Guest Post from MK: Organic / Local is doing great, and so desperately needs help

It's hard to follow the logic of the author here.  A summary, offered by MK, to get us through:

Highlights: - Organic food is now a $35B business and farmers' markets have grown 76%. 

Therefore, they obviously need $52M in federal cash. With numbers like that they need help.

Vilsack says more organic farmers are needed to revitalize the rural economy.  And the rural economy must be in deep manure, because in February Obama tripled the subsidy to local/organic/pious/yogic food to $291M. Who can live on that? 

Plus, people love it! Some (rich, white) people anyway: "“It’s a really nice bump for us because we’ve been getting chump change for research,” said Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, an organic research and advocacy group. 

Still, Mr. Kastel said that given the growth in the organic business, with about $35 billion in sales in the United States last year, he wished "there was more money to study organic practices."

I can't call you sugar, cause sugar never was so sweet

The US government is a welfare agency for farmers with an army! Take the case of sugar (please). This year, the government spent over $100 million buying up sugar to "support" its price. However, producers made so much that the price was somehow not high enough to repay the annual loans they get from the USDA. So the growers just default, to the tune of $171 million!

And and and and and and.... they get to BORROW AGAIN from the same program for next year, como si nada! So far the USDA has issued another $86 million in loans, sometimes to companies that had just defaulted.

Like Amalgamated Sugar. Defaulted on $17 million this year, borrows $18.8 million for next year. This isn't like the World Bank giving new loans to countries so they can pay off their old loans.  That's fresh cash with no strings.

And and and and and and... experts expect the producers WILL DEFAULT AGAIN NEXT YEAR!

It's not a bug, it's actually a feature of our insane farm policies.