Bush's farm bill benefits rich in Presidio Heights, while he throws mothers and their children out in the streets.
San Francisco gothic
Residents of tony city neighborhoods reap millions in U.S. farm subsidies
By Julian Foley
Who knew the Marina is a haven for down-and-out farmers? Or that tractors cruise the streets of Presidio Heights and Nob Hill? It may seem unlikely, but residents of those well-to-do neighborhoods – and a handful of San Francisco-based corporations – are getting federal subsidies for something that has hardly been seen in this city since livestock were ordered out of Cow Hollow in 1891: farms.
According to data compiled by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group, 374 people and businesses in San Francisco received a total of more than $10 million in farm-subsidy payments from the Department of Agriculture between 1996 and 2001, $2 million of which went to addresses in Nob Hill and Presidio Heights. And thanks to a new farm bill signed by President George W. Bush in May, subsidy checks will increase dramatically in the coming years – at the expense of the U.S. Treasury.
Some of the recipients are large rice, corn, and soybean farms around the state with offices in San Francisco. Others have an even more tenuous connection to that pitchfork-carrying, straw-chewing, ruddy-cheeked farmer of the American imagination.
Consider Austin Hills, founder of Hills Vineyards and cofounder of Grgich Hills Cellar. It isn't grapes (or his tenure as president of Milton National Bank from 1991 until 1999) that qualifies him for the $278,407 in federal money he has reaped since 1996. Hills grew rice, one of the most heavily subsidized crops in the United States, on 335 acres near the Sacramento airport until four or five years ago, when he decided to sell the land for warehouse space. Although it hasn't been sold yet, it has been rezoned for industrial uses. But that hasn't stopped the subsidies from rolling in. What grows there now? "Maybe some weeds," Hills said, chuckling.
Introduced in the early 1930s, farm subsidies were designed to aid struggling farmers and protect food production during the Great Depression. But the program has long outlived the depression, and as the breed of small farmers it was meant to prop up has declined and corporate farms with high margins and access to private capital have become the prime beneficiaries, the subsidies' usefulness has been called into question. The 1996 Freedom to Farm Act was supposed to be a first step in weaning farmers off federal support, but this year the subsidies came back bigger than ever before, thanks to a weak economy and a strong agriculture lobby. The new bill increases payments by up to 70 percent, at an estimated cost of $190 billion over the next 10 years. And despite a barrage of criticism, it won't stop the wealthiest landowners from filling their coffers with public money.
Prominent San Franciscan Charles Schwab, the 84th richest person in the world, gets hundreds of thousands in subsidies for the rice that grows in the marshes of his duck-hunting club, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year. His estimated $4.1 billion net worth does not make him ineligible for USDA handouts.
And then there is Chevron. Most people associate the company with oil, but out in Kern and Fresno Counties, it's in the cotton business. As the landlord for some 25,000 acres of leased-out farmland, the company collects a percentage of its tenants' federal crop subsidies – $80,000 last year – as part of its rent. The money, Chevron spokesperson Greg Hardy said, "is just one of the revenues that goes into the business operating fund."
San Francisco is not alone. Twenty-one cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, take in more farm subsidies than we do. And Berkeley has some urban farmers too: city councilmember Betty Olds got $4,294 last year for land she grew up on in Missouri. Her niece and nephew run the farm now, and though she says she hands her subsidy over to them, she gets it back as profit, albeit a tiny one.
Even the UC Regents are on the dole. When land is donated to the university, the subsidies come with it – money that is then funneled anywhere from the medical school to the ceramics department, depending on the donor's wishes.
USDA spokesperson Dann Stuart said the agency cannot discriminate among landowners. "We have to treat [businesspeople] just the same as if they were the guy in bib and overalls," he said.
There are, to be sure, some bona fide farmers living in San Francisco, even if they are not particularly needy. A tech designer living in the Marina-Cow Hollow area, who preferred not to be named, doubles as a corn and soybean farmer, staying constantly involved with the couple thousand acres his brother manages in Illinois. But while the family has used the nearly $500,000 it has received in subsidies over the past five years to improve farm operations, this farmer has no sympathy for the program. "Subsidies are a criminal political act," he said. "Farmers don't need the subsidies. Politicians need the subsidies to do their deals." |
