percent of the rice is
imported now, which is crazy because it would have been
if not for this trade stuff, it would have been
entirely a self sufficient country.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
You know, this is a real issue here, and I
would say a lot of the problems arise because of
the next thing we're going to talk about. When you're
we've the way you've been talking about this, it makes
it feel like, Okay, it's a farm, it's a family,
it's a you know, you know, whatever you want, whatever
a family looks like to you, it's that just living
(43:32):
on a farm and producing a thing. But as we find,
these subsidies are not necessarily for that type of farming situation.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
And we'll get to that after a word from our
sponsor and we're back. There's another problem, and you can
see it in the example that we just gave about
Haitian rice and the trade deal stuff. That's that's a
(44:01):
whole different backup badgers. The point we're making is that
these subsidies overall throughout the world, in whichever country they occur,
they tend to help high income business, not the poor
rural farmers that so many people think of when they
hear the word fam well, when they hear the term
family farm. As a matter of fact, the majority of
(44:24):
this money goes to huge agribusinesses and the numbers are spooky.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
So between nineteen ninety five and twenty seventeen, the top
ten percent of recipients got seventy seven percent of the
two hundred and five point four billion that was distributed,
and that is according to the EWG Farm Subsidy Database.
Then the top one percent received twenty six percent of
the payments, and that kind of averages out to around
(44:49):
one point seven million per company. Fifty people on the
Forbes four hundred lists of the wealthiest human beings in
America received farm subsidies. On the other other hand, sixty
two percent of US farms did not get any.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And you remember.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Raven who wrote to us at the top of the
show and include us into this topic. We will let
this savvy listener sum it up. We've got Rice Lands
Foods Incorporated at five hundred and fifty four million dollars, producers,
Rice Mill Incorporated, three hundred and fourteen million dollars, farmers,
(45:25):
Rice co Op one hundred and forty six million dollars,
Number four only forty eight million received, and it trickles
down from there.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
It's a pretty big discription. It's a big old dip,
in't it. So what's what's the deal?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Well, the one thing you'll notice is that it's all
rice produces.
Speaker 4 (45:44):
Well sure, very uncreatively named corporations, if I might add.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
And it's a precipitous dip from one rank to the next,
from five point fifty four all the way down to
three fourteen and then number four only forty eight million.
I say, only forty eight million, right. I don't think
any of us have been in a situation where we said, well,
you know, it's only forty eight million, it's not like fifty.
He can still go to Dave and Busters later. Sorry,
(46:12):
it's my dream to be at a Dave and Busters
with an ungodly amount of money.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I wouldn't you rather have Dave and Busters tickets? I
guess so?
Speaker 5 (46:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, I would want to participate.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
In their currency, right, They won't take your money there,
David Busters only tickets.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I don't know why casinos bother me, but I love
Dave and Busters. It's kind of the same thing, but
for kids, right, well.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
See, yeah, I mean it's half for it's really for
drunk adults kind of more than anything.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Okay, well I haven't been. I haven't been in a
long time.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Oh I thought you'd never been. It's about to be
very sad for you talk about it so much. Yeah,
I love the idea of it.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
At least, when are we going to go? Let's we
should go? That's our show, folks.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
You guys want to go to chuck e Cheese with
me and my kid?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, because you have to have a kid. Yeah, It's
like a playground at a public park, right, yes, if
you don't have a kid there.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Not to divert too much from the topic a hand,
but did you guys know maybe I haven't missed this before.
They have this crazy system where when you go in
you get an invisible ink stamp on your hand and
on your kid's hand, and they have to match, and
they like shine a light on you before you leave
to make sure you're not like running off with someone
else's kid.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Good, pretty clever. I can doone this system. Yeah, yeah,
I'll I mean, I'll go. I'll go with you, Matt
if it. Yeah. Yeah. Do they have ski ball? They do?
