From Karen Helton

Monroe

To the Editor:

I am writing to fill in a few blanks I have observed in election coverage pertaining to Project 2025’s impact on farmers. To research this information, I went to The Hill, a publication about Congress and legislation in the U.S.

I wonder how many local farmers have read any portion of Project 2025’s position on the farm subsidies which are a standard part of government appropriations. Take for instance this quote from The Hill’s consolidation of information on Project 2025, “The project proposes ending “safety nets” such as the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs, which pay farmers of selected commodities when the prices of those commodities fall below a predetermined level. . . and to end the sugar program, which manages U.S. sugar production to keep prices high.”

“It also pushes to cut government subsidies for crop insurance — for which the project also seeks to constrict or eliminate the Conservation Reserve Program, which was established in 1985 to pay farmers to fallow sensitive land to give it time to recover. Its creation was part of a broader attempt to slow the loss of American topsoil, which is both the basis of the food system and is vanishing 25 times faster than it is generated. taxpayers currently pick up about two-thirds of the cost.”

I don’t know if you will publish this letter, but at the very least, to keep local farmers informed on the plans of the Republican Party and the Heritage Foundation, please print an article on this topic. None of us want to go hungry, many of us know how hard farmers work and how precarious their work is in the face of global warming, their own government should not be attacking them as well.