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Federal Subsidies Turn Farms Into Big Business
'Farming Is a Science'
From the perch of his $180,000 six-row combine, churning through cornfields that stretch as far as the eye can see, John Phipps has a rare view of American farm policy.
Outfitted against a gray October day in jeans, wool shirt, vest and faded baseball cap, Phipps, 58, resembled hundreds of other farmers as he struggled to change a filter on his combine. But he is hardly typical. Trained as a chemical engineer, Phipps spent five years serving on a nuclear-powered submarine before returning to east-central Illinois in the 1970s.
  Thomas Oswald stays out of the land-grab game. "I want to be known as someone who farms well as opposed to farming big," he said. (By Gilbert M. Gaul -- The Washington Post) |
Today, he calls himself an "industrial farmer" who uses computers, technology and science to get the most out of the 1,800 acres of corn and soybeans he plants in an area of Illinois where the weather and soil are ideal for farming. The strategy has paid off with bigger and better yields.
Yet to Congress and federal agricultural officials, Phipps and his wife, Jan, are struggling family farmers. Last year, the government sent the Phippses a check for $120,000. Thousands of similar checks arrived throughout the Corn Belt, even as many farmers had bumper crops.
"Being labeled as a family farmer immediately qualifies me as someone who needs help," he said. "Name one other business like that -- there are none."
Over the past decade, farmers in the Midwest have produced one record crop after another. Now, surging demand for corn-based ethanol has corn prices at a 10-year high.
Phipps resents the images used to evoke sympathy for farmers. "I think they do us more harm than good," he said as he scrambled to finish his harvest. "I don't think farmers are any more special than anyone else; lots of people work hard and don't get help. Why should farmers get special treatment?"
In addition to farming, Phipps hosts a weekly farm television show, writes a blog and contributes articles to Farm Journal. That income helps significantly, he said, allowing him "a little more flexibility" than other farmers have. In the past five years, the Phippses have also received about $357,000 in federal subsidies.
"I'm not proud of it," he said. "I would like to have the moral courage and financial clout not to take them. But if I don't, I won't be able to compete when it comes time to bid for land."
Phipps knows that this fuels the rising cost of farmland; an acre of land there now sells for about $4,800. "When I belly up and write a check, I am perpetuating the problem," he said. "For the most part, all of the smaller farmers have all been flushed out in the last five years."
Still, Phipps's sympathy extends only so far. Large farms are a "rational and ethical" response to market demands, he said. His family has farmed there for six generations, Phipps himself for the past three decades. He owns 800 acres outright or with his siblings and rents 1,000 acres. His wife is his main helper and drives one of the trucks that haul up to 700 bushels of corn per load to grain bins. "Imagine that: Two middle-aged people able to farm 1,800 acres," Phipps marveled. "That's all because of the immense technology we have at our hands. We are horrendously efficient."
As his combine churns down the rows of corn, Phipps knows exactly how many bushels he is harvesting, acre by acre, row by row. The information is downloaded to his computer so he can put it in a spreadsheet.
