These Farmers Get Subsidies for Pushing Up Daisies

Posted by Don Carr in Featured Articles, Subsidies on November 24, 2009 | 6 responses

Last night, Stephen Stock — lead investigative reporter for Florida’s CBS-TV 4′s I-Team — aired a report on people collecting taxpayer-funded farm subsidies for years after they’ve died. Stephen’s story is a timely follow-up to a Government Accountability Office report two years ago that showed how $1.1 billion in those federal subsidies went to the estates or companies of dead farmers over the course of 7 years.

For this story, the I-Team didn’t rely on a government report. Instead, they cross-referenced the Social Security Administration’s Death Index with the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database. The SSA’s Death Index, or Death Master File, “contains over 83 million records of deaths that have been reported to SSA.”

The result? The I-Team found that in Central Florida alone, dead farmers have received $9.5 million in farm subsidies. Statewide, the number swelled to $89 million.

Elected representatives from both parties have assured us that the recently passed farm bill is chock full of reforms. Senator Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) called it a “reform-minded, solid farm bill,” while Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) said that “farm and conservation program transparency increased.”

Stephen has a nose for stories of government waste and abuse, and the US’s deeply flawed farm subsidy system is a tempting target. Last July he reported on a Florida office park developer named Maurice Wilder who banked nearly $3 million in farm subsidies over a three-year period. I asked Stephen what interests him about the subject of farm subsidy abuses. He told me:

This is the type of story we believe we must be doing. It is important to let the public know what is happening to their tax dollars, how they are being spent or misspent. Americans must understand where their government fails them. And we must continue to hold those in power accountable for how billions of tax dollars are spent. This type of story is at the very essence of what we as journalists are about.

Go here to watch Dead Farmers Get Millions From Tax Dollars.

  • Juanita Stock

    Stephen’s investigation, along with the Medicare investigation he did, shows journalism at its best but our government at its worst. Sure, we have health-care, education, crime problems, but Stephen reveals how careless our government can be and, instead of putting the money into those problems it can fix, the government squanders it on illegitimate claims. And who are the congressman voting or implementing these outrageous claims? Throw the bums out!

  • Don Carr

    Who are the members of Congress voting for these programs Juanita? Look no further than the member of the House and Senate Ag Committees. The subsidized keep voting for more subsidies.

  • Miranda Rice

    I am so pleased with The Environmental Working Group’s investigations and actions – this is the sort of abuse that goes on in an enormous government – and with no one on the lookout for significant errors like this. We need a watch dog like EWG to catch & report these things, so the waste can be stopped and the money redirected to where it is really needed. Thank you, EWG.
    Great job!

  • Andrea Lauer

    Thank you for reporting this important news. Now we need to make sure other media outlets pick it up and run with it!

  • http://www.MindBodyNutrition.net Holly Noonan

    Hmm, subsidizing dead farmers AND alive ones to grow commodity crops that get made into food that kills people early. How about we pay alive farmers to grow food that keeps people alive?

  • Juanita Stock

    Yes, Holly, I’m with you. Big corporations like Monsanto have a vise grip on such products as soybeans, corn, and potatoes. Michael Pollan is right–genetic engineering of what we grow can lead to some bad agriculture. For instance, Monsanto, as perhaps you know, has a patent on an Idaho potato, which it sells to third-world countries. This particular potato, however, is patented as an insecticide rather than a vegetable. And to make matters worse, farmers in these 3rd world countries are not allowed to use the potato crops they grow to grow more potatoes; they have to keep buying the spuds from Monsanto.