T1B

“I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.

Farm Country Stood by Trump. But the Shutdown Is Pushing It to Breaking Point.

By Jack Healy and Tyler Pager
Jan. 10, 2019

DENVER — In Georgia, a pecan farmer lost out on his chance to buy his first orchard. The local Farm Service Agency office that would have processed his loan application was shut down.

In Wisconsin’s dairy country, a 55-year-old woman sat inside her new dream home, worried she would not be able to pay her mortgage. Her loan had come from an Agriculture Department program for low-income residents in rural areas, but all of the account information she needed to make her first payment was locked away in an empty government office.

And in upstate New York, Pam Moore was feeding hay to her black-and-white cows at a small dairy that tottered on the brink of ruin. She and her husband had run up $350,000 in debt to keep the dairy running after 31 of their cows died of pneumonia, and their last lifeline was an emergency federal farm loan. But the money had been derailed by the government shutdown.

“It has just been one thing after another, after another, after another,” Ms. Moore, 57, said.

Farm country has stood by President Trump, even as farmers have strained under two years of slumping incomes and billions in losses from his trade wars. But as the government shutdown now drags into a third week, some farmers say the loss of crucial loans, payments and other services has pushed them — and their support — to a breaking point.
While many rural conservatives may loathe the idea of Big Government, farmers and the federal government are welded together by dozens of programs and billions of dollars in spending.

Now, farmers and farm groups say that federal crop payments have stopped flowing. Farmers cannot get federally backed operating loans to buy seed for their spring planting, or feed for their livestock. They cannot look up new government data about beef prices or soybean yields to make decisions about planting and selling their goods in an ever-changing global market.

“This is real,” said Jeff Witte, president of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and New Mexico’s agriculture secretary. “You had farmers who were in the process of closing a loan or getting an operating loan. Now there’s nobody there to service those.”

Mr. Trump is expected to address a largely friendly audience on Monday at the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention. Many farmers, including David Nunnery, 59, of Pike County, Miss., have stayed unflinchingly loyal to Mr. Trump and his demands for $5.7 billion for a border wall, even as the shutdown threatens their livelihood.
“I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.

But Davinder Singh, 41, the Georgia pecan farmer, said the border wall was not worth the price he had already paid — losing out on the chance to finally buy his own orchard instead of working other people’s land.

“Why spend money on the wall?” he said. He just wanted the government to reopen — “as soon as possible.”

The Agriculture Department had tried to blunt the effects by keeping local Farm Service Agency offices open through December. And it extended deadlines for farmers to apply for the administration’s $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Mr. Trump’s trade policies.

States like Wisconsin, which lost at least 638 dairy farms last year, are particularly vulnerable.

The new farm bill passed in December contained programs to help dairy farmers weather swings in the market, and to help farmers struggling with stress and depression get mental health services. But those programs cannot be put in effect during the shutdown, said Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“More uncertainty and more stress,” she said. “We can’t afford to wait months and months. We need to get this moving now.”

lefty wrote:Trump doesn’t hate us.

schmick wrote:Nobody is going to lose their farm in a couple months.

After 30 days of shutdown, our President can furlough government employees. It’s called Reduction In Workforce or RIF. I believe 800,000 of our government employees can be furloughed. Will President Trump do this? We can only hope. Our government is overly bloated as it stands right now.
800,000 govt hacks earning just an average of 75,000 dollars a year is 60 billion dollars a year and drains the swamp.

Hello Wall.

Screw_Michigan wrote:These farmers who voted for Trump are getting EXACTLY what they deserve.

Jsc810 wrote:

Left Seater wrote: a little work from able bodied welfare recipients

That is current law, btw.

Derron wrote:Your sources and narrative are laughable. You are citing and quoting small slices and subsets of agricultural producers who have failed to keep pace with agricultural production, and to look out for themselves and run a decent business. Much as your shit slinging monkey nature wants, the sources quoted are all a bunch of idiotic producers who rely on these obscure handouts to try and run a farm.

I know well over a hundred farmers, all of whom are farming from 1000 to 5000 acres. All are self financed or borrow production money from local banks, pay it back, and most all are not receiving any kind of subsidies, because you actually make more money farming than you do with any kind of government programs. Every one of your examples are piss poor farmers and business people and they deserve to fail.



Now take your lame ass bullshit take and shove them right up your Trump deranged pussy.

smackaholic wrote:

Derron wrote:Your sources and narrative are laughable. You are citing and quoting small slices and subsets of agricultural producers who have failed to keep pace with agricultural production, and to look out for themselves and run a decent business. Much as your shit slinging monkey nature wants, the sources quoted are all a bunch of idiotic producers who rely on these obscure handouts to try and run a farm.

I know well over a hundred farmers, all of whom are farming from 1000 to 5000 acres. All are self financed or borrow production money from local banks, pay it back, and most all are not receiving any kind of subsidies, because you actually make more money farming than you do with any kind of government programs. Every one of your examples are piss poor farmers and business people and they deserve to fail.



Now take your lame ass bullshit take and shove them right up your Trump deranged pussy.

What you say is correct, however, there are sectors of the agricultural economy that are completely beholden to government subsidies, not because they are shitty at farming, but because government along with “big agriculture” have set up a system that makes it that way.

Not saying that there aren’t farmers that suck at farming, but to dismiss all these people as such isn’t fair.


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Kierland wrote:So not only does your midget family suck gov teet, so do all of your tiny friends. Disgusting.