Relief from high inheritance taxes expires at the end of December, 2012. In the article “A Storm of Estate Taxes Threatens Farm Country,” Lynne Finnerty says that the new estate tax exemption will drop to one million dollars and the tax rate will increase to fifty-five percent (Finnerty). Lowering the estate tax exemption while increasing the rate may consequently cause the liquidation of many multigenerational family farms and an ultimate decrease in the world’s food supply.
Comprehending the effect of estate taxes on farm families requires a general understanding of farm economics. In Illinois, for example, there are 76,000 farms and more than 28 million acres of farm land. Therefore, the average farm size is 368 acres, including hobby farms (“Facts About Illinois Agriculture”). Illinois is a major corn producing state and the cost of corn production in 2012 is $832 per acre. The revenue from a 170 bushel per acre corn yield at $5.50 per bushel is $880 (Caldwell). Thus, an average corn farmer in the state of Illinois can expect to net approximately forty-eight dollars per acre on his corn crop in 2012. The average farm ground value in Illinois in 2011 increased to $5800 per acre (Tartar). These numbers are important to note when analyzing journalistic and political viewpoints concerning the effects of estate taxes on family farms.
The expiration of the tax relief act will negatively affect the next generation of American farmers. Farming does not generate enough income to meet the estate taxes that will be owed on a piece of farm ground. According to Editor Stu Ellis, in “End Estate Tax, Cut Deficit,” “Despite the high value of farm property, estates have relatively low liquid assets necessary to pay the high estate...
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"Kill The Death Tax." NODEATHTAX.ORG. The American Family Business Institute, 2009. Web.
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Tarter, Steve. "Central Illinois Farmland Prices Spike in 2011." pjstar.com. Gatehouse Media, 4
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The young, recently married farmers living in the Great Plains during the 1930s had a terrible life. First off, being married meant having multiple people to provide for. This is more responsibility, and leads to dividing up the food between family members. Then, the country was also in an economic downturn, so the price of food and crops were low. Farmers already had debt because of new machines and land that was purchased during World War I to keep up with the demand during the war. Then the depression caused banks to fail, so farmers lost all their money that was in the bank. Everyday life was treacherous, and there were few amenities in the home, with no plumbing or electricity. Life was awful for a farmer during the Great Depression.
Farmers everywhere in the United States during the late nineteenth century had valid reasons to complaint against the economy because the farmers were constantly being taken advantage of by the railroad companies and banks. All farmers faced similar problems and for one thing, farmers were starting to become a minority within the American society. In the late nineteenth century, industrialization was in the spotlight creating big businesses and capitals. The success of industrialization put agriculture and farmers on the down low, allowing the corporations to overtake the farmers. Since the government itself; such as the Republican Party was also pro-business during this time, they could have cared less about the farmers.
Corn took over American farmlands at the end of World War II, when a new synthetic fertilizer was introduced and manufactured by former munitions factories. It allowed for the elimination of crop rotation, leading to the switch from family farms to the corn monoculture. Economically, this system seems to make more sense, but it destroyed the once sustainable, sun-driven fertility cycle. Now, farmers are trapped into making more and more corn by government policy. As the abundance of the crop causes prices to fall, farmers must plant even more in order to make ends meet, surviving off constantly decreasing government subsidies. What’s worse is that the New Deal system that allowed corn farmers to stay afloat has since been dismantled in an effort to lower food prices and increase production without considering the farmers
A viable alternative to corn subsidies would be a program that would replace the corn subsidies with a price floor. A price floor would c...
The Plight of the Late Nineteenth Century American Farmer From the early beginnings of America to well into the nineteenth century, America has been dominantly an agricultural country. Farming and the country life have always been a great part of the American culture. Thomas Jefferson even expressed his gratitude for the farming class by saying Those who labor on the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He, has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. The American culture was built upon farming and agriculture, but since the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slaves, things have changed dramatically to the American lifestyle. This time brought on the Industrial Revolution, which sparked many factories and new ways of transportation across America.
