Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Farmers could take it in the shorts


Brazoria County farmers could take a kick to the gonads in President Bush's proposed budget.

For those who don't know, more goes on down here than chemical mixin', oil refining' and keeping convicted felons locked up.

There's a lot of farming and ranching going on, too. With that goes a lot of farm subsidizin' via Uncle Sam (ie., you the taxpayer).

How much?

From 1995 to 2003, total USDA subsidies of $113,683,803 were paid to 980 Brazoria County farmers.

The subsidies are on the chopping block in the new budget. [Farm Subsidy Database]

Here the are farm subsidy numbers for other Houston-area counties:
Harris: $39.7 million to 374 recepients
Galveston: $14.7 million to 124 recepients
Fort Bend: $98.2 million to 2,746 recepients
Waller: $46.4 million to 835 recepients
Montgomery: $645,405 to 191 recepients
Liberty: $87.4 million to 618 recepients
Matagorda: $172.3 million to 1,545 recepients
Chambers: $94 million to 457 recepients.

2 comments:

Gritsforbreakfast said...

That's a mountain of money to <1,000 farmers. With all those rural TX Dems gone, I'll bet those Ag subsidies are toast. Charlie Stenholm was probably the main reason they made it through the first Bush term.

Banjo Jones said...

you may be right. it'll be a nasty battle, i'm sure.