People in Brooklyn and Beverly Hills receive farm subsidies from the federal government, and local farmers say that's just wrong.
Anyone who owns farm ground can receive subsidies, even if the person doesn't work the ground, explained Liz Moore of the Environmental Working Group.
That leads to some unlikely subsidy recipients, her group reported.
Payments included $171,000 to Caterpillar, $126,000 to John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance, $260,000 to oil giant Chevron.
About 372 Brooklyn residents received farm subsidies, as did 803 residents of Washington, D.C., 31 people in Beverly Hills and 40 people in Aspen, Colo., the group said.
And while big dollars were going to multi-national corporations and city dwellers, a lot of actual farmers got little help, according to numbers compiled by the group.
About 80 percent of farmers averaged subsidy payments of less than $1,200 a year. This is one reason the group has dubbed Congress's 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill the "Freedom to Fail" bill.
'Should be a farmer'
Some local farmers have said if you're not a farmer, you shouldn't be getting a check.
"They collect, and I don't think they should. If you get a subsidy, you should be a farmer," said David Beachel Sr. of rural Danville. "Period."
Philip Moyer, another Montour County farmer, said one solution might be to limit the number of acres that subsidies cover.
"That would protect medium- and family-size farm operations," said Moyer.
"Then, if these companies wanted to get huge they could do it at their own risk."
But even that idea is controversial, because no one seems to be able to decide what a small farm is.
"The big- and small-farm issue has been going on for a while in Pennsylvania," said farmer Carl Shaffer, Mifflinville. "There are no definitions of what is a big farm and what is a small farm."
And even if the issue could be decided on a state level, it would still be relative nationally.
A Pennsylvania farm that's several thousand acres might be considered big here, but it would be dwarfed by huge operations in the Midwest, said Shaffer.:
