The Law of Unintended Consequences

The Senate Farm Bill proposed by Senator Stabenow (D-MI) seems to have a provision that will not work the way they intend.

Photo by Michael Bourgault on Unsplash

The Senate Farm Bill is purely a proposal by the democrats on the Senate Ag Committee with no input from the Republican side and it shows in the summary released by chairwomen Stabenow (D-MI) about a week ago. We have previously posted on this summary, but in today’s post we will specifically review one proposal that we don’t believe will achieve their objective and even penalize the farmers they are trying to help.

In Sec. 1104 dealing with payment acres, the following wording is used:

“Restricts commodity program payments from being made on land owned by an individual or legal entity for which the average Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) exceeds $700,000 to discourage further investor purchases, which would restrict, for the first time, wealthy investors and absentee landlords from benefitting from farm safety net programs intended to support the active farmers that are taking the risk and producing the crops.”