Bastrop, Tx–The value of agricultural production in Bastrop County last year fell more than $20 million from 2008, a drop blamed on severe drought conditions which extended back to 2007, according to a report delivered to Bastrop County commissioners on March 8.
The report by Texas AgriLife Extension Service agent Rachel Bauer estimated total production in the county at $46.9 million for 2008. That total fell to $26.2 million in 2009, she said.
In 2006, before the onset of a multi-year drought, the total production was valued at $63.2 million.
Bastrop County’s biggest products, hay and cattle, also took the biggest hits, according to Bauer’s figures. Hay production, valued at $5.7 million in 2006, sank to $2.3 million last year.
Beef cattle production, which reached some $34 million in 2006, fell to an estimated $24.9 million in 2008 and sank to $16.7 million in 2009 as producers thinned or sold off herds while grass and water disappeared during the dry period.
Pecan production, which topped $3 million in 2007, dipped to less than $1 million in 2009. Vegetables were valued at $1.9 million in 2007 but fell to $837,000 last year.
A few minor production categories showed increases, however. Bauer estimated the value of hogs in 2006 at $45,000, a number which had more than doubled to $99,000 by 2009. Hunting, recreation and timber production also either held steady or showed small gains since 2007, according to the report.
What? No figures on the value of hemp grown in Bastrop County during the same periods? Given the unrealistically inflated value assigned to such things by media and law enforcement, the figures would have ameliorated the dismal figures in your post.
It is difficult to know exactly what the Extension Service’s figures mean, without knowing how those dollar amounts were determined. I suspect the amounts are estimates, based upon spot prices at one or more auction barns, or upon interviews with some small number of producers as to the sale and/or purchase prices of the commodities.
But, there are some dollar amounts available, through the USDA, upon which some reliance can be placed for their accuracy. Those are the amounts received by agricultural producers in direct payments from the US government.
For instance, in 2007, there were 145 agricultural producers in Bastrop County who received, in total, $188,000.00 in direct subsidy payments. The amounts ranged from $2.00 to $17,541.00.
Texas ranked No. 3 out of fifty states for direct subsidy payments in 2007, with income of $397 million in direct payment agricultural subsidies by the US Government. In 2008, Texas ranked No. 1 in direct subsidy payments to agricultural producers. Although, according to USDA, 82 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in Texas.
This data, and more detailed information on agricultural subsidies, including the names of Bastrop County farmers receiving subsidies and the amounts they received, can be found at the web site of the Environmental Working Group, http://www.ewg.org. EWG acquired the figures from the USDA via an open records act request.
The irony of the federal crop support and federal direct payment subsidy programs is that they have the strong and everlasting support of those very same Republicans who are forever carrying on about reducing the federal budget and getting government out of the subsidy business. Texas, for instance, was the beneficiary of a massive amount of federal dollars:
• $16.2 billion in subsidies 1995-2006.
• Texas ranking: 1 of 50
• Top Recipients 1995-2006
• Top Recipients in 2006
• 82 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in Texas, according to USDA.
• Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 77 percent of all subsidies amounting to $12.5 billion over 12 years.
Strange, you never see people like Gov. Perry, Congressman John Carter, or State Rep. Kleinschmidt carrying on in a critical manner about this kind of federal program.
If you go to the EWG web site, you can find out the amount of subsidies paid in each and every Congresssional District, and the names of those people who received them. It would worthwhile for someone to compare those names with the names of donors to Republican candidates who rail against government programs handing out cash.
And it isn’t just farmers and ranchers who get direct payment subsidies. Check this out, also from the EWG website:
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U.S. taxpayers doled out more than $6.4 billion in subsidies to the commercial fishing industry between 1996 and 2004, possibly accelerating the ongoing collapse of fish stocks worldwide and adding to the devastation of large ocean fish species.
U.S. subsidies, calculated for the first time by Renee Sharp, director of Environmental Working Group’s California Office and renowned fisheries economist Ussif Rahid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, amounted to 21 percent of the $31 billion U.S. commercial fish harvest between 1996 and 2004. Some kinds of subsidies can be good, if they encourage conservation and careful management of fishery stocks or if they equip under-employed fishers for other lines of work, for example. But there is general international consensus that some other kinds of subsidies can contribute significantly to the depletion of ocean fish.
The Sharp-Sumaila study published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management and supported by the Lenfest Ocean Program has determined that direct federal and state subsidies to commercial fishing operations totaled $6.4 billion and averaged $713 million annually (in 2007 dollars) between 1996 to 2004.
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Ever wonder who is getting paid by the government to grow/produce your evening meal????