Farm bill works to turn dirt into cash
By Jim Galewski | Just Jim

Every year we shake our heads at the latest farm bill. This year is no different.

I challenge you to understand it.
When a senator or member of Congress talks about it, he or she will bring up the food stamp program, child care or land conservation. In reality, the big winners of the farm bill are corporations, rich investors and lobbyists who succeeded in getting special interests — a piece of the pie. Or should I say pork?

As contentious as the 2008 farm bill is, it has overwhelming bipartisan support. When politicians sell the new farm bill they will talk of world hunger, nutrition and food banks.

The “black eye” of the farm bill is the billions of dollars in subsidies and special interest that are only slightly related to farming. There’s a tax break for racehorse owners thanks to Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky.

Thanks to the farm bill, we’ll spend untold dollars protecting the red-cockaded woodpecker in Georgia. The West Coast Democrats grabbed $170 million for the struggling Pacific salmon industry. We’re told the bill is “full of reform.”

Reform means some married farmers won’t get subsidies if they make more than $1.5 million a year. I wonder how many Winona County farmers will be excluded from that clause?

We all know the great outcome of the corn subsidy and the ethanol subsidies. It’s done wonders to curtail the cost of gasoline. Last weekend, I sent the boy who cuts my grass to the gas station to fill my one-gallon can of gas. I gave him $5 and wasn’t sure if there would be money left to buy him a pop.

From a farm subsidy angle, Minnesota ranks sixth out of 50 states, and Minnesota farmers collected $305 million in 2007.

In Winona County, 620 farmers collected $2.6 million in 2007. A St. Charles farmer, who received the most in 2007, got $33,115. While names are as interesting as numbers, farm subsidies are complex and keep some farmers in business. Unfortunately, the subsidies also help investors own property for recreational purposes, hunting or tax write-offs.

The Web site that lists farm subsidy recipients and has a searchable database is located at, http://farm.ewg. org. Farm subsidies were meant to help the family farm. Thanks to Congress, the bill is laden with billions of dollars of waste.

Vietnam, China or Poland? It depends on who’s asking

The Winona School Board would like to put the choir trip to Poland to rest and move on. One thing that came out of the trip was a fairly exhaustive and cumbersome procedure for making an international trip through the school.

It now takes a lot of time to plan the trip and raise the money to go — unless you’re the right person. Academic Affairs Director Scott Hannon made some contacts when he traveled to China last year. The School Board approved a Chinese Language Exchange program that could take up to 15 students to Changsha, China, for two weeks at the end of August. Instead of a 12 to 18 month timeline to plan the trip, Hannon will pull it off in less than three months.

It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. Will the chaperones pay their own way? Will the chaperones be carefully selected or selectively chosen? I understand the timeline had to be shortened to take advantage of some special funding. The timing of bending the rules for this trip is awful.

I wonder if any ordinary teacher would have even considered approaching the board with such a request right after the new guidelines were written?

What do you get for one barrel of oil?

I asked my breakfast comrades, “How many gallons are in a barrel of oil?” With most of them being retired businessmen, I thought someone there should know. The answers ranged from 22 gallons to 100 gallons. One person said 42 gallons, but we quickly discounted his answer because he used to be mayor.

After a little digging, I found out one barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil. The old gray mayor was right!

Since the price of oil reached $135 last week, it seemed like a pertinent question. It should also be noted that the price slid back to $127 when we reduced our driving over the holiday. Maybe $4 a gallon is our breaking point.

If you have a 25-gallon tank, you can spend $100 to fill up the tank. The total volume of products made from crude oil based origins is 48.43 gallons on average 6.43 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude oil.

This “processing gain” is due to the additional other petroleum products such as alkylates that are added to the refining process to create the final products. Now I wish I could find out why diesel fuel, a product that takes less refining, costs as much as 40 cents a gallon more than refined gasoline.

I’ll need to look that one up. I’m sure not going to ask the guys at breakfast that question.

Jim Galewski is the retired editor and Opinion page editor of the Winona Daily News. His views don’t necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper. If you have an idea or tip about a Winona issue, call Jim at (507) 452-3960. His e-mail is editor@luminet.net.

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