The period between 1880 and 1900 was a boom time for American Politics. The country was finally free of the threat of war, and many of its citizens were living comfortably. However, as these two decades went by, the American farmer found it harder and harder to live comfortably. Crops such as cotton and wheat, once the sustenance of the agriculture industry, were selling at prices so low that it was nearly impossible for farmers to make a profit off them. Furthermore, improvement in transportation allowed foreign competition to materialize, making it harder for American farmers to dispose of surplus crop. Mother Nature was also showing no mercy with grasshoppers, floods, and major droughts that led to a downward spiral of business that devastated many of the nation’s farmers. As a result of the agricultural depression, numerous farms groups, most notably the Populist Party, arose to fight what the farmers saw as the reasons for the decline in agriculture. During the final twenty years of the nineteenth century, many farmers in the United States saw monopolies and trusts, railroads, and money shortages and the loss in value of silver as threats to their way of life, all of which could be recognized as valid complaints.
The farmers of the Great Depression did benefit from “New Deal”. The New Deal was mainly focused one them and the government tried many ways and started many organizations to help them from being taken advantage of like they had been in previous years.
The dead speak to the living in various forms. Humans are gifted with experts who translate the clues of the deceased including psychics, medical examiners, forensic pathologists, and forensic anthropologists. Anthropologists study bones, pathologists examine the “cause and development of disease,” and merging into forensics skews their missions (“Career”). For instance, forensic anthropologists study any causes of death available in the bones and aid the identification process with confirmations of age, race, and height while forensic pathologists study the causes of death “for legal purposes, one of which is deciding cause of death” (“Career”). Dr. Bill Bass, the author of Death’s Acre, is an expert in the
Richardson, J. ( 2011). Are All Farm Subsidies Giveaways to Corporate Farmers? Nope, Here's a
Agricultural subsidies is a very complex and controversial economic topic today. It will continue to be a hot topic as government continues it. It is largely debated in the United States as well as in other countries. The reason it is so largely debated is because it literally have an effect on the entire world market. Not to mention that the farm has been booming the last 5 to 10 years. This topic also tends to draw strong opinions in our area in particular due to the large agricultural community in our region. However, even within different states there are many supporters as well as opponents to these government subsidies.
Murphy, Tom. (2013). Why are some Kenyan farmers abandoning the one acre fund?, Humanosphere, Retrieved from, http://www.humanosphere.org/basics/2013/10/kenyan-farmers-abandoning-one-acre-fund/,
1991. The off of the farm income of this sector is only $20,847 per farm. The
Family farms are slowly fading away from the American landscape due to the increasing number of industrialized farms. Yet, there are so many benefits that the family farm brings to the community that it would be foolish to let them slip away. As Americans, we need to do everything we can to support out family farmers because they help the community out in many ways. Everything from local, fresh, produce, to helping keep our land free from chemicals and insecticides are just a few of the tasks they do to help everyone out. Without them, the United States will turn into a place where only few farm, and those who do, farm for an economical motive. America needs the farmer who not only farms for themselves but for the entire community as well.
Farmers have no specific amount of money that they are going to receive each year. This unreliability upon income causes financial problems when a family is involved.
The inevitable possibility of disasters and their outcomes of destruction leaves farmers at a risk of financial ruin. The 2014 Farm Bill in the United States was created to protect such agricultural producers, including livestock producers, from the devastation that can be caused to farms due to weather, disease from weather, or attacks by animals that were released or protected by the federal government. Provided by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the information can be trusted because it comes from a highly educated source that focuses on agriculture, and more specifically cattle by UNL Beef (“The 2014 Farm Bill...”). The source also explains how the bill provides protection, one way being through the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) for abnormal animal deaths, and another way being through the Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP) for losses in grazing lands. The LIP is managed by the federal operated Farm Service Agency (FSA) and economic assistance “is limited to a cumulative $125,000 per person per year across all programs” (“The 2014 Farm Bill…”). . The evidence from the 2014 Farm Bill verifies the importance and growth of animal agriculture in the economy because the 2014 Farm Bill and the LIP is a federally operated