Team 4 Investigation: Farm Subsidies Going To City Residents

The following is a transcript of a report by Team 4 investigator Paul Van Osdol that first aired July 24, 2008, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.

You may be paying record prices for food, but billions of your tax dollars are still subsidizing farmers.

Believe it or not, many farmers getting subsidies actually live in the city -- including downtown Pittsburgh.

How can you live in the city and get a farm subsidy? It's all perfectly legal, and Congress just passed a new farm bill that means it will continue.

In the past decade, more than $4 million in farm subsidies has gone to people who live in the Pittsburgh area but own farms elsewhere. In fact, the biggest local subsidy has gone to a retired doctor living in a downtown condo.

This is obviously not a farm. It's a downtown condominium tower. But in the past decade, more than $1 million in government farm subsidy checks have been sent here.

That's because a retired doctor who lives here -- Frank Bauer -- owns farmland in Iowa and Nebraska.

Team 4 found plenty more city or suburb dwellers who are getting fat farm subsidy checks.
Related: Online Database: See who's getting farm subsidies

Rodney Sveet lives in a home on Pittsburgh's North Side. He got $237,000 in farm subsidies.

Scott Brinkmeyer is an anesthesiologist who lives in a Fox Chapel home. He has gotten $136,000 in subsidy checks.

Sue Keegan lives in Mount Lebanon. She has gotten $104,000.

None of them wanted to talk on camera.

In all, people living in Pittsburgh ZIP codes got $4.1 million in farm subsidies from 1995 to 2006.

It's all perfectly legal. Even if you never set foot on a farm or touch a tractor, as long as you own farm land, you can get big government subsidies.

Sandra Schubert, of Environmental Working Group -- which analyzes farm subsidies -- says Pittsburgh is not unique.

"When you see city maps showing millions of dollars going to Manhattan and Beverly Hills and Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., you know there's a problem," Schubert said.

That's an outrage to dairy farmer Myron Bonzo, of Zelienople.

"Is that right?" Van Osdol asked.

"That's not right at all, and it does upset me that that happens," Bonzo said.

Like many small farmers, Bonzo struggles to make ends meet. He says the government should do more to help small farmers who are actually working the land themselves.

"We wish all the money got channeled in the right place, and these people who sit around and find loopholes in the programs, they're stealing money from the American people, absolutely," Bonzo said.

Congress just passed a new farm bill but it did nothing about so-called urban farmers.

U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, supported the farm bill but says he was not aware there were so many city dwellers getting subsidies.

"It's always a legitimate concern if someone is not really a working farm and that money is not going to help agriculture and farming, then that's something the Department of Agriculture needs to investigate and get back to us on," Murphy said.

Schubert says Congress was made aware of the problem during debate on the farm bill, and nothing changed.

"The system continues to be broken because Congress didn't take the necessary actions in this farm bill," she said.

It's not just people in the city getting farm subsidies. It's churches, universities -- even the Pittsburgh YMCA, which got about $10,000 in government subsidies through the Wildlife Habitat Program.

Even governments get farm subsidies. Washington County gets thousands for land in Cross Creek Park.

Colleges, too. Penn State got nearly half a million dollars over the past decade.

And how about this? A mosque in Philadelphia got $44,000 in farm subsidies for acreage surrounding the burial site of its founder.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it's all legal.

"It can be a corporation who owns the land. It can be a church who owns the land. If they meet all other eligibility requirements, they are eligible for the payments," said Brad Karmen, of the USDA.

Millions to non-farmers, while farmers like Bonzo struggle. He says it does not make sense.

"If you want to see farms survive, if you want to buy your fruit and produce locally, we need to support the guys that are out there doing it every day," Bonzo said.

Despite the concerns about the farm bill, it won support from all members of Congress from western Pennsylvania.

Environmental Working Group has an online database that allows you to find out who's getting farm subsidies.

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