Speaker 1 (47:27):
They have laser tag. No, I'll still go, but I
won't stay along.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
They have this Yoshi's Haunted Mansion game that is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
I'm in.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I'm in, assuming this whole thing doesn't burn down before
we get a chance to go.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Raven.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
You also noted the possibility of another conspiracy, and we'll
quote from your letter here. You said the bigger payouts
were substantially higher than all other years, and they happened
at the same time nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, two
thousand and one, two thousand and two. Now, remember we
had that statistic that you quoted at the top thereinal
(48:08):
in nineteen ninety nine. The subsidies were huge. They were
twenty two billion dollars. But Raven says, I don't see
a record of a natural disaster or anything that could
warrant the need for so much assistance. Raven continues and says,
for a company like Riceland Foods that boast almost a
million dollars a year in revenue, why would they need
(48:30):
so much in subsidies? And why are the top three
also rice? Riceland Foods and producers Rice mill are both
also based in Stuttgart, Arkansas. That's a place with less
than nine thousand people. And so this leads Raven to conclude,
what the US just pays them to exist. Plus they
get insurance so if they lose money, they can file
(48:50):
insurance claim. You can't tell me, says Raven. There's no
conspiracy here. So I have to ask you guys, you know,
is it possible that this is corruption? Is this what
is it pork barrel politics? Is somebody pocketing these millions
of dollars? I mean, these are corporations, so I'm sure
(49:11):
that the executive suites, are you know, getting their vague
in the form of bonuses or performance compensation or something.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
I would say, it just feels a bit odd because
you know, they need that money to stay in business.
It does feel weird that the companies wouldn't attempt to
like pivot to maybe something else. It wouldn't require that
level of like I think it was fifty five percent
(49:40):
of the profits coming from or fifty five percent of
their income coming from government subsidies. It seems like you
you'd have to switch and start doing something else, just
knowing that if you end up losing those subsidies, depending
on who's in office and the way, you know, the
wins of change from whatever government become you know, whatever.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
As to witch crops become priority.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
You mean, like as to whether or not those subsidies continue,
because they may not, because there's a big debate now
about a lot of times it's portrayed as in one hand,
you have subsidizing crops and farms. In the other hand,
you have snap and you know, helping those who are
in need, right, Like, yeah, food stams are just food
(50:26):
assistants product. Yeah, So in a lot of times it's
not those those two things aren't necessarily connected, but maybe
it's just they appear to be connected in people's minds,
and lately they've been tied together in like taking money
away from food assistants and adding money to subsidizing farms.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
The idea being that those two things are so inextricably
intertwined that you're kind of putting money in the same
place in a weird but that's see, I wouldn't you
say it's somewhat disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
I think it's very disingenuous because you what you could
be doing is all of those over you know, creating
too much supply, and all of these things being paid
not to create food.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Why would you just not.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
Have specialized processors like farmers and processors to make specialized
foods that are then specifically for those programs that are
just then free I then paid for with the subsidy itself.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Well, ultimately the bill comes due, you know, someone gets
left holding the end voice at the end of the day.
But it is a good question because governments also try
to get in front of this, for lack of a
better corporate term, by buying up those excess crops and
saving them for a rainy day or saving them for
(51:47):
people who need assistance. But also, you know, it is
not disingenuous to argue that SNAP and agricultural subsidies are related, because.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
If the government is paying for.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
Food assistance of some sort, then it wants the lowest price, right.
And it's strange because you can see how there might
be a conflict of interest there at some point, if
you put too much money into subsidizing farms, maybe it
affects the price of food that the government pays for
(52:26):
under SNAP in a way that they didn't anticipate or
in a way that they do not find favorable. So
sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's
doing here. And that's not saying that anybody's necessarily a
bad actor. That's just saying that this is a complex system,
a lot of moving parts, a lot of stakeholders, and
a lot of people with goals that contradict one another.
