Obama’s Proposed Budget Cut Disappoints Ag Groups

The Obama administration announced that it wants to save billions of dollars by putting new limits on farm subsidies and cutting back on government support for crop-insurance companies, according to the fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. Under the budget, farmers who most need assistance will continue to get it, but “wealthy farmers should be cut off from the billions of dollars the USDA doles out every year,” according to the proposal.

Farmers, if their non-farm-related adjusted gross income (AGI) is more than $500,000, or their farm-related AGI is more than $750,000, are currently excluded from subsidies. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the administration wants to lower those income ceilings by $250,000 in each category over a three-year period, thus excluding more farmers. The cap on how much any farmer can be paid is also being targeted for a 25% cut. Under that proposal no farmer could collect more than $30,000 a year in subsidies, down from the current $40,000.

The American Farmland Trust said despite the administration’s desire to support conservation and agriculture, and address such issues as climate change and renewable energy, reductions of over one-half a billion dollars in mandatory conservation program spending ‘will make it much more difficult for farmers and ranchers to make changes necessary to protect our air, land and water.’

The President’s proposed budget would also cut hundreds of millions of dollars from working lands conservation programs that was promised under the 2008 Farm Bill.