Turns out there is a way to make money farming, after all;
According to Gretchen Shappert, U.S. attorney for the western district of North Carolina, “the Warren Farms investigation is literally the mother of all crop fraud investigations. It was a result of a perfect storm of individuals who were involved in fraud.”
Robert and Vicki Warren are among eight people who pleaded guilty to swindling the government and insurance companies out of more than $9 million in bogus insurance claims from 1997 to 2003. The Warrens were among the largest tomato growers east of the Mississippi; at one point they owned 26 farms in three states, including one run by Bobby Chambers.
“We grow different kinds of produce, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, just a little of everything,” says Chambers, a beefy, baby-faced, 42-year-old lifelong farmer who runs a spread that borders the Nolichucky River in Cocke County, Tennessee.
According to trial records, he helped the Warrens stage a hailstorm to make it look like their tomatoes had been destroyed, so they could collect the insurance money.
Chambers says he bought a bag of cocktail ice and a disposable camera, and, on his boss’s order, created a foul-weather tableau. “The way we did it, we was down taking pictures, out this row, and then we just stood behind it and throwed the ice over the top. To me, it looked like a hailstorm,” says Chambers.
To complete the scene of devastation, they then picked up wooden tomato stakes and attacked the unsuspecting vegetables. “They had one Mexican who did all the beating, he beat every 16,000 of them. He’d just go through there and knock the leaves off of them,” says Chambers, as he illustrates the activity with a long stick. “It made it look like where the hail had beat it up.”
It gets better. Not only does the US Treasury back insurers in the risky business, the USDA subsidizes premiums.
The government is so generous with crop insurance that it subsidizes farmers’ premiums. Edwards says the USDA paid the Warrens more than $2 million to help them insure their tomatoes. He compares it to the following hypothetical situation: “Every year a bank gets robbed and they notice the bank robber is using an old getaway car and they ask, ‘Would you like a car loan to have a nicer getaway car next year when you come to rob us?’ Because the government is subsidizing the farmer’s ability to defraud us for the coming season.”
Good ol’ farm ingenuity!
I fail to see why farmers bother to grow food anymore since most people seem content to eat garbage and take pills to stay alive.
Entitlement mentality sleeps in bed every night with the enemy of personal responsibility. It is called socialism. Take a peek under the farmer’s covers in Canada and you just might find the same thing.
I’m no expert, but I am curious. What would the world market look like with absolutely no subsidies?
The US farm subsidies are substantial which makes competition unfair. The soft wood lumber issue has been found in Canadas favour over and over again as not a subsidy. Go figure?
capt bob, the U.S. farm susidies are substantial to say the least, but what really irks me is that their lumber industry is subsidised under the Farm Bill. Another thing that should’ve been stopped long ago in B.C. is the export of raw logs, but again we have a Lie-beral government out here that’s too intertwined with the corrupt (Earnscliffe) bunch in Ottawa. Unfortunately there is no longer an alternative centre right party and that is truly needed.
A southern farmer. Probably a Baptist. That would be the worst kind of Christian. The Southern Baptist farmer lied. George Bush lied too. He’s a Christian too. And, he’s conservative. Those Reform Party guys, the ones hiding behind the curtain with the hidden agenda – they’re Christians and conservatives too. Those Conservatives are lying about their hidden agenda. See? we have no choice but to vote Librano again.
Just thought I would offer that up for the Librano spin-doctors in Ottawa to serve up to vacant-skull -rich Ontario through their sycophantic media macine.
I’ve had a lifetime’s experience with American agriculture and my own views of it tend to parallel Victor Davis Hanson’s words in his book “Fields without Dreams”. Years ago I was an actuary with the USDA Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, an agency continually slapped around by both congressional whim and an entrenched upper management cabal of clasping toadies and ambitious music majors. A well timed phone call from a well connected “farmer” to a well placed bureaucrat can be quite profitable. It’s both a sin against the US people and a betrayal of the honest USDA employees, who are the majority. One thing I admire about the Bush administration is its willingness to take on the entrenched and ossified portions of each federal agency that only serve themselves.
Presently, I am an investigator with the Washington State Department of Agriculture and have had a long experience with “insurance farmers” and other miscreants that abuse the system. Usually, they’re caught right away, but sometimes it takes a little while longer. They do get caught though.
A final word about the US/Canada lumber fracas. The US Forest Service, which is responsible for the majority of US softwood access, is a portion of the USDA, and subject to the Farm Bill, because trees are considered to be a crop. In an era where environmentalists have put enough pressure on the forest industry to force mill closures and the diminishment of many communities it is much easier for politicians here help out by making things more difficult for Canada, especially with the well publicised “I hate those bastards” ethic up there. Hence, both environmentalists and anti-Americanism are not cost free.
