In support of my prediction that Big Ag will do well as the trade war with China heats up comes from AgMag:
Farm bailout payments designed to offset the impacts of President’s Trump’s trade war have overwhelmingly flowed to the largest and most successful farmers, according to [Environmental Working Group’s (EWG)] analysis of the latest Department of Agriculture data.
EWG today released updated data on payments made through the first two rounds of the Market Facilitation Program, or MFP. Through April, total MFP payments for 2018-19 were $8.4 billion. …
EWG’s analysis of the data found:
- The top one-tenth of recipients received 54 percent of all MFP payments.
- Eighty-two farmers have so far received more than $500,000 in MFP payments.
- One farm, DeLine Farm Partnership, of Charleston, Mo., has so far received $2.8 million in MFP payments.
- The top 1 percent of MFP recipients received, on average, $183,331. The bottom 80 percent received, on average, less than $5,000.
- Thousands of residents of the nation’s largest cities received MFP payments.
- MFP payments continue to leave out minority farmers.
As of 30 July. While these results do not appear to have been properly scaled – for example, a primitive scaling would be on a per-acre basis – I do not doubt that the larger concerns would also be on top of just about any reasonable scaling. The ability of larger concerns to gather up this compensation comes from both political connections and simply having the resources to recognize and collect these government handouts.
I talked a little recently about Turchin’s observations of the farmlands emptying out as the demographic cycle enters the disintegrative phase as the land owners concentrate more and more land in their hands, and I think this is another step along the way for the American farmer.
