Well, this is MY last post on the farmers (welfare) package....

[democratsruletheday]

Article from Politico re-hashing most of what we know already. Thing is, even IF the governmet re-opened tomorrow, it would take well into Nov. or Dec. to get asshole's biggest voting block their money, which would be too late for a crap ton of farmers. They are going broke in real time.

Article claims they could be given as much as 50 billion now, which comes on the heels of the Administration giving away 20-40 billion to Argentina. Yeah, I know...it's what they voted for but if you don't recognize how this mess can hurt all of us then I don't know what to tell you all. Here's the article:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/16/trump-promised-farmers-help-its-complicated-00610757

[Traildogbob]

1. Now they are

Expecting that Argentina 20 billion to be as high as 40 billion or even 60 billion.

[gab13by13]

2. I saw where they are digging up an additional 20 billion.

[Traildogbob]

3. Our money.

From those that pay taxes. Not from the “tariff Fund”
(Our taxes as Well if it existed) that has trillions stashed for………….trump and his pals.
Farmers, you been had, again. Stop hitting yourselves.

[democratsruletheday]

5. I JUST read that too Traildog....

will edit that change into my original post...thanks. These fuckers are running us into an iceberg

[Traildogbob]

6. Right you are.

Thieves, liars and child abusers. With their God’s blessings.
No funds for snap. Guess Jesus needs to start passing out fish, bread and wine.

[littlemissmartypants]

15. The regime is definitely a criminal enterprise.

[Lovie777]

4. I really don't think this current administration was going to bail out the farmers ..............

just a hunch. Same parallel to heath insurance, good paying jobs, and of course education.

More money in their pockets.

[gab13by13]

7. Isn't there appropriated infrastructure money he can steal

and give to Big Farma?

[Skittles]

26. "Big Farma"

OUTSTANDING

[walkingman]

8. Farm subsidies and bailouts have been almost continuous since the Great Depression.

It is bipartisan, and I personally think it is self-perpetuating. This year a large part will be because of tariffs, often it is weather related, but any given year it is because of price levels, which are caused by Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

IMO, these bailouts because of government actions (tariffs, etc) become expected and have no consequences because taxpayers mask the issue. It encourages bad practices and has no political consequences. It is simply corporate welfare (most farms these days are LLCs).

[Shoeless Louis]

21. Farmer bailouts are indeed in large part self perpetuating. Even more...

… so now that the tariffs have destroyed trust in our ‘good faith’ negotiations. Trump is nothing more than a bull in a china shop when it comes to business decisions. The good news is that maybe we won’t have to sell our National Parks to Saudi Arabia, they can just buy up all the swiftly disappearing private farms. The farmers will still have a job, but it would be working on somebody’s else’s farm.

[yellowdogintexas]

28. just because they are LLCs does not mean they are Big Farma.

I grew up in a farming area where the vast majority of the farms are family farms. The LLC designation allows them to function as a small corporation but they are by no means giant business enterprises. My sister's family has an LLC; they have about 10 workers at most. While most of their crops are managed completely by machine, they grow tobacco which is extremely labor intensive. Once the plants are in the ground, everything is done by hand; it is backbreaking work and it takes an entire year to bring in the crop.

I know a lot of them voted for Republicans but there is no excuse for what the administration has done to them.

[Keepthesoulalive]

30. I think they did this to themselves

He did the exact same thing during his first term and he doesn’t care about them he just needed their vote.

[walkingman]

32. There is absolutely no excuse for what Trump has done with tariffs. To make matter worse

it is crazy that the POTUS is allowed to pick the winners and the losers in all aspects of our economy - including farmers. The cost of production is affected, planning is impossible, and prices across the board are affected.

Agree that because you are a LLC only means that farmers are trying to limit their liability. The bad thing about the whole process is....IMO, a program created with good intentions is abused by those with wealth and influence, as is our entire "free market" system. There is really nothing free market about any of it.

It is a system that leaves all the players with no options - they have to play within the system or it is almost a guaranteed lose situation. Farming like everything in the US is about influence and sadly the political players know how to use this system to stay in power.

[Mysterian]

39. Two senators each for the dirt states is why

Farmers should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

[flashman13]

14. Why would Trump bother sending them a bailout? He doesn't expect to ever need their votes again.

[littlemissmartypants]

16. Bingo.

[progressoid]

22. Optics.

He wants to be seen as their savior. Or at least be the center of attention. He loves attention.

[flashman13]

23. The only optics he cares about are toughness and cruelty.

[NickB79]

9. Correction: the BIG farms will get bailouts

Small family farms will get a pittance, go bankrupt, and see their land bought up by the megafarm corporations.

If they're lucky, they'll be hired on as laborers on the land they once owned.

[progressoid]

19. farm bankruptcies have doubled this year

compared to last year. Yeah, it's not the mega farms going bankrupt.

[walkingman]

10. I think we should separate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits

from the "farm bill" because it muddies the waters. If SNAP was funded separately, then it would clearly show what each of the political parties actually support. Historically, the GOP does not like SNAP because it is a social program. However, they have no problem at all spending billions to bailout and subsidize corporate farms (which btw most farms are LLCs) at taxpayer expense.

[Wounded Bear]

11. The damage is done. Harvest time is almost over, completely over in many crops...

The effect on food prices is locked in and farmers everywhere are facing bankrupcy from losing a season of production. Pouring money in won't help the basic problems caused by trump this year, and will mostly funnel into the BigAg producers anyway. Family farms have suffered another hammer blow.

Trumponomics in action.