Speaking of food and trade, I just saw this AFP (?) story. Can a ten year old boy do a better, more effective job of solving Canada’s trade dispute with the USA than Paul Martin’s Liberal Government? I say “Yes!”:
Boy launches McDonald’s boycott over US-Canada lumber rift
MONTREAL (AFP) – A 10-year-old Canadian boy has called for a boycott of US fast food chain McDonald’s in hopes of hastening an end to the deep rift over lumber trade between Canada and the United States.
Taking the trade impasse into his own hands is Luke McAndless of Vancouver, who along with a 13-year old friend — and apparently some adults in the background — launched his proposed one-day boycott on an internet website, http://www.wewantourmoneyback.ca
…
“We want our money back!,” proclaims the website. “Yo yo yo, give us our dough,” it says, asking readers to join the boycott starting December 3 and also to send a message to US
President George W. Bush.”
I love it.
Does a ‘hobby farm’ qualify as a tax write-off?
The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for access to national forest lands, the majority of forest lands in the U.S. are privately held and are also eligible for subsidies under the Farm Bill.
I for one do not hate Americans, but I do detest the tactics employed by the lumber lobby and the Commerce Department in Washington, D.C.
The WTO ruled the “Byrd Amendment” illegal and the U.S. governments refusal to repeal it is yet another example of that government not living up to it’s obligations under international trade rules it was intrumental in developing.
Come now Bruce..
We all know that the U.S. makes rules for other nations to follow.
They of course don’t need to follow rules, they’re perfect.
I wnder how long one could park (using TWO STALLS) in a McDonalds parking lot, before they asked you to move.
When I find out I’ll let y’all know…tee hee hee
Again, with regard to the softwood dispute, I have two things to point out:
#1. A significant amount of Canadian lumber comes from trees that cost the timber company 25 cents (Canadian) each. Tell me that’s not a subsidy.
#2. Political change comes from political will that’s largely derived from political capital. Canada’s political capital in the US has continually been undercut by its own government’s behavior. So, spout off with all the anti-American crap you have; it really helps out.
…and BTW, apparently Jack Frost has never heard of OPEC or the EU marching to their own drums.
Twenty five cents per tree? What planet do you live on Jeff? You’re attitude is just like the Lie-beral sacks of crap we have for a government up here right now. Funny it’s the Democratic Party politicians that tend be more protectionist.
Jeff–what about this governments’ behaviour do you refer to? There are no more remedies for this government to persue regarding the softwood issue excepting retaliatory sanctions. What you percieve as anti-americanism is self perception based in the disagreement–I guess you mean we can’t disagree with the Bush administration as that would be anti-americanism.
“#1. A significant amount of Canadian lumber comes from trees that cost the timber company 25 cents (Canadian) each. Tell me that’s not a subsidy.”
Any treeplanter will tell you that figure is kinda suspect. The labour alone is 10 cents to a buck per tree to say nothing of nursery costs, transportation, camp costs, etc. Hell, even I’ve gotten 25 cents per tree on crappy land.
But that’s a separate issue anyway; you are inferring that the Canadian gub’mint in some way provides artificially low cost seedlings to Canadian timber companies and I am unaware of any such scheme. Maybe things have changed since I planted but I think this 25 cent per tree stuff as subsidy is, in the absence of a link or two, suspect.
Your second point is well stated.
Oh Jeff, the Canadian womens hockey team hammered the USA 7-0 in the pre-olympic tournament—this doesn’t look good for us huh.
I doubt that we would be arguing about this softwood thing if our respective leaders were still singing together. The Canadian MSM only gives one side of the argument; guess which one? PMPM and the Libranos are cornered rats and if they can deflect attention to George Bush, that buys them a bit more time. WAKE UP CANADA!
Both PMPM and Bush are cornered rats–RR and BM sang together while JC and BC golfed together–during those times we got along just fine. Who are/is dubyas friends anyway—TB? can’t think of anyone else.
My point is to be provocative in bringing out statements based on emotion rather than sense. Silly comments about kids boycotting hamburgers and women’s hockey teams are merely useless harumphing rather than legitimate portions of a meaningful discussion. Whenever people begin to understand that they’re being used as political dupes to prop up weaklings passing themselves off as heroes valiantly fighting bogeymen perhaps this discussion will mature into something actually helpful. There is blame to be found on both sides of the border.
Heard this On the Radio and Was Appalled
Small Dead Animals points out the worst of it-
It gets better. Not only does the US Treasury back insurers in the risky business, the USDA subsidizes premiums.
The government is so generous with crop insurance that it subsidizes farmers…