(52:49):
So of course they're going to butt heads. But one
thing is for sure, Raven, there is a lot of
money in play here, and money tends to make people,
if not terrible, a little less worried about ethics in general.
Related episode, for anyone who hasn't heard it, check out
(53:09):
check out the podcast that Matt Nolan and I did
on whether wealth makes you a bad person. Yeah, the
studies are fairly conclusive and terrified.
Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yike.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
True, Like you're literally more likely to take candy from children.
Someone did that study and I think replicated it.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Money can't buy happiness, but it sure can make you
an a soul. There we go, There we go.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
I want that crocheted and hanging up somewhere.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
You know, one of those little circle frames.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Yeah, you know, Yeah, I want to carry that as
a placard around and replace all the live, laugh, love
signs I see with that.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
I can't do that.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
You can't replace other people's signs. It's up to them,
you know, if they want to live, they want to laugh. Wow,
I sound like a monster.
Speaker 3 (53:56):
Hey, I want to bring something up. Monster, Not sure, No,
I want to bring this up. There's something I was
reading earlier today about finding ways to get more money
out of these farm subsidies, and it was and correct
me if I'm wrong, Ben Paul Noll or you listening
out there. I believe the amount of money you can
(54:17):
get in this subsidy for farming was eighty thousand dollars
per individual. Then you could go into like a co
op or into a.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Create a group or company. Then that has.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
A group of individuals, and then each one of them
could get eighty thousand, and then that co op can
get a you know, a much larger sum in subsidies
from the government. Then you can use that for a
larger farming operation essentially. And I don't know exactly what
the limits are for any of that stuff, but it
does seem as though you could exploit the system in
a couple of ways just by teaming up.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Is that do we know?
Speaker 3 (54:55):
If that's correct?
Speaker 1 (54:57):
It's they're definitely they're dea point loopholes that are in play.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
I mean, that's the only way that.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Only one hundred thousand individuals could collect seventy percent of
the money at play here.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
So then I just wonder what the we're We aren't
able to really explore the full numbers here, but how
that is affected when you, let's say you build those
numbers up and you have a large enough operation that
you do get into the you know, five hundred million
dollars subsidy range. That's that's pretty astonishing, And I wonder
(55:37):
at what point that five hundred and fifty four million
dollars is actually sustaining and making like generating real wealth
for the individuals involved. As we were talking about, like
I wonder how wealthy actually some of the people running
those large companies are.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Right, because you've heard the phrase land rich, cash poor. Yeah,
there can be people like through a variety of different
financial instruments, you can you can appear to be much
you can appear to have much less or much more
money than you actually possess, you know what I mean,
especially when you're leveraging loans, leveraging.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
Futures, speculation gets involved.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's true, there is a lot of money at play,
and there are many opportunities to game the system. That
is not the same thing as saying that people are
thieving or doing that. You know that they're purposely doing that,
just saying the opportunity is there. We do know that
the farm subsey program, at least the modern version of it,
has occupied a special place in the halls of Congress
(56:40):
and in the halls of various presidential administrations. Like you
guys remember the auto industry bailout right or the bank bailout.
People were up in arms, torches, pitchforks, you know, both
sides of Congress had had some angry words to say
and was hotly debated, but the USDA created the new
(57:03):
farm subsidy program just like out of thin air. Congress
didn't really have anything to say about it. And we
know that if we look at the state of subsidies today,
they're going to continue. In twenty nineteen, the federal government
delivered the biggest aid package it had delivered in fourteen years.
(57:26):
You know, the price of farm subsidies has spiked. These
subsidies aren't going to go away. It may wax and
wane in terms of the total money paid out by
the government and hence the taxpayer. And the question is
should they go away? Because we know that there's growing
instability in the global climate, and we know that that
(57:49):
means even just that alone means that further government intervention
is probably in the cards. Even people who would otherwise say,
you know, no big government whatsoever, even those people will
will sometimes make an exception and come out in defense
of things like, you know, the military, right, or the
(58:11):
agricultural industry, especially if they're involved in the farming industry
and are otherwise solidly libertarian. I'll say this is different
because everybody needs to eat. Now, what do you think
about this, folks? What are farm subsidies? Are they an
economic necessity? Are they an opportunity for a quagmire of
(58:31):
large scale, billion dollar level corruption?
