Half of government farm payments over the past decade have gone to just 22 of the 435 congressional districts, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. Environmental Working Group: Individual farms collect millions.  Graphics: http://www.journalstar.com/media/flash_news/farm_subsidies.swf%20',%20'privacy',%20'width=500,%20height=500,%20scrollbars,%20resizable=no')"> The districts | Top 10 in Nebraska

By ART HOVEY | Lincoln Journal Star

In other years, harvest might be one of Bob Milton’s favorite farming times. But the price of corn is way down and the prices of fertilizer and diesel fuel are way up in November 2005.

Pardon Friend farmer Milton for getting a bit prickly as he tries to counter what he sees as more unwelcome news Wednesday.

As reported by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., he and five others in a family partnership called H-r-w Farming got almost $376,500 in direct payments from the federal government last year.

“If you could really put them out and people could see the true story,” Milton said of Wednesday’s payment figures, “there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

“But a lot of people see the figures and they think somebody is actually getting rich off the government.”

As far as he’s concerned, “they don’t realize what it takes to raise a bushel or an acre of irrigated corn. And the prices we receive, the market prices, are devastating right now.”

The latest update from the Environmental Working Group covers a lot of farming territory.

Besides identifying the Milton family as the seventh largest single recipient in Nebraska, its research cites Kaliff Farms of York as the largest, at $713,176, in 2004.

In the bigger picture, it points to the 3rd Congressional District presided over by Rep. Tom Osborne as the target of $5.8 billion in farm payments for the 10-year period from 1995 through 2004.

That’s the third highest total among the 435 districts in the United States for that time span.

“It’s not a surprise to me at all,” Osborne said.

The Environmental Working Group is also reporting half of all government farm payments are going to just 22 of those 435 districts.

In still more important contexts, the numbers come out as the Senate prepares for a possible vote today on lowering the limits for individual farm payments from $360,000 to $250,000.

And the House and Senate have yet to agree on how much to cut the food-stamp portion of the agricultural budget over the next five fiscal years to hit a multibillion-dollar budget reconciliation target for a period that began Oct. 1.

That raises the specter of hurricane victims and other needy people going hungry so the people who raise the food can keep a bigger safety net.

Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook wants the government to cut farm payments and revise provisions that allow some operations to collect millions of dollars a year from taxpayers.

“The whole system is tilted to a handful of big farm operations and everybody else comes up short,” Cook told The Associated Press Wednesday.

“Once members of Congress see just how much they would stand to gain by a fairer distribution, I think that will help shift the debate,” Cook added.

Osborne said he and some of his peers on the House Agriculture Committee promoted stiffer payment limitations as they looked at possible ways to cut agricultural spending last week. But they could not persuade a committee majority.

“We felt that the really large farms, people who receive really large payments, have some economies of scale,” he said. “And they probably could absorb cuts better than really small farmers. But we were unsuccessful in getting that done.”

Osborne counts the Environmental Working Group as “pretty negative toward farm payments” and he considers its periodic reports  “one of those things that’s unpleasant for everybody” in agriculture.

But does he share the view of some farmers that farm payments should be as much a matter of privacy as food-stamp payments?

“I don’t know that there’s anything you can say about it as long as it’s disclosed according to the law, the public disclosure issue,” he replied.

“No apologies, Nebraska is a fairly large agricultural area and we receive a fair amount of agricultural subsidy. No question about it. That’s the way it is.”

To one degree or another, Milton and Brad Lubben, a farm policy specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, aren’t buying the argument that Cook is trying to sell.

“I don’t usually comment,” Milton said, “but I would just try to remind people those numbers are a little bit deceiving when you look at them. Because our partnership goes under H-r-w Farming, but there are six individuals in the partnership.”

Split up the approximately 8,400 acres three brothers, two sons and a son-in-law farm six ways, he said, “and there would be a lot of farmers in the state that farm way more than that.”

“We’ve made it work. But I guarantee you we’ve got a lot of debts and a lot of worries all the time.”

The Journal Star was unable to reach Charles Kaliff of Kaliff Farms at York Wednesday, but Lubben said a check of public records shows there are seven partners in that operation that collected $713,176.

With the Kaliffs and a $250,000 individual limit proposed by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley in mind, “it’s not as large a payment as you think it is,” he said.

Furthermore, “I would say the size of the payment does not directly suggest how much anybody is putting in his back pocket.”

Much of the money will be spent on increasingly expensive farming inputs.

Apart from that, the latest announcement day for the Environmental Working Group is not farmers’ favorite day in Nebraska, Lubben said.

“In some sense, we don’t like to be reminded how dependent the agricultural sector is on government payments. And the more noted that is, the bigger target it becomes.”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.