[Aristus]

12. It was always going to hurt US. That's what they wanted; it's what they voted for.

So if it hurts them before it hurts us, well, that's just too fucking bad for them. Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em sideways with a splintery two-by-four.

[ashredux]

13. Idiocracy ....movie satire comes to reality!

[littlemissmartypants]

17. Farmers are people. The end.

https://democraticunderground.com/11822364

[angrychair]

18. Let's be clear

Any money they give out is almost entirely going to go to corporations with big factory farms.
The concept of the independent family farm is almost entirely a lie.
The USDA only defines a family farm with a farm income less than $350,000 but in many cases these "small" farms are actually owned or have exclusive contracts with a big corporations and the "farmers" are often little more than caretakers but on paper at least, "the farmer owns the land". It's how big AG companies keep that money flowing.

[Red Mountain]

25. I hate to argue this point but I think you're mistaken

This is from Wikipedia (and a bit dated) but more current info seems to me to indicate things aren't all that different now. Biggest change doesn't seem to be the number of non-family corporate farms going up but that the ones that exist are controlling more land as a percentage of land farmed.

This doesn't mean that corporations aren't asserting too much control over farmers......either through contract growing, gmo seed, chemicals or just plain controlling the market for farm products but you get the idea. It is NOT a free market and the truly independent farmer has a tough time surviving the inevitable dips in commodity market prices.

I'm a small family farmer. One of these days I really need to get around to forming a llc which will make me a....drum roll.....corporate farmer.


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

The 2012 US Census of Agriculture indicates that 5.06 percent of US farms are corporate farms. These include family corporations (4.51 percent) and non-family corporations (0.55 percent). Of the family farm corporations, 98 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Of the non-family farm corporations, 90 percent are small corporations, with 10 or fewer stockholders. Non-family corporate farms account for 1.36 percent of US farmland area. Family farms (including family corporate farms) account for 96.7 percent of US farms and 89 percent of US farmland area;[26] a USDA study estimated that family farms accounted for 85 percent of US gross farm income in 2011.[27] Other farmland in the US is accounted for by several other categories, including single proprietorships where the owner is not the farm operator, non-family partnerships, estates, trusts, cooperatives, collectives, institutional, research, experimental and American Indian Reservation farms.

In the US, the average size of a non-family corporate farm is 1078 acres, i.e. smaller than the average family corporate farm (1249 acres) and smaller than the average partnership farm (1131 acres).[26]

[kbowman]

20. call it farmfare or aggfare

Last edited Thu Oct 16, 2025, 12:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Relief for farmers should have a name similar sounding to relief for poor struggling non-farmers. Give it a similar sounding name - e.g. farmfare, etc. They see themselves as different, but they are not. Make them think whenever they hear it. I'm sure someone here can come up with some good ones.

Edit: However, I remembered that most farmers are fairly well off and farming if not owning multiple square miles of land (I grew up surrounded by them). So, farmfare and wellfare are not really the same thing. One set of people genuinely could use help, the other are well off, but don't want to have any consequences for their past bad decisions.

[Happy Hoosier]

24. I think we're in a position now where real consequences...

... may be needed to break the fever dream. I don;t like it. But if we keep bailing them out, what incentive do they have to change? They can have their cake, and eat it too.

[Red Mountain]

27. The problem here is that

the farmers didn't ask Trump to antagonize the Chinese and destroy the markets they rely on. The markets they built over the years.

Yes, red states tend to be rural. Yes, they voted for Trump. But they're not all republicans.......and the ones that are are seeing where the culture war bullshit they got sucked into has led them.

Small farmers are businessmen, first and foremost. They see how bad the current climate at the top is for business. If it doesn't get better the handouts will never be enough. They'll inevitably fail.

It's an opportunity to educate, not beat them down.

[Keepthesoulalive]

31. Why did most of them vote for the leopard

He is what he always was a failed businessman who has the intellect of an amoeba.

[Prairie Gates]

33. They surely fucking did

It was the number one top line item of his entire trade platform. He did it last time and promised he would do it again. What kind of an idiot could have voted for Trump not understanding that he would be engaging in a trade war with China that had the potential to damage their markets?

[Red Mountain]

35. Farmers are optomists

It's always worked out in the past. Because the Chinese didn't have other options.

Now they do.

Those markets might never come back if South America has lower production costs.

I don't fault some farmer in the midwest getting caught with his pants down. Things just changed. A lot.

Graham Platner would like a word.....

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ODDCdZFXnmQ

[NorthStarStCentrist]

29. A quart of wheat for a Denarius, 3 quarts of barley for a denarius. Do not harm the olive oil or wine....

It's getting to that point.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

36. Welcome to DU

[NorthStarStCentrist]

40. Thank you!

I'm going to be honest with you, I'm right of center. Normally, I wouldn't be caught dead voting for the DNC. But things have changed in this country. Liberty's going away. Law and order is going away. This isn't the America I used to feel proud about. This is another dictatorship that I remember as a kid, America used to chide. We felt proud of this country for not being a dictatorship..... Now, the America that we all fought hard to preserve is going down the tubes.

I'm a guest on your forum. I will not try to interject when it comes to basic Democratic policies. But when's all said and done, we all love America and we want the best for it.

[Hassler]

34. Julius Seizure will do something very big,

Very powerful for his farmers in two weeks, or maybe fourteen days.

[Mysterian]

37. Boo fuckin' hoo

Who did they vote for?

[Blue Full Moon]

38. They will give the bailout money only after

The tech bros get enough of the farmland at dirt cheap prices.