Speaker 3 (58:34):
Are they a fun combo right? Like a number two.
Speaker 2 (58:40):
The Yeah?
Speaker 1 (58:41):
It is it a necessity in corruption? With a side
of fries in sour gum.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
And what is it mohair and mohair mohair.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
Container just sprinkled on top. Yeah, you don't like a
little hair on your burger? No? No, I feel like
that's not a hot take. I don't think so either.
Speaker 1 (58:59):
What if we get so many emails from people who
are like, I can't believe you guys eat on Harry burgers.
Speaker 4 (59:05):
You ever got a hair stuck in your throat and
you pull it out and it just doesn't stop?
Speaker 2 (59:08):
No long hair like a gross stage magician, just like
the like the ring. Yeah, never had that man? You Nope,
me neither. Okay, good. I was worried for a second.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
But but we do want to We do want to
hear from you because this is this is a very
serious topic.
Speaker 2 (59:29):
There's a lot of money on.
Speaker 1 (59:31):
The table and one of the one of the biggest
points we have to make before we end the episode.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Today is this.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Obviously, this weird arrangement has has a lot of imperfections.
Obviously there's plenty of room for conspiracy and corruption and later.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
Cover ups, but.
Speaker 1 (59:52):
That should not be taken in any way to be
an allegation against all farmers. Farmers throughout American history and
in the modern day are some of the hardest working
individuals in this country.
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Full stop.
Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
There you go, that's exactly what I would say. Paul,
Do you wanna give shout outs to any farmers out
there they've been listening to the show, he says. Paul says,
I send you my admiration and love, and oh he's
given me his phone number. Okay, uh oh no, he
says he's going to retract that, but he does send
(01:00:27):
his admiration.
Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
So we in the room here only get his contempt
and icy stares.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But but you know, it's a he's a tough love producer.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
You gotta respect the guy. It's true. So it's all
about the chase with Paul. So he is gonna kill us.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
So, as always, we want to thank you for tuning in.
We want to hear from you. You can find us
any number of ways. Because this concludes our episode, but
not our show. Some of the best parts of our
episode are the parts that you generate in conversation with
our fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Online.
Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. We love
to recommend our community page. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
If you don't want to do that, but you should.
But if you don't want to, you can give us
a call. Our number is one eight three three std WYTK.
Leave us a message, tell us what you're thinking. We
look forward to talking to you and or at least
hearing from you, and then maybe you'll get a callback.
Who knows if you If you feel like this whole
(01:01:34):
episode was just a giant tease to hear Paul's voice
and you didn't get it, head on over to movie Crush.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
You can find him.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
You search up his name, Paul Decant search it on
the internet if you want to track him down. Don't, don't,
you know, not like in a creepy or ely super
creepy way.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Said Threading.
Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Just do it in a standard creepy way, you know,
waiting outside, staring up at his window in the it's
all good.
Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Holding up a giant jukebox playing in your eyes by
Peter Gabriel, or you.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Know, whatever your choice of music, just make it happen.
I would say, Casey Musgrove is probably a good, good call.
It's a weird plug for that I have, and I
would say that.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Or if you know, if you have, if you have
input here, and especially if you have personal experience with
farm subsidies, yes, and you have seen you know, allegations
of corruption, or you have seen the system work beautifully.
Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
If you're one of those people and you say I
have something to say.
Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
If I hate the Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I remember your Facebook episode from a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
We do too.
Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
We do too, And I, like many people, hate using phones.
But I want to contact you somehow while you are
in luck, friends and neighbors. We have one more way
to contact us. You can send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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Ben Bowlin
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