Farming is a singular, sometimes lonely activity.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we farmers talk to our cows, pigs, even our soybean plants.\u00a0 I recommend a good, long talk with a soybean plant.\u00a0 They are more reasonable than many human beings and less likely to troll you on social media.<\/p>\n
Despite working alone, farmers historically have banded together in groups.\u00a0 There are the old-time farm organizations like Farm Bureau and Farmers Union.\u00a0 Historically the Bureau has leaned right, and the Union has leaned left.\u00a0 Sometimes they lean together and try not to fall over.<\/p>\n
In recent decades, the commodity groups have come to prominence, promoting certain groups of growers.\u00a0 These are organizations like the National Corn Growers Association, American Dairy Association, and the Associated Rhubarb Producers.\u00a0 I am a member of the United Giant Ragweed Growers Association and have won several state contests in giant ragweed production.<\/p>\n
In 2012, I was involved with the founding of a new farm organization: Producers Opposed to Obscene Payments, aka P. O. O. P.\u00a0 2012 was a year of record profits in agriculture.\u00a0 Prices were high, yields were good, and subsidized crop insurance guaranteed healthy returns.\u00a0 Farming was all kinds of fun!<\/p>\n
On top of all that, farmers were receiving large \u201cdirect payments\u201d from the government. \u00a0Li\u2019l farmers like me were getting thousands of dollars.\u00a0 High-roller farmers were getting many thousands of dollars.\u00a0 In response to that illogical situation, POOP came into being.<\/p>\n
These wonderfully generous payments were based on\u2026get ready for this\u2026nothing.\u00a0 Smart people had decided farm payments should be \u201cdecoupled\u201d from prices and yield.\u00a0 Near as I could tell, farmers were getting the money because we\u2019re nice guys.<\/p>\n
During this same time, politicians were looking high and low to be sure some schmoe on welfare didn\u2019t get a couple hundred bucks he didn\u2019t deserve.\u00a0 Yet no one could figure out how to not send $5 billion to farmers, some of whom were millionaires.<\/p>\n
POOP\u2019s first national convention was a raucous affair.\u00a0 Farmers who were embarrassed by this state of affairs came from across the country.\u00a0 We talked about holding POOP\u2019s inaugural gathering at some luxurious Caribbean resort and writing it off.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t quite convey the message we wanted to send.\u00a0 So we settled on my machine shed with a couple cases of Keystone.<\/p>\n
We chose officers, and the newly elected POOP functionaries took control of the meeting.\u00a0 Next order of business was writing of by-laws by a committee of in-laws, out-laws, and scoff-laws.<\/p>\n
When it came time to deal with the issue at hand, a motion was made that farmers decline our direct payments, hoping to maintain an ounce of pride.\u00a0 A lengthy debate ensued that went on late into the night, well after the Keystones were gone.\u00a0 Finally, an alternative proposal passed.\u00a0 We agreed to take the money, but sheepishly and slightly embarrassed by it.<\/p>\n
I look back on that as a missed opportunity to make a statement.\u00a0 You could call it a stain on POOP.<\/p>\n
The next time POOP gathered, a new Farm Bill was in place, one without those generous Direct Payments.\u00a0 Heretofore future farm payments would be based on something.\u00a0 Only no one knew what.<\/p>\n
Farmers could choose whether to sign up for Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC).\u00a0 Who better to deal with this conundrum than POOP?\u00a0 Again convention attendees worked late into the night.\u00a0 We read and reread things like:<\/p>\n
\u201cARC payments for a given crop are paid when the actual county revenue for the crop falls below the County benchmark revenue guarantee. The actual County revenue is the final County FSA yield times the final MYA price. The MYA price is the national average corn or soybean price from Sept. 1 to Aug. 31. The MYA price is then \u201cweighted\u201d at the end of the year, based on the volume of bushels sold in each month.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huh?\u00a0 There were pages of this gobbledygook.\u00a0 After scratching our heads a lot, and running out of Keystones again, we decided to do what everyone else was doing.\u00a0 Which was signing up for ARC.\u00a0 Don\u2019t ask me why.<\/p>\n
The upshot is that as farm revenue declined, payments to farmers shrunk.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t make any sense.\u00a0 But it reduced the need for a group of producers opposed to obscene payments.\u00a0 POOP went into a hiatus.<\/p>\n
As you probably saw in the news, POOP was called into an emergency session last week.\u00a0 This was in response to the current state of agriculture which can best be described as \u201cperilous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prices have been in a death spiral for several years.\u00a0 Then they fell off a cliff when our president decided that a trade war was a good idea, announcing that \u201cTrade wars are easy to win.\u201d\u00a0 Prices went from a slow decline to a free fall.\u00a0 Farmers will be chewing through equity this year, which is a nice way of saying \u201closing money.\u201d<\/p>\n
As you know, farmers voted en masse for this president.\u00a0 The White House was not going to abandon these faithful, and it was announced the government will give farmers $12 billion dollars in aid.\u00a0 Since that is money the government does not have, POOP decided this qualified as an \u201cobscene payment.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the POOP gathering, there was discussion about whether farmers\u2019 affection for our 45th<\/sup> president was well placed.\u00a0 He has spent his life in New York, never done any physical work, and knows nothing about agriculture.\u00a0 Why do we think he represents us?\u00a0 Someone pointed out that he has married three models with various porn stars and Playboy bunnies in between, and that we all sort of wish we could do that.\u00a0 And that he calls people names like a sixth-grade bully, and we all sort of wish we could do that, too.<\/p>\n He promised to overturn trade agreements that have allowed United States farmers to export much of our production to the world, which he has.\u00a0 In addition, he offended our longtime allies, demanding they bend their policies to our wills.\u00a0 This conveniently ignores the fact that our country has protected sugar for decades.<\/p>\n So, what to do about the $12 billion being used to placate farmers?\u00a0 A voice in the back of the room suggested we tell the president to shove the money up\u2026but he was hollered down.\u00a0 In the end we decided to take the money, but sheepishly and slightly embarrassed by it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Farming is a singular, sometimes lonely activity.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we farmers talk to our cows, pigs, even our soybean plants.\u00a0 I recommend a good, long talk with a soybean plant.\u00a0 They are more reasonable than many human beings and less likely to troll you on social media. Despite working alone, farmers historically have banded together …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 17:40:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108646,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108637\/revisions\/108646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}