Eleven Missouri farms received over $300,000 from feds in '04

WASHINGTON -- Eleven Missouri farms each received more than $300,000 each in federal farm subsidies last year, according U.S. Department of Agriculture documents.

Dale Farming Co. of Ridgeway, Mo., in northwest Missouri, received $547,000 in payments, the most of any farm in the state, records show. The documents were obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

Other leading subsidy recipients were all in the Bootheel: Bottoms Farms Partnership of Dexter, with $472,000; DDAB Farms of Caruthersville, with $384,000; Pierce Farms of Caruthersville, with $374,000; and Robinson Farms of Dexter, with $347,000.

Six other farms received payments between $310,000 and $328,000.

Current law limits farmers to $360,000 in subsidies a year, but that cap is filled with loopholes that allow many to exceed it.

The Bush administration in February proposed lowering the limit to $250,000 and closing the loopholes, which would have meant reductions for many of the top recipients in the state. Bush also called for an across-the-board cut of 5 percent for all farm payments. Republican leaders in Congress have said it is unlikely the limit would be reduced this year.

The budget resolution that Congress approved late Thursday directs lawmakers to cull about $3 billion from agriculture programs over 5 years. Those cuts could target specific subsidy programs, but not at the depth or severity of Bush's proposals, which sought cuts of $8 billion over 10 years, as calculated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Darryl Dale, who owns Dale Farming with his son Douglas, said cutting payments would harm his business more than people realize.

"You just can't hardly farm without the subsidies because there's just not enough money in it," Dale said. The company farms about 17,000 acres in the state -- mostly corn and soybeans -- with annual sales between $2 million and $3 million, he said.

According to the Environmental Working Group, a government watchdog organization, Dale Farming received payments totaling more than $3.6 million in subsidies from 1995 through 2003.

Subsidies bring hundreds of millions to Missouri farms every year. Farmers in the state received $4.6 billion in federal payments from 1995 through 2003, ranking Missouri 11th among all states, according to EWG statistics.

Clark Medlin, manager of DDAB Farms, said he depends on subsidies to help make it through the lean years.

"The last few years there's been an up and down market," Medlin said. "We've seen some of the biggest lows in the last 20 years. A lot of farmers are dependent on this to survive and even with that, some of them still haven't."

Medlin's farm grows mostly soybeans, corn and rice on about 12,000 acres and had sales of more than $2 million in 2004.

EWG spokeswoman Liz Moore said subsidies benefit large farm operations most, often at the expense of small farmers. The group reported last year that subsidies for the top 10 percent of farmers averaged $34,424 in annual payments between 1995 and 2003. The bottom 80 percent of recipients averaged $768 per year.

The Agriculture Department's analysis shows that 8 percent of farmers collect 78 percent of the subsidies.

But Medlin said targeting big farms is unfair because they have a lot more invested in their operations.

"Somebody who farms 3,000 acres is going to get more money than someone farming 100 acres because there's more at stake," Medlin said.

Large, diversified farmers who grow more than one kind of commodity can get more out of the federal subsidy system by pulling in payments for each crop. Cotton and rice growers tend to get the largest subsidies.

Ron Plain, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said cutting subsidies can hurt smaller farms too, and noted that the size of payments doesn't often translate into bigger profits.

"A lot of these farms that are impacted from the standpoint of labor involved aren't very large farms," Plain said. "A farmer and his family can crop a lot of acres and if you're in cotton and rice, you could be receiving very large government payments but still only managing to support one family on them."