I just finished reading Brian Cross’s farmland ownership article (WP,June 10.) It read like it was about the United States Department of Agriculture, only not quite as bad.
USDA is making a great deal of effort to kill the family farm. Three of my nieces own Idaho land. They inherited it. One of them lives in Torrance, California, one in College Station, Texas, the other in Woodbridge, Virginia. …
They have rented it to a local big shot. I used to farm (the land) for them but felt I was losing money.
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The subsidizing is well known to you, so that does not need to be mentioned. But the writing off may not be that well known.
The Farm Credit Service will loan big loans to big shots, and when they cannot pay, the loan is written off. …
One local big shot is rumoured to have more than $10 million in loans written off. There are many others.
About five years ago, a farm was foreclosed. It was small enough the FCS thought they could sell it. If they foreclosed some of the big farms, it would lower the price of land.
They found a buyer in California. He paid less than half of what the mortgage was. Better yet, there was a $225,000 second mortgage held by the Farm Home Administration. He told me he settled with FHA for $25,000.
We found out about writeoffs and selling to outsiders for less than local family farmers when we were in Nebraska in 1995. We met a former Idaho farmer who was able to buy a larger place in Nebraska than they had in Idaho for fractions of what a Nebraskan would have had to pay.
I like your article. Then on the next page, a wheat board chairman was glorified because he had a 6,500 acre wheat farm. ‘Nuff said.
I really enjoyThe Western Producer.You say it like it is.
George Thompson,
Nezperce, Idaho
