Harvesting Cash: Urban Farming in Mpls.-St. Paul
From the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune: Year after year, the federal government sends farm subsidy checks to homes nestled in some of the most expensive neighborhoods in Minneapolis, far from any corn or soybean field.
The urban payments total millions of dollars out of the nearly $1 billion sent to Minnesota farmers in 2005, according to federal records sent to the Star Tribune under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The flow of federal largesse comes thanks to rules that allow landowners -- including some 2,000 in the Twin Cities metro area -- to collect subsidies without farming the land themselves, a legal and increasingly common practice as farm ownership has consolidated over the past few decades.
See map above of urban "farmers" in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area receving farm subsidies.
(HT: JJ Howe)
1 Comments:
Look who's another "urban farmer"--Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Bachmann, who earns $165,200 as a congressperson, and whose husband is a clinical psychologist, live in a well-to-do Stillwater golf course subdivision. They own up to a quarter-million-dollar interest in the Bachmann Farm Family Limited Partnership in Independence, WI. Paul Bachmann, a family member who runs the Bachmann farm, has collected $232,445 in federal farm subsidies for the Bachmann family farm between 1995-2005. And Michele reported between $2,501-$5,000 in income from the family farm in 2006.
So I guess if government-subsidized health care is "socialized medicine," as Michele Bachmann calls it, it's fair to say that Michele Bachmann practices "socialized